The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

The story of the Red Balloon Challenge strikes us as surprising, because most of us instinctively see vulnerability as a condition to be hidden. But science shows that when it comes to creating cooperation, vulnerability is not a risk but a psychological requirement.

“What are groups really for?” Polzer asks. “The idea is that we can combine our strengths and use our skills in a complementary way. Being vulnerable gets the static out of the way and lets us do the job together, wit...

Each loop was different, yet they shared a deeper pattern: an acknowledgment of limits, a keen awareness of the group nature of the endeavor. The signal being sent was the same: You have a role here. I need you.

call it ‘unconscious genius,’ ” one SEAL training officer tells me. “The people who built the original training program didn’t completely understand why this was the best way to build teams, but they understood that it was the best way. It would be so easy now to go back and change things, to modernize them in some way. But we don’t, because we appreciate the results.”

A conversation travels back and forth through the fibers of the log: 1. A teammate falters. 2. Others sense it, and respond by taking on more pain for the sake of the group. 3. Balance is regained.

“We’re all about seeking the microevent,” Freeman says. “Every evolution is a lens to look for teamwork moments, and we believe that if you stitch together a lot of opportunities, you start to know who the good teammates will be. It comes out at the oddest times. For instance, let’s say they’re running late and the instructors are going to hammer them. Does