What makes a winning team? We all want one, whether it be the All Blacks or our own team at work. What a great time to be looking at how to maintain a winning culture as we have proved that how and where we work can change, leading to new everyplace working strategies but we are only at the beginning of the journey…

Sir Steve Hansen shared his insights into maintaining a winning culture and I was fortunate enough to share my views on workplace trends and creating a space to win first, which kept everyone tuned in as they waited for the main event!

The team is people.

As Steve says, “vulnerability creates trust” and “sharing becomes caring”.

Sharing more about who you are and getting to know your teammates as people means they can show up and bring their whole selves to work, whether that be in an office, or on a field.

He talked about a person’s identity having many facets, just like a bridge having many boards. If you only focus your energy on one board, for instance “work”, then the bridge isn’t strong but if you nurture all the boards, who you are as a person be that a mother, sister, daughter, awesome chess player, great organizer, then your bridge is more complete and stronger.

In applying this to creating a space to win, ask these questions about your team culture:

Can you team bring their whole self to work?
Can they show up for each other, trust each other and share?

Start with “What’s our culture”, develop ideas and thoughts and create a vision for your team space and refine it so that you can reach a decision that the majority support. This will confer ownership of the space to the team and along with that responsibility for maintaining standards as well as developing an etiquette for the space to uphold those standards.

Acknowledgement of a person’s individual cultural identity is important but defining the team’s cultural identity and what spaces can support it will be key to creating a space for a winning team.

We are seeing more and more with clients that teams are the drivers of the new ways of working that are emerging and that maintaining connection and culture within teams is really important, so models that structure days in the office together are becoming more common. Rather than a fully flexible model, this allows for decisions to be made that are based on “best for team” rather than the individual, which is how Steve says he managed the All Blacks.

It is, however, possible to have groups self-organizing within a framework that follows the vision, for instance teams could be self-organizing within a business framework model for new ways of working but have a variance that suits their particular workstyle.

I loved what Steve said about encouraging everyone in the team to be a leader, even if they are only leading themselves as this leads to greater accountability for everyone, not just the leaders, who need to the walk the talk every day and live the business vision if it is to be successful.

So, when creating a space to win for your team, answer these 5 questions:

1. Who are your team? Understand them as people and as professionals.

2. Where and when do they work best and what will they do when together?

3. What spaces do they need to help them be productive, engaged and collaborative?

4. What tools and technology support do they need?

5. What will be the new guidelines for them to follow as a team?

Answering these questions will help you define your property and everyplace working strategy to enhance satisfaction, build advocacy and maintain culture and community.

If you would like a copy of my presentation or help defining your winning culture drivers and goals and the spaces that support them, please click here.