When a new person joins a team, managers know they’re in for an emotional rollercoaster. At last, they’ve got someone to fill an important gap in their team, but the fear remains – will they live up to expectations, and will all that work we’ve done on team culture need re-doing?
Culture, at its simplest, is the norms that bind any group of people together for any period of time. If you have an extended conversation with a stranger, as you talk, you and they are subconsciously co-creating a negotiated culture. If you’re successful, the conversation continues; if you’re unsuccessful, the conversation will end prematurely, often in disagreement and frustration. If a third person joins the group, the culture is subtly altered and refined.
The Evolution of Culture
In your carefully crafted team, you have already managed and built the team the way you want it – and adding a new team member means that the culture will change – evolution and growth is an essential parts of life – and as a manager, it is up to you to make sure that it is a positive change.
It’s important to say that positive change may well involve conflict and disagreement. Positive change may mean rethinking some of the founding principles of your team. Positive change may mean confronting uncomfortable situations and moving past what you assumed was the right way. In fact, if you don’t have a period of adjustment and recalibration when a new person joins the team, then it may be that the person you’ve hired is not adding their full potential value to the team.
Challenging and Questioning
The value of diversity is that it challenges accepted practices and adds to the entire pool of knowledge and skills in your team. A new person should bring new challenges and new knowledge and that will disturb the balance a little – and we need to reframe that as a good thing.
In my team, when someone new joins, in their first week, I ask them to get familiar with our processes and the projects we are most proud of. I challenge them to ask ‘why?’ as often as possible. It not only helps them to learn about us, but as we are forced to explain what’s going on, we confront whether there is a better way of doing things. It would be a courageous noobie to immediately suggest alternatives, but as a manager, we must listen and observe and learn from the experience of a new person.
And as that new person sees that their voice is heard and listened to, they will settle in more quickly; as they see that disagreement is encouraged and valued, they are more able to be authentic and a value-creator.
Recruitment Is Always a Risk
The recruitment process is often a long wait, with several false starts, so when you eventually get your hands on the long-expected recruit, you will be tempted to throw work at them straight away, to load them up to capacity – partly to relieve the pressure on the rest of the team and clear the backlog and partly because you want them to show their ability as quickly as possible, justifying your decision.
This approach is high-risk. Your new talent is not only over-whelmed, but they are less able to challenge and see from a different perspective. Rather than asking why they ask how – and end up cloning your existing processes. In a team with simple repetitive tasks – an assembly line, for example, this may be best. However, most teams have complex tasks, which require decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. In this kind of situation, cognitive diversity training – a range of cultural perspectives and views – is of the highest importance.
Intentionally Creating Culture
But we need to create the right environment for a new recruit to join the team effectively. We want to challenge, not disruption; we want creativity, not chaos. Here are some suggestions to help your new starters make a positive impact from the beginning and add to the cognitive diversity in your team, particularly if they’re joining you as a hybrid or virtual worker.
Fill out their calendar on day one. There is nothing worse than feeling that everyone is too busy to help you or to welcome you to the team, particularly if you don’t yet know what you should be doing or how to do it. If there is an unavoidable reason (and it better be a really good one) why you can’t meet with your new person first thing, make sure that someone else who has been around a while is available to welcome them enthusiastically into the team and help them get things set up. I always try to make sure that there is a named IT support person on standby to ensure that the equipment works straight off.
Explicitly tell your new starter that you expect them to ask why and challenge things they don’t understand. If they are more comfortable, suggest they write their week-one questions in a document and let you have it at the end of the week. Encourage them in public and privately to speak up and let them see you encouraging others to do so.
One of the key innovations that Amazon have brought in to ensure meetings are more effective is to mandate that the most senior person in the room does not speak till all others present have given their opinion. When you have a new member in your team, it is even more important that they are given space to speak and to share their opinion before they are swayed by the temptation to go along with everyone else or try to guess what you, the manager, want to hear. As soon as they start repeating your opinions back to you, you have damaged the value they can add to the organization.
A New Approach to Team Leadership
Research has clearly shown that the era of top-down leadership is at its end. Organizations, led by people who lift employees up, give them space to innovate and experiment and amplify those voices historically not heard, are those organizations that are not only productive and ahead of the competition, but they are also more inclusive, attract and retain the best talent and are more innovative and creative.
It is imperative that your team see that you encourage, mentor, and liberate your whole team. New team members will see your actions and will be built up and will buy into your whole team culture. Their potential and value increase, productivity and performance increase, and their engagement and sense of belonging increase.
Get the Culture Right and the Team Works
Your team culture is there, whether or not you create it, it evolves from your actions and example. New team members will look to you and will assume the culture that you demonstrate to them. As the leader of the team, the best you can do is to give new members the freedom to amend and impact the evolution of the team culture, rather than forcing them into a fixed mold.
Peter Drucker famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Getting the team culture right means that you can achieve your strategy. Getting the team culture right means your team collaborates to solve problems. Getting the team culture right means getting the best out of your whole team and providing an environment that sees new team members add more value more quickly.
