Knowledge Sharing   6. Strategies for Building A Strong Team Culture Within Our Organization   Ruby KW Chiu    @February 2023

I wish all our alumni a happy Chinese New Year. Let me share with you about my presentation at last AGM 2022 for strategies for building a strong team culture within our organization.

Is one of the important elements contributing to the prosperity of a society and success of an organization. It is actually measurable and manageable.

• As individual, It is the belief, way of life, art and customs that are shared and accepted in a particular society.

• In an organization, it is the belief and particular ways of doing things regularly towards the common goal that are shared among members. Some organizations associate themselves with a set of values such as innovative or environment friendly organizations. Alphabet Inc. (Google) are known for employee centric e.g. creative and flexible working environment.

Benefits of Organizational Culture

• Support the objectives of the organization.
• Attract job applicants to the organization whose culture they agree with.
• Drive member retention and new talent acquisition.

 Characteristics of Organizational Culture

• Vision from mission statements, a powerful tool. Google’s “don’t be evil”.
• Values, a broad concept necessary to achieve an organization’s vision.
• Practices guided by ethics. Netflix pays its employees higher salary than market range.
• People, train members to enhance overall culture
• Narrative/story and place to share with other members for growth e.g. Steve Jobs and Apple Inc.

Team Culture

The values, missions and visions that a team shares. Every team has own culture developed by the team leader’s management style.

• Poor team is critical not only to the team but to the whole organizational success.
• Team member’s commitment to work and retention are related the perceived organizational and team values.

Elements make strong team culture values

• One team may value efficiency or productivity as core to their performance.
• Another team may value honest and open communication more important.
• The values are different, but the team members share among themselves.

Essential components to build values

1.    Clearly define cored values and mission to the team members

• What qualities do you look for in the applicants you hire?
• Who are your model members, and what do you admire about them?
• What ultimate goals are you working toward

2.     Transparent culture among team members

Put the clearly defined mission statement – what we do into a handbook, display core values – what we believe on posters in the workplace and reinforce your goals – what we want to be regularly in team meetings.

3.    Valuing Feedback Culture      

• Continually check in on how your team members perceive the team culture.
• Discuss the culture openly in team meetings, gatherings and one-on-one between team heads.

4.  Prioritize Continuous Learning Culture

• By offering training resources or hosting training sessions.
• The benefits are boosting team members’ engagement and morale at tasks.
• Generate and model the expected behavior of the team members.

5.  People Oriented Culture

• Give praise to team members for their efforts.
• Highlight team members’ accomplishments is an inspiring way to make members feel recognized and appreciated and have a sense of belonging at the team and encourage other members to do the same.

to recognize wins and accomplishments of team members

6. Team Oriented Culture

• Members are allowed to help each other when needed as they have higher understanding of each other’s functions.

7.      Inspiring Innovation Culture

• Members are encouraged to give their creative ideas.

• There are certain criteria or objectives the idea needs to meet in order to be considered a viable idea.

8.     Embracing Diversity Culture

• The team helps members to foster compassion and develop deeper understanding towards different set of opinions from members with diverse skills, preventing any one from alienated.

Organizational culture constantly changes and evolves with the time lead to organizational improvements and an increase in talent retention.

Culture Management

The team culture is a summation of what the team stands for

• A strategic way to link the beliefs, purpose and core values to the member-related systems of the teams together.

• It involves recruitment and selection, diversity and inclusion, performance management, training and development and rewards and recognition.

The role of Human Resource Management

Human resource plays an important role in building a successful organizational culture thru recruitment, employee / member training and development and performance management program.

The role of Team Management

• Focusing on collaboration, cooperation and working together to bring out a collective strength into the team force, not just within their own teams but other members.
  

• Providing a flat structure to team members enabling them to lead and manage themselves with great task satisfaction.

Even building a strong team culture takes efforts and time, it is rewarding eventually when team members are committed to their tasks, share their knowledge and rely on each other to work together in harmony towards their common goal, that not only lead to organizational success, but also their career development personally.

I wish the new year of rabbit may bring you more happiness and prosperity.