by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
Some coaches spend a lot of time and money making sure their team culture is thriving. Rightly so, because if your recruits don’t see a team environment that they like or want to be apart of, they are not going to commit to you.
Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
It’s a bold statement.
But the data show he’s right (yes, there is research on this).
One aspect of culture that I find a lot of head coaches spend very little time on but might be as if not more important than team culture and recruiting, is one level higher with your staff culture.
Have you built an internal staff culture where you and your staff are motivated, engaged, productive, and happy?
There’s a strong relationship between all those benefits I mentioned and healthy staff culture.
And if your staff has a toxic culture?
Well, you’ll have the opposite experience.
Your staff will be distracted. There will be constant infighting and politicking. And they’ll dread getting out of bed in the morning.
What’s more…
A rotten culture can cause coworkers to avoid discussing crippling problems and leave them festering instead of fixing them.
So they leave.
It’s pretty hard to build an amazing team and attract the best recruits if those at the top who they are looking to guidance aren’t in an atmosphere where they can thrive.
So how do you foster a thriving, healthy staff culture?
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula.
What works for Netflix or Apple or Amazon, might not work for you.
However, here are two guidelines you should keep in mind…
Diversity Is Dangerous
Research shows that coworkers work better when they share the same values.
Because while it’s important to have a diversity of ideas, if the staff don’t believe and follow the same rules of the workplace (i.e. “don’t be evil”), you’ll end up with a fractured, dysfunctional organization.
Walk The Talk
It’s one thing to write your programs values in a Google doc and give them to every new hire. But if those ideals aren’t acted upon—from the Head Coach to the student assistant—then they’ll be nothing more than a joke of the jaded.
This is especially critical when not sticking to your values will lead to lost time or only minor short-term gains.
Bite the bullet. Stick with your principles. If you need help setting these up, please let me know.
Alright, that’s enough preaching for the day.
Now it’s time to go out and put your values into practice.
And if you’ve got some staff values that’ve made a huge impact in your program, email me at mandy@busy.coach and share them with me.