Status:: { Books MOC Author:: Medium:: #literature/books/finished Tags:: Links: { The Culture Code Application
{ The Culture Code
Skill 1 - Build safety
1 - The good apples
Characteristics of a Good Group
- MBA students and their focus on group dynamics prevent them from doing better than kindergarteners
- To prevent a person’s negative mood to influence a whole group, you need to deflect their emotions with positivity and stronger warmth
- Following up on their attempts to sabotage with jokes and engagement
Common features in good, positive groups with chemistry:
- Close physical proximity, often in circles
- Profuse amounts of eye contact
- Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs)
- Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches)
- High levels of mixing; everyone talks to everyone
- Few interruptions
- Lots of questions
- Intensive, active listening
- Humor, laughter
- Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors, etc.)
These features all fall under one of the three categories, promoting safety:
- Energy: They invest in the exchange that is occurring
- Individualization: They treat the person as unique and valued
- Future orientation: They signal the relationship will continue
Team performance is mostly dependent on communication and teamwork:
- Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.
- Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.
- Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader.
- Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
- Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.
Culture and Belonging
- Google’s constant connection and insider competition
- A sense of social accountability or connection causes us to increase performance significantly
- However, this needs to be constantly connected through engagement to cultivate safety
- Amygdala can be used to watch out for danger, or build social connections. When we’re safe, we unlock another resource for teamwork and chemistry
Christmas Truce
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People were able to share their vulnerability, which led to the peaceful connection during christmas
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To make people more committed to a group, focus on hearing the individual
4 - How to build belonging
Popovich
- successful underdog basketball coach of the spurs
I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.
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You are part of this group.
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This group is special; we have high standards here.
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I believe you can reach those standards.
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Forms of effective connection communication, progressively zoomed out
- Up-close connection (body, attention)
- Performance (criticism)
- Big-picture stuff (politics, history, food)
People later said he behaved like the father of a bride at a wedding, taking time with everyone, thanking them, appreciating them. There were no speeches, just a series of intimate conversations. In a moment that could have been filled with frustration, recrimination, and anger, he filled their cups. They talked about the game. Some of them cried. They began to come out of their private silences, to get past the loss and to connect. They even laughed.
5 - Desining for belonging
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6 - Ideas for Action
“To create safety, leaders need to actively invite input,” Edmondson says. “It’s really hard for people to raise their hand and say, ‘I have something tentative to say.’ And it’s equally hard for people not to answer a genuine question from a leader who asks for their opinion or their help.”
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Something so daunting can be flipped into something irresistible that is helpful, all from the actions of the leader
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If something good happens, be grateful for the people who contributed to it
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Have no tolerance for bad apples, there are people more humane ready to fill in the position
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Safe spaces
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Everyone’s heard
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Pick up trash
- No matter your position, display humility by finding ways to serve the group
Alternative to feedback sandwich
- People know the structure, and continue to dwell
- Instead, handle through two distinct categories
- embrace negativity through dialogue
- shower with praise
Skill 2 - Share Vulnerability
7 - Tell me what you want and I’ll help you
Flight 232 teamwork to provide a miraculous plane landing
- Synthesizing skills for a greater intelligence through relaying information
- Notifications, open-ended questions that others can provide knowledge for
Pixar’s brain-trust meetings
- Arranged time to adress bad news and scary questions
- Facing adversity allows for trust and cooperation
8 - The vulnerability loop
Set a vs set b questions
- a is more comforting and safe
- Where did you go to high school?
- b is more explorative and emotional
- ex) Why haven’t you done something you’ve dreamed of?
Vulnerability
“People tend to think of vulnerability in a touchy-feely way, but that’s not what’s happening,” Polzer says. “It’s about sending a really clear signal that you have weaknesses, that you could use help. And if that behavior becomes a model for others, then you can set the insecurities aside and get to work, start to trust each other and help each other. If you never have that vulnerable moment, on the other hand, then people will try to cover up their weaknesses, and every little microtask becomes a place where insecurities manifest themselves.”
- Dependent on the recipient to also reciprocate, or to hide and pretend
- Vulnerability loop
- That’s how you start deep conversations, you need to show the other person you’re vulnerable
- Steps
- Person A sends a signal of vulnerability.
- Person B detects this signal.
- Person B responds by signaling their own vulnerability.
- Person A detects this signal.
- A norm is established; closeness and trust increase.
- Vulnerability linked to cooperation and is contagious
- You do not have to reciprocate to the source of vulnerability, you can transfer it to something else
- how people pay it foward
- You do not have to reciprocate to the source of vulnerability, you can transfer it to something else
9 - Super Cooperators
- The SEAL exercises practice intense vulnerability and deep interconnectedness
- Vulnerable as it’s tiring
- Interconnected as it requires teamwork to effectively balance weight
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12 - Ideas for Action
Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often.
- If you’re a leader, ask:
- What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do?
- What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often?
- What can I do to make you more effective?
