Why leaders need to actively build inclusive cultures in their teams

I’ve worked in a number of different teams, often led by ‘good’ people who generally work hard, are considerate, and have no explicit ill-meaning malice within them.

So why does it often go so wrong?

I have seen a number of new teams being created at a very quick pace due to wider work pressures and fast-paced nature in which business demands are changing quickly. This trend is not going to change either, with our working lives becoming more embroiled in shifts and rapid changes, organisations are becoming more agile in deploying teams quickly to respond to new opportunities or challenges.

Unfortunately, when teams are built up at pace, often little thought is put upon team dynamics and building a wider inclusive culture. And whilst practically nobody sets out to build a non-inclusive culture when setting up a team, this aspect falls through the cracks as lots of new managers grasp to understand their new responsibilities, so instead are focused that they are delivering to their job standards and proving they can do the job. From the team leaders perspective, this can quickly turn into command and control decision-making from the top.

Organisations do not help themselves in how they set up these teams. Generally, highly proficient individuals are selected to lead the team. This is potentially on promotion, rewarding these individuals for their hard work and their technical potential from other work.

Unfortunately, there is little within the workplace to highlight the importance of new-found management responsibility or the importance of building a team. As such, what often takes place is a strong technical deliverer (but average manager) gets promoted into a position of responsibility where they are suddenly the head of dozens of people or more. With little training and guidance around this area (or even consideration whether someone would be a good team leader from a people perspective in the first place), the seeds are sown for a poor team culture.

What often happens is that the new team leader operates in the same way that they did when managing a small team. This is particularly problematic because the way of working with a few people is very different to managing a large group of people. Whilst things like relying solely on informal conversations through coffee point chats or the pub for work conversations is less of an issue when it is a group of three, it does not work for a larger team. Instead, what it leads to is those with the direct access via these methods are thrusted into a position of exclusive access. Others outside of this group find it difficult to get their voice heard. Staff instead have to resort to turning up where their boss does to be ‘seen’ or for any of their ideas to see the light of day.

Sadly, many leaders do not realise that they are inadvertently creating an exclusive culture. It requires a good deal of introspection and thought for leaders to take stock of routes of access, and how relying on traditional communication methods (i.e. heirarchical messaging upwards) is fraught with the danger of them only hearing one side of the story from the people they interact with frequently. This leads to problematic decision-making due to a disconnect with what is happening throughout the team, and leads to a growing disillusionment and resentment from wider staff who are not part of the more exclusive club.

This usually manifests itself via worse employee engagement and satisfaction scores, leading to middling output. Higher staff turnover and its associated cost to the business is usually the result. It can also lead to siloed working and a lack of attention on all areas of a project. For example, areas such as team or project management, HR or finance may just get sidelined despite being critical functions. In all, there is little positive to come out of an exclusive culture.

So what can be done to improve the situation?

From the leaders perspective, they can look to re-evaluate how accessible they are to the whole team. An often used idea is having ‘open hours’ for anyone to speak with them anonymously about issues they may be having. Leaders could also go a step further, and try and book short catch-ups with more junior members of the team to get a better sense of the mood music from below. Leaders can also look to build more inclusive habits into their meetings, ensuring a more equitable participation from different people. They can also look to break down implicit hierarchical barriers by empowering more junior staff to give their opinions at regular intervals.

From an organisations perspective, much can be done to avoid the negative culture being built in the first place. Organisations can do much more to value, train and assess management capability within their performance management, and in particular when looking at promotions or job opportunities for their staff. Currently, organisations rarely genuinely consider whether people are likely going to be good at leading a team when putting them into a post, despite it being a critical factor in its success. An important way to do this is by instilling the importance of management and effective team working within their company values so that this is fostered throughout the whole organisation.

These are my thoughts. What good stories do you have around building inclusive team cultures, and conversely, do you have any horror stories?