Building Team Culture

Team culture is a huge part of my leadership style.

Once you’ve experienced the incredible results that an effective team culture program provides it becomes a foundational element of your success.

Planned and executed effectively, team culture helps you attract and retain the right talent and propel performance.

It's the foundation of how we work together, how we treat each other and in a remote resort it also cements expectations surrounding how we live with each other.

A team culture allows colleagues to connect with the company through shared values and feel secure in the understanding of what is expected from them in terms of behaviour.

During my career I’ve been involved in numerous team culture programs. The following are the key lessons I’ve learned about creating and implementing team culture programs.

Collective Input

When I worked on the opening of Elements of Byron we executed a Leadership Workshop Day focused on getting to know each other as a leadership team and defining our team culture. To this day it is still a very special day for me.

It included some great activities like meditation and kayaking but ultimately allowed us as a group to come together and collectively decide who we are, what we stand for and how we treat each other. It was powerful.

Define Team Culture

Your team culture should be simple and easy to describe. Generally speaking, most team culture programs I’ve worked on have had the following elements to them:

1. A title statement or slogan – something that you can use to name the program so that whenever you mention the title everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about.

2. Values – these speak to the identity of the resort/team and give colleagues the ability to recognise the same values in themselves and then feel like they belong.

3. Behaviours – these practical statements allow colleagues to understand exactly what is expected of them and makes your team culture actionable.

Embed It In The DNA

Don’t be one of those company that prints your team culture on a poster, puts it on the wall and then speaks of it again.

Your team culture needs to be a part of every aspect of your colleague operation. For example:

• Recruitment – make it the star of your employer branding and marketing so you attract the right talent. The Lizard Island careers page leads with our team culture. It features a video front and centre.

• Training in Orientation – introduce new colleagues to your team culture straight away and make sure they understand how to translate their new knowledge into action.

• Daily Discussion – create a talking point regarding your team culture so that it is a part of your daily operations meetings. Talk about how you’re going to bring the team culture to life today.

• Positive Reinforcement – create systems that allow you to recognise and reward colleagues for executing the team culture. When I worked at One&Only Reethi Rah our Ignite Reethi culture program had a weekly winner. The winner would get the chance to spin the prize wheel. It was always great fun.

• Facilitate Communication – I’ve often used a private Facebook group for colleagues as a means of communication. Daily discussion points regarding the team culture can be posted here. You’ll know your team culture is really working colleagues start to post notes of congratulations to other colleagues on great work and behaviours that are in line with your cultural behaviours.

I think that a team culture program can be underestimate and undervalued, but once you’ve seen it impact your team morale, employee retention and guest satisfaction, you’ll never want to be without one.