4 Types of Workplace Culture: Which One Is Most Like Your Team?

Workplace culture can significantly influence team dynamics and overall productivity. Explore the four distinct types of workplace cultures and identify which one resonates most with your team's ethos and working style.

Well-being and healthy relationships are defining characteristics of strong, long-lasting teams

Typical company culture puts qualities like excellence, innovation, knowledge, financial performance, or industry leadership at the top, while losing sight of the fact that these are the result of strong and healthy people working well together

• We picture the dynamics of a workplace according to how much it values well-being/strong relationships
• The interplay between these values-strong and weak on each axis-creates quadrant values

Simple Gestures to Foster Compassion

Scott Shute, the former head of Mindfulness and Compassion at LinkedIn, shares a few simple gestures that can help foster compassion in our workplaces, families, and communities.

• Eric Langshur and Nate Klemp
• How a deep mindfulness practice helped Jessica Morey loosen the reins at Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, and empower the organization to adopt a new way to work.

School of Sharks

Focused relationships are transactional-with others on the team, with people in the wider organization, and even with customers. Relationships are valued for their utility: acquiring money, success or prestige.

• No-sum thinking and a scarcity mindset. People react to limits on promotions and bonus money by grabbing the most they can for themselves.

Where Is Your Team?

Teams, like people, rarely exist at one extreme or the other

• Consider who you are (or want to be) and who others are in your immediate work circle
• Are you surrounded by people with the same values, and could you all name what they are

The Doom Loop

People might work very hard, disregarding their well-being, or just do the bare minimum, without a sense of purpose other than getting by.

• Business results on most metrics, from profits to employee engagement, are below average, and attempts to change such a culture are usually too little, too late.

Try This Informal Practice

Decide which scenario best describes your team and write the reasons for your decision

• Remember you’re thinking about the two axes here: How much your group values relationships and how much they value well-being
• It’s worthwhile to discuss where your team is on the quadrant among team members

Lone Leopards

Value individual well-being but not strong human relationships

• Innovation and risk-taking work best when trusted bonds exist among team members
• Organizational resilience is lower
• With less understanding of contrasting work styles, individuals struggle to create win-win solutions

Trusted Teams

A workplace that values both strong relationships and individual well-being is ideal

• People benefit when they look out for each other as well as themselves
• Benefits from an abundance mindset
• Organizational resilience grows from uniting around a common mission and purpose

Source