Management & Leadership
![Daniel Coyle - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001IQWPIA.jpg)
The Culture Playbook: 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed
The ultimate handbook for fostering and cultivating a strong team culture, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code and The Talent Code.
"If you are a leader-or if you work with one-and want to understand how to build psychological safety, trust, and a sense of purpose for your team, then you need this book."-Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit
Building a team has never been harder than it is right now. How do you create connection and trust? How do you stay focused on your goals? In his years studying the ways successful groups work together, Daniel Coyle has spent time with elite teams around the world, observing the ways they support each other, manage conflict, and move toward a common goal. In The Culture Playbook, he distills everything he has learned into sixty concrete, actionable tips and exercises that will help your team build a cohesive, positive culture.
Great cultures, Coyle has found, are built on three essential skills: safety, vulnerability, and purpose. Within this framework, he shows us how we can better serve our teammates, ourselves, and our shared purpose, including:
• scheduling regular team "tune-ups" to place an explicit spotlight on the team's inner workings and create conversations that surface and improve team dynamics
• creating spaces for remote coworkers to connect with their colleagues to foster a team spirit even across distances
• holding an anxiety party to serve as a pressure-relief valve, as well as a platform for people to connect and solve problems together
With reflections, exercises, and practical tips that will prove invaluable to companies, athletes, and families alike, and replete with black-and-white illustrations, The Culture Playbook is an indispensable guide to ensuring that your team performs at its best.
"If you are a leader-or if you work with one-and want to understand how to build psychological safety, trust, and a sense of purpose for your team, then you need this book."-Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit
Building a team has never been harder than it is right now. How do you create connection and trust? How do you stay focused on your goals? In his years studying the ways successful groups work together, Daniel Coyle has spent time with elite teams around the world, observing the ways they support each other, manage conflict, and move toward a common goal. In The Culture Playbook, he distills everything he has learned into sixty concrete, actionable tips and exercises that will help your team build a cohesive, positive culture.
Great cultures, Coyle has found, are built on three essential skills: safety, vulnerability, and purpose. Within this framework, he shows us how we can better serve our teammates, ourselves, and our shared purpose, including:
• scheduling regular team "tune-ups" to place an explicit spotlight on the team's inner workings and create conversations that surface and improve team dynamics
• creating spaces for remote coworkers to connect with their colleagues to foster a team spirit even across distances
• holding an anxiety party to serve as a pressure-relief valve, as well as a platform for people to connect and solve problems together
With reflections, exercises, and practical tips that will prove invaluable to companies, athletes, and families alike, and replete with black-and-white illustrations, The Culture Playbook is an indispensable guide to ensuring that your team performs at its best.
Editorial Reviews
"As an entrepreneur and founder of a new investment bank led by women, I found The Culture Playbook to be an invaluable asset, providing tools and techniques as I work to unleash my team's full power and potential in an ever-evolving workplace. Daniel Coyle has given us all a game plan for success."-Anne Clarke Wolff, CEO and founder of Independence Point Advisors
"‘Your Culture = Your Actions.' With that simple phrase, Dan Coyle nails the most important and elusive element of building great cultures, and then delivers concrete actions you can take-today-to ensure that you're building an amazing culture every day."-Laszlo Bock
"The Culture Playbook offers an integrated set of simple, powerful exercises for anyone serious about creating a culture where people can thrive and do their best work. Refreshingly practical, this is really a workbook with a playful bent, and taking it seriously will help any group succeed."-Amy C. Edmondson, professor, Harvard Business School
"‘Your Culture = Your Actions.' With that simple phrase, Dan Coyle nails the most important and elusive element of building great cultures, and then delivers concrete actions you can take-today-to ensure that you're building an amazing culture every day."-Laszlo Bock
"The Culture Playbook offers an integrated set of simple, powerful exercises for anyone serious about creating a culture where people can thrive and do their best work. Refreshingly practical, this is really a workbook with a playful bent, and taking it seriously will help any group succeed."-Amy C. Edmondson, professor, Harvard Business School
Short Excerpt Teaser
BUILDING SAFETY
"You belong"
You feel it the instant you enter a strong culture: that warm sense of cohesion, the shared willingness to speak up, the whole group thinking and feeling as one entity. We usually describe this phenomenon as "group chemistry," and tend to regard it as mysterious and accidental. But in fact, science has shown that group chemistry-or, to use the more accurate term, psychological safety-is not mysterious at all. Rather, it is built through the exchange of belonging cues-small, vivid behaviors that send a crystal-clear message:
• We are connected.
• We share a future.
• I care about you.
• You have a voice here.
• You matter.
Belonging cues signal our brains to switch out of vigilance mode, where we scan for possible danger, into connection mode, where we actively tune in to the people around us. That's why strong cultures send belonging cues in abundance, especially during critical moments when norms get established, such as the first time a group comes together, the group's first disagreement, and the first time the group learns something together. If you get these critical moments right-that is, if you flood the zone with belonging cues-you'll go a long way toward creating the foundation of safety on which strong culture is built.
One of my favorite belonging-builders is the Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay, who makes a practice of learning the names of her entire crew before the first day of filming. "I don't treat my actors differently than I treat the gaffer or the grip or the craft services manager or hair and makeup, because we're all making the movie," she told The Statesman. "No one is better than anyone else just because they're in front of the camera."
