Help & support
- The foundations of good team culture are support and respect.
- Building a strong team and communication go hand in hand and are building blocks towards success.
- A resilient team will be able to adapt to obstacles and navigate change.
Q. What does a strong team culture look like?
A. Workplace culture is built on trust, open communication and shared goals. There needs to be mutual respect and a clear vision of what success looks like in your business. On a business level, strong team culture is important for minimising staff turnover and increasing productivity. On a personal level, leading a team that’s working to its full potential can be extremely rewarding.
Whether you’re running a business or coaching the CommBank Matildas, success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of hard work and commitment to building a strong team. There are a lot of ways to create a strong team culture but according to CommBank Matildas head coach Joe Montemurro it starts with instilling confidence in your people.
“The biggest thing for me is empowering the staff and giving them the opportunity to be the best they can be,” he says. “That’s usually the first win you’ll have – then everyone will believe in moving forward together for the good of the team.”
Joe Montemurro’s top 3 tips for team building
The lessons learnt from years of working in elite sport easily translate to building teams that work harmoniously together in the business world. Here are Joe Montemurro’s top culture-building tips.
1. Mutual respect builds togetherness
You don’t always need formal activities that build teamwork – Montemurro says your actions on a day-to-day basis form the cultural foundations of your organisation.
“You have to make the staff united, which means less talk and more action. For example, we all help unload the team van and it’s okay for me to pick up the cones after training. There’s no hierarchy in my group.”
2. Team and communication goals
Empowering team members and fostering mutual respect gives people the opportunity to innovate and grow the business. “ The best thing that happens when you empower people is that they’re able to have their say,” says Montemurro.
“There’s constant communication and people feel comfortable talking amongst the group. That means we [the coaches] know what the team is thinking.” Team members can then take more risks within a framework of support. “We can give them the pros and cons of that risk and they know if they go for it, we’re backing them.”
Being a leader also means having to give direct feedback. “I believe in giving feedback in context, rather than just giving an opinion – everyone can give their opinion,” says Montemurro. “Feedback with some sort of substance helps your team understand the context.”
3. Train resilience
Mistakes happen and obstacles get in your way. It’s how you and your team respond to these changing head winds that make all the difference, according to Montemurro. “When results don’t go your way, the team needs to be resilient enough to say, ‘Okay, we’ll take the positives out of that.’ There are always learnings but we need to be strong enough as an organisation to take those and make sure we’re preparing better for next time.”
The key to training resilience is supporting your team members. “As a leader, you have to bring people in and make them feel that you have their back. You have to stand up for them.”