Building team culture
Enhancing team performance requires more than processes and goals. It depends on the culture leaders create. Culture shapes how people feel at work, how they treat one another, and how they respond to challenges. By paying attention to team culture, leaders can unlock motivation, connection, and collective success.
Foundations of culture: safety, connection, and shared future
Strong team cultures are built on three pillars: psychological safety, genuine connection, and a sense of shared future.
Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety shows that when people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes, teams learn faster and perform better. Culture also depends on people feeling connected to one another, building trust, empathy, and respect. And looking ahead, teams thrive when they share a vision of what they are working towards together, not just individually.
As management thinker Peter Drucker famously said, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No matter how strong the plan, it will not succeed without a culture that supports collaboration, trust, and commitment.
Learn more
To find out more about how team performance improves when there is team psychological safety, look at the links below.
Reflect
- How safe do people in your team feel to take risks or admit mistakes?
- What helps your team feel connected to one another beyond tasks?
- How clearly does your team see the future it is building together?
Behaviours that shape culture
Culture isn’t abstract. It’s visible in daily behaviours. One useful framework is the Above and Below the Line model, which distinguishes between constructive and unhelpful mindsets.
Above the line – open, curious, accountable, and solutions-focused.
Below the line – defensive, closed, blaming, or avoiding responsibility.
Leaders set the tone by role-modelling ‘above the line’ behaviours and addressing when the team slips below it. Over time, repeated behaviours build trust — or erode it. Trust grows when leaders consistently act with transparency, fairness, and reliability.
Use the below activity to reflect with your team on how they are showing up together and notice mindsets and behaviours that either strengthen or weaken collaboration.
Reflect
- What ‘above the line’ behaviours are strongest in your team?
- Where do you notice ‘below the line’ behaviours creeping in? What can you do to address this?
- How do you personally role-model trust-building behaviours every day?
Collaboration and including diverse perspectives
Collaboration is the outcome of a strong culture; it’s how people work together toward shared goals. Gallup’s long-running ‘State of the Global Workplace’ research repeatedly shows that engaged teams built on trust and valuing diverse perspectives consistently outperform those that don’t.
Valuing diversity means inviting and respecting different viewpoints, experiences, and ways of thinking. When leaders create space for this, they reduce groupthink and make better, more inclusive decisions.
Challenges to watch for
Even strong teams can slip into patterns that weaken culture. Common challenges include:
- Cliques or exclusivity
- when some voices dominate and others feel excluded.
- Leadership Intervention: deliberately rotate who leads discussions or shares updates, and actively invite quieter voices in.
- Cultural drift
- when stated values don’t match daily behaviours.
- Leadership Intervention: revisit your team’s agreed values or purpose regularly, and role-model them in decision-making.
- Lack of leader role-modelling
- when leaders fail to ‘walk the talk’.
- Leadership Intervention: seek feedback on how your actions align with your words, and acknowledge when you fall short.
- Avoiding conflict
- when teams prioritise harmony over honest, constructive debate.
- Leadership Intervention: set norms for respectful disagreement, and frame conflict as a pathway to better solutions.
Spotting these challenges early and intervening intentionally allows leaders to take corrective action and keep the team culture strong.
Reflect
- How often do you see genuine collaboration in your team, versus people working in silos?
- In what ways do you invite and make use of diverse perspectives?
- How could greater collaboration and inclusiveness strengthen your team’s performance?
Pause and reflect on team culture
Culture is built through the everyday actions, choices, and conversations of leaders and their teams. By fostering safety, encouraging constructive behaviours, and embracing collaboration, you set the tone for high performance. Remember: culture is never static. It requires constant attention, role-modelling, and reinforcement.