Want to Build a Team Culture? Respect is Fundamental

Teamwork is a lot like cooking. Similar to individual ingredients in a recipe, each person in an organization plays a unique role in creating a high-performing team. A chef has a lot of influence over the flavor, and overall quality of a meal. Like a chef, leaders have substantial influence over team performance and alignment.

Skilled and knowledgeable leaders can build team culture and increase productivity. Take the first step in your organization:

The Benefits of Team Culture and Alignment   

Alignment means team members are fully committed to a common purpose, vision, and goals, where individuals are held mutually accountable. Team members are invested in the organization’s values, and one another’s growth and success. There are challenges in blending diverse backgrounds, skills, and personalities, but those same challenges can lead to high-performing teams when aligned with a purpose.

When each member is on the same page, it results in a natural and more effective team culture. Organizations with a thriving team culture generate better ideas, are more efficient, and have a higher level of trust. The increased innovation, productivity, and agility enhance your organizations competitive edge.

An authentic team environment requires team members to be aligned around a shared vision and goal. This level of commitment is derived from trust.

Team Culture starts with Respect

A high-performing team culture forms naturally as a team is aligned, and alignment begins with trust. The Intégro Trust Model identifies eight values and four main behaviors of trust building. One of the eight values, respect, creates an environment where trust can flourish and lead to alignment and team building.

The Intégro Leadership Institute saw a connection between their trust model and Tuckman’s Model of team development. The Tuckman Model consists of four phases a team goes through to grow: forming, storming, norming, and performing. The Intégro Leadership Institute combined their eight values of trust and Tuckman’s four phases of development to better identify the role respect plays in team building and alignment, as well as how teams can move from one level of the Tuckman model to the next. Building a team culture does not happen in one day. Teams can get stuck in a phase for an extended period and even regress. Using the eight values of trust, your team can successfully move through each stage of the team building model.

Diagram from Integro Leadership Institute

Respect is fundamental in the first phase of team building and is crucial to move into phase two. Building a solid foundation of respect makes it possible to grow and develop a team culture within an organization. The Intégro team found that none of the other behaviors made as great an impact when respect was removed from the model. For example, in the second phase, receptivity, disclosure, and keeping commitments did not improve the team as much unless respect was the foundation. You need trust building behaviors at each phase to naturally progress through the model, but it is much more difficult for an organization to move forward or build a team culture without respect. Once respect is established, teams can successfully move through the storming, norming, and performing stages of team development by applying specific, additional trust building activities.

How Action-Strategies-By-Design Can Help You Build a Team Culture

Action-Strategies-By-Design provides a wide range of services, assessments, and trainings to help build high-performing teams and influential leaders. The Team Alignment Survey from Trust Inside Assessments is a starting point to build trust and teamwork within your organization.

The Team Alignment Survey

Low alignment is caused by a lack of trust and inhibits a team culture from forming. The Team Alignment Survey pinpoints where the lack of alignment lies and:

• Identifies specific areas that suppress growth and communication.
• Collects valuable feedback from team members and ideas on how to increase alignment and trust.
• Measures two aspects of alignment: clarity and approval.

After the survey, you receive a team alignment and trust report. The reports identify perceived levels of trust and alignment based on overall findings and areas for improvement. In addition, each team member receives individual information, which shows where they rated team performance compared to the overall group results.

Action-Strategy-By-Design can help your organization make a sustainable change by debriefing leaders and team members, providing tools and advice for developing alignment, and offering training and assessments to measure progress over time. Learn more about how you can implement a strategic team development plan with the Team Alignment Survey.

Attend a Free Virtual Showcase

Webinars are an excellent resource for training and personal development. Action-Strategies-By-Design hosted a free virtual showcase, Building High Performance Teams, on June 16, 2021. Register now to view speaker Keith Ayers, president of Intégro Leadership Institute, as he explores the six aspects of team alignment and how your team can align to increase productivity.

Dedicated and passionate chefs receive prestigious training to perfect signature dishes and techniques and achieve a five-star rating. You, too, can become a five-star leader with training and access to developmental resources. Contact us for more information on building team culture, free webinars, and Trust Inside Assessments.