How To Fix A Broken Team Culture

It happens way too often. Maybe it’s even happened to you.

You interview for a new role in a new organization (or a new role in a different part of a large organization). You seem to connect with the people, and you definitely connect with the work, so you excitedly accept the job offer. And then you arrive in the new role and everything is different. The people aren’t nearly as warm as they seemed when they were recruiting you. The work isn’t as interesting and meaningful as you thought.

The culture is broken.

And, you begin to feel that you’ve made a terrible mistake. And if you’re in an entry level position in the company, there’s not much you can do except re-polish your resume and look for a better culture. But if you’re in a leadership role-or even an influential team member role-then you don’t have to move on quite yet. You can fix the broken culture. Maybe not in the entire organization-but you can fix the broken culture on your team.

In this article, we’ll outline the three steps to fixing a broken team culture, or at least preventing the toxicity of the companywide culture from infecting your team.

Start With Who

The first step to fixing a broken team culture is to start with who. Apologies to Simon Sinek and his concept of “start with why”…