Choosing an above the line culture

The well-being of every person in a workplace is impacted on by their team culture.  Engage team members in playing an active role in creating their team culture.

The most effective leadership teams have members who trust each other, who truly feel like they belong to the team, who are accountable, who communicate well, and, where the team has a well understood and explicit code of behaviour.

Given how we behave is one key component in developing an effective team, we cannot leave this to chance and hope that a code of behaviour magically develops over time.  This 'code' is an agreed understanding of how all team members will behave - on their good and not so good work days.

Many organisations have a 'Code of Conduct' that new employees sign when starting with the agency/business.  As we all know, it is easy to sign - how many of us agree to new software terms on line without reading the material?

Teams needs to 'own' their Code of Behaviour and in my view the best way to achieve this is to hold open conversations about what behaviours are expected with examples.  These existing codes are usually more focussed on how the organisation expects people to behave rather than being explicit re what is and is not acceptable.  I am not criticizing this - just pointing it out. 

One way of developing the Team Code is to work together in a facilitated leadership team workshop.  The focus of the workshop is to clarify where the behavioural line is.  A horizontal line is drawn.  In the workshop, participants write up behaviours that are above the line - behaviours that are encouraged and accepted.  They also write up behaviours that fall below the line - behaviours that are not acceptable to team members.  It is important to do this with no judgement - we all naturally spend time below the line.  

As we all know, teams go through stages and when in a 'rough' patch, behaviours are more likely to slip.  So let's be clear what below the line behaviour looks like in the teams people are working in.  One good example is responsiveness - the word responsive could be written above the line, but, what does this mean?  Respond within a day? Within 30 minutes?

When listing above and below the line behaviours as a team, there are three things that I have found to be vitally important:

1. Before this process even starts, create a trusting team workshop environment in which all participants feel safe to contribute.  If this is not possible at this time, do not proceed with this activity.
2. Work with team members to explicitly define the below the line behaviours as these are often not talked about (assuming it was 'easy' to list the above the line behaviours)
3. Ensure that team members are using their own language to describe the behaviours and clarify these with each other, using their own examples.

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After the participatory segment of the workshop, I create time for team members to focus on themselves and look at their own behaviours, identifying what tips them below the line AND how they journey back to above the line.  We all spend time below the line.  We then need to choose how long to stay there and find a way to get ourselves back above the line.  If you have a long standing pattern of spending time below the line, you will likely need someone to work with you to shift this.

How do you switch your behaviour from below to above the line?