Overcommunicate expectations
- Explain that cooperation and its form is necessary
Deliver negative stuff in person:
When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments:
- First vulnerability and the first disagreement
- Helps set the tone of eitther cooperation or defensiveness
Listen like a trampoline:
- Actively absorb, then add your own energy to gain altitude
- People rarely think on the first question, so keep rephrasing it until something gets uncovered
- They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported
- They take a helping, cooperative stance
- They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions
- They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths
Skilled listeners do not interrupt with phrases like Hey, here’s an idea or Let me tell you what worked for me in a similar situation because they understand that it’s not about them.
- Only introduce when people are accepting of the risk of cooperation
‘Say more about that.’
Reflect on results:
- What were our intended results?
- What were our actual results?
- What caused our results?
- What will we do the same next time?
- What will we do differently?
Aim for Candor; Avoid Brutal Honesty:
- Candor is feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful
Embrace discomfort
Align language with action:
- Reinforce identity
Use Flash Mentoring:
- Few hours of mentoring
Those brief interactions help break down barriers inside a group, build relationships, and facilitate the awareness that fuels helping behavior.
Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear:
- make the group cooperate without you
3 - Establish Purpose
purpose is a set of reasons for doing what you do.
- Purpose is the bridge between now and the future
13 - Three Hundred and Eleven Words
Our environment and surroundings should be
High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal. They provide the two simple locators that every navigation process requires: Here is where we are and Here is where we want to go. The surprising thing, from a scientific point of view, is how responsive we are to this pattern of signaling.
- Future can be goal or behavior
14 - Hooligans and Surgeons
- Aim for steady, ultra-clear signals towards the shared goal, rather than one big dump
- Consistency over inspiration
16 - Lead for Creativity
Name and Rank Your Priorities: In order to move toward a target, you must first have a target. Listing your priorities, which means wrestling with the choices that define your identity, is the first step. Most successful groups end up with a small handful of priorities (five or fewer), and many, not coincidentally, end up placing their in-group relationships—how they treat one another—at the top of the list. This reflects the truth that many successful groups realize: Their greatest project is building and sustaining the group itself. If they get their own relationships right, everything else will follow.
Be Ten Times as Clear About Your Priorities as You Think You Should Be: Statements of priorities were painted on walls, stamped on emails, incanted in speeches, dropped into conversation, and repeated over and over until they became part of the oxygen.
Figure Out Where Your Group Aims for Proficiency and Where It Aims for Creativity: Every group skill can be sorted into one of two basic types: skills of proficiency and skills of creativity.
Skills of proficiency are about doing a task the same way, every single time. They are about delivering machine-like reliability, and they tend to apply in domains in which the goal behaviors are clearly defined, such as service. Building purpose to perform these skills is like building a vivid map: You want to spotlight the goal and provide crystal-clear directions to the checkpoints along the way. Ways to do that include:
- Fill the group’s windshield with clear, accessible models of excellence.
- Provide high-repetition, high-feedback training.
- Build vivid, memorable rules of thumb (if X, then Y).
- Spotlight and honor the fundamentals of the skill.
Creative skills, on the other hand, are about empowering a group to do the hard work of building something that has never existed before. Generating purpose in these areas is like supplying an expedition: You need to provide support, fuel, and tools and to serve as a protective presence that empowers the team doing the work. Some ways to do that include:
- Keenly attend to team composition and dynamics.
- Define, reinforce, and relentlessly protect the team’s creative autonomy.
- Make it safe to fail and to give feedback.
- Celebrate hugely when the group takes initiative.
Most groups, of course, consist of a combination of these skill types, as they aim for proficiency in certain areas and creativity in others. The key is to clearly identify these areas and tailor leadership accordingly.
Embrace the Use of Catchphrases: When you look at successful groups, a lot of their internal language features catchphrases that often sound obvious, rah-rah, or corny. Many of us instinctively dismiss them as cultish jargon. But this is a mistake. Their occasionally cheesy obviousness is not a bug—it’s a feature. Their clarity, grating to the outsider’s ear, is precisely what helps them function.
- The trick to building effective catchphrases is to keep them simple, action-oriented, and forthright: “Create fun and a little weirdness” (Zappos), “Talk less, do more” (IDEO), “Work hard, be nice” (KIPP), “Pound the rock” (San Antonio Spurs), “Leave the jersey in a better place” (New Zealand All-Blacks), “Create raves for guests” (Danny Meyer’s restaurants).
Measure What Really Matters: The main challenge to building a clear sense of purpose is that the world is cluttered with noise, distractions, and endless alternative purposes. One solution is to create simple universal measures that place focus on what matters.
Use Artifacts: If you traveled from Mars to Earth to visit successful cultures, it would not take you long to figure out what they were about. Their environments are richly embedded with artifacts that embody their purpose and identity.
Yeah Focus on Bar-Setting Behaviors: One challenge of building purpose is to translate abstract ideas (values, mission) into concrete terms. One way successful groups do this is by spotlighting a single task and using it to define their identity and set the bar for their expectations.
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Created:: 2021-12-12