The actions that follow are a series of belonging generators. As you use them, keep in mind that your overarching goal is not merely to make people feel safe but to create an environment where everybody-from the newest hire to the CEO-knows they can speak up when it counts. "The academic research is overwhelming," says Amy Edmondson of Harvard, who pioneered the study of psychological safety. "When people believe they can speak up at work, the learning, innovation, and performance of their organizations is greater."
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Let's Talk About Safety
Psychological safety is powerful because it's personal. You may experience a strong, warm sense of connection and belonging; the person next to you may be experiencing the opposite. As you explore these questions with your group, be sure to keep curiosity, perspective, and empathy foremost in mind.
TIP #1
Zero Tolerance for Brilliant Jerks
Brilliance is dazzling; that's why we tend to think that great performance can make up for bad behavior. But that belief is wrong: Studies show that the benefits of high-performing jerks almost never outweigh their cost to the group's performance.
Zero-tolerance policies work because they send a flashing-neon belonging cue: Nobody, no matter how talented, is more important than the rest of the group. And it works: Research shows that people in groups that value civility are 59 percent more likely to share information with one another than people in groups that don't. Here are three ways to jerk-proof your group, as well as to deal with occasional flare-ups:
• NAME IT: Make it unmistakably clear in the hiring process that jerks are not welcome. One swift way to do this is to add a jerk assessment. For example, the San Antonio Spurs evaluate hundreds of players each year for consideration in the NBA draft, assessing and measuring every factor-shooting percentage, speed, defensive skills, you name it. At the bottom of their evaluation sheet is a single line:
Not a Spur
If this box is checked, they will not draft that player, no matter how talented they are.
To assess potential jerkhood, pay close attention to how the potential hire treats everyone-Zappos even debriefs the shuttle-bus driver who brings the candidate to the interview. Also, consider using these three questions, developed by Dylan Minor of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, which have been shown to indicate the likelihood that someone will engage in toxic behavior:
1. Which statement do you agree with more?
"You belong"
You feel it the instant you enter a strong culture: that warm sense of cohesion, the shared willingness to speak up, the whole group thinking and feeling as one entity. We usually describe this phenomenon as "group chemistry," and tend to regard it as mysterious and accidental. But in fact, science has shown that group chemistry-or, to use the more accurate term, psychological safety-is not mysterious at all. Rather, it is built through the exchange of belonging cues-small, vivid behaviors that send a crystal-clear message:
• We are connected.
• We share a future.
• I care about you.
• You have a voice here.
• You matter.
Belonging cues signal our brains to switch out of vigilance mode, where we scan for possible danger, into connection mode, where we actively tune in to the people around us. That's why strong cultures send belonging cues in abundance, especially during critical moments when norms get established, such as the first time a group comes together, the group's first disagreement, and the first time the group learns something together. If you get these critical moments right-that is, if you flood the zone with belonging cues-you'll go a long way toward creating the foundation of safety on which strong culture is built.
One of my favorite belonging-builders is the Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay, who makes a practice of learning the names of her entire crew before the first day of filming. "I don't treat my actors differently than I treat the gaffer or the grip or the craft services manager or hair and makeup, because we're all making the movie," she told The Statesman. "No one is better than anyone else just because they're in front of the camera."
The actions that follow are a series of belonging generators. As you use them, keep in mind that your overarching goal is not merely to make people feel safe but to create an environment where everybody-from the newest hire to the CEO-knows they can speak up when it counts. "The academic research is overwhelming," says Amy Edmondson of Harvard, who pioneered the study of psychological safety. "When people believe they can speak up at work, the learning, innovation, and performance of their organizations is greater."
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Let's Talk About Safety
Psychological safety is powerful because it's personal. You may experience a strong, warm sense of connection and belonging; the person next to you may be experiencing the opposite. As you explore these questions with your group, be sure to keep curiosity, perspective, and empathy foremost in mind.
TIP #1
Zero Tolerance for Brilliant Jerks
Brilliance is dazzling; that's why we tend to think that great performance can make up for bad behavior. But that belief is wrong: Studies show that the benefits of high-performing jerks almost never outweigh their cost to the group's performance.
Zero-tolerance policies work because they send a flashing-neon belonging cue: Nobody, no matter how talented, is more important than the rest of the group. And it works: Research shows that people in groups that value civility are 59 percent more likely to share information with one another than people in groups that don't. Here are three ways to jerk-proof your group, as well as to deal with occasional flare-ups:
• NAME IT: Make it unmistakably clear in the hiring process that jerks are not welcome. One swift way to do this is to add a jerk assessment. For example, the San Antonio Spurs evaluate hundreds of players each year for consideration in the NBA draft, assessing and measuring every factor-shooting percentage, speed, defensive skills, you name it. At the bottom of their evaluation sheet is a single line:
Not a Spur
If this box is checked, they will not draft that player, no matter how talented they are.
To assess potential jerkhood, pay close attention to how the potential hire treats everyone-Zappos even debriefs the shuttle-bus driver who brings the candidate to the interview. Also, consider using these three questions, developed by Dylan Minor of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, which have been shown to indicate the likelihood that someone will engage in toxic behavior:
1. Which statement do you agree with more?
