Chapter 2
Positive Teams Create Positive Cultures

Behind every great team is a strong culture; great leadership; and passionate, committed people.

There's a reason why all great teams have a great culture. It's because culture is the living and breathing essence of what a team believes, values, and does. Team culture is the written and unwritten rules that say how a team communicates, connects, thinks, works, and acts.

Culture isn't just one thing. It's everything. Culture drives expectations and beliefs. Expectations and beliefs drive behaviors. Behaviors drive habits. And habits create the future.

When Apple was just the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak), they knew the culture they wanted to create. They would be the culture that challenged the status quo. Everything they did, including hiring people, running campaigns, and creating products, was influenced by this culture. Even now, the culture continues to influence everything they do and the way they do it. It's why Apple is famous for its maxim, "Culture beats strategy." You have to have the right strategy, of course, but it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy is successful.

Your most important job as a team is to create a culture-and not just any culture. You must create a positive culture that energizes and encourages each other, fosters connected relationships and great teamwork, empowers and enables your team to learn and grow, and provides an opportunity for you to do your best work.

Create Your Culture

When I was a sophomore on the Cornell lacrosse team we were ranked ninth in the country. I was the starting face-off midfielder and we played a tough game against West Point that went into sudden-death overtime, which means the first team to score wins. I remember standing at the face-off circle in the middle of the field thinking, If I lose this face-off we will likely lose the game. I need to win it.

I lost the face-off and, the next thing I knew, my opponent was running down the field along the sideline with the ball. I was so mad that I ran as fast as I could and somehow caught up and hit him really hard and the ball fell out of his stick. I picked it up before he did and, as he pushed me out of bounds, I jumped in the air and threw the ball behind my back to my friend and teammate, John Busse, who caught the ball with one hand and threw it to our other teammate, Joe Lando, who scored the game winner for us.

Please know I'm not telling you this to impress you with my athletic ability. It was my one and only great play in college. I'm telling you this because we won so many close games that year. But during my senior year, we lost a lot of close games. We even had a chance to beat Princeton, who won the national championship, in overtime but couldn't pull it off.

Looking back, I can see that the clear difference between my sophomore year and my senior year was our team culture. We had lost the championship culture that had been created. As Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens says, "Your culture is not just your tradition. It's the people in the locker room who carry it on." Unfortunately, my fellow teammates and I didn't create or carry on the culture of our older teammates before us.

I wish I had been the leader then that I am now but, unfortunately, I wasn't. I didn't know how important culture was to the success of a team. I didn't know you could lose your culture. I didn't know that culture and performance could change so quickly. I now know that building a great team begins with creating a great a culture. I know that, as a team, you are always creating your culture. You are creating culture every moment of every day by what you think, say, and do. It doesn't matter what your culture was like yesterday or last year. What matters is what you are doing to create it today.

Culture Is Dynamic, Not Static

People often look to leadership when it comes to the culture of an organization and team-and they should. Leaders have a huge influence on the culture. They set the tone and decide what the team values and stands for, but it's important to note that your culture is brought to life and created by everyone on your team.

You and your team members have a huge influence on your culture and the culture you create. It's not just about what your manager, school principal, boss, coach, or supervisor says and does. It's also about what you say and do. If you are a part of a negative culture, don't see yourself as a victim and by-product of it. Instead get together with your team and create a positive culture to replace it.

Culture is not static; it's dynamic. You can change it by what you say. You can elevate it by what you think. You can improve it by what you share. You can transform it by what you do. You can be a positive team that creates a positive culture right now.

Make Your Bus Great

People often ask me what to do if they are part of an organization with a negative culture but desire to have a positive culture in their department or team. I tell them what I shared in my book, The Energy Bus.

You may not be driving the big bus but you can make your own bus great. Create the culture of your team and show the rest of the organization what a positive team looks like.

Over the years I've had many teams do this and report to me that their team inspired other teams. In some cases, the positive team became the model for the entire organization, and transformed it as a result.

Never doubt the impact that a positive team can have on its organization, community, and, ultimately, the world. When you make your bus great, you show what's possible and help others drive toward greatness.

Make Your Culture a Priority

The University of Southern California (USC) men's tennis team won four national championships from 2009-2012. When I asked head coach Peter Smith what made these teams great, he didn't talk about talent. He talked about the culture they had created and the fact that Steve Johnson, arguably the greatest college tennis player of all time, bought into it as a team leader-and the team bought into Steve and the culture as well. They always had championship-quality players but for those four years, they had a championship culture too. It was a culture of love, accountability, family, and respect.

While USC was winning championships, Brian Boland and the University of Virginia (UVA) men's tennis team were coming close each year, but falling short. Brian Boland had been the UVA men's tennis coach since 2001 and, year after year, his teams were talented. They often made the quarters, semifinals, and even a few finals, but fell short of winning a championship. But in 2013 everything changed and they won four out of the next five national championships.

I asked Brian what happened and he said, "I changed. We changed. I was a hard driver and all about the outcome. I never said it but my guys knew it. In 2013 I made culture our focus and the team became culture and process focused instead of outcome focused. We worked to become a great team instead of just a bunch of individuals who wanted to win a championship."

I'll share some of the team-building process Brian took his team through later in the book, but the point is that an improvement in a team's culture changes everything for the better. In my work with businesses, schools, and hospitals, I have witnessed this often as well. Great things happen when a team makes culture their top priority.

Invest in the Root

I remember talking to Erik Spoelstra, the head coach of the Miami Heat, a few years ago. He told me that in past years, when the season ended, he focused 100 percent of his time on watching film and studying X's and O's. But now he spends most of his time on culture. I've spoken to his staff and team over the last few years, and you can tell they have a special culture. From the training staff to the coaching staff to the players and operations staff, they make their culture a top priority. They know it matters. They know it's important. They know they may not always have the best players, but they can always work to create the best culture. So can you.

You may not have the most talented team, but you can work to create the best team culture. There's a lot you can't control, but you can control how much time, energy, and care you invest in your culture.

I'm not going to lie and say that talent isn't important to be a successful team. No matter what kind of team you have, it helps to have talent. But culture drives your talent toward greatness. I've seen many teams with a lot of talent and a bad culture perform poorly. Too many teams focus on the fruit of the tree. They focus on the outcome, the numbers, the stock price, the test scores, the profit, and the wins and losses. They focus on the fruit and ignore the root (their culture, people, relationships, and process). They think it's the numbers that matter most.

What they don't realize is that it's not the numbers that drive the culture and process; it's the culture and process that drive the numbers. The fruit is just a by-product of how well you invest in the root. If you focus on the fruit and ignore the root, the tree will die. If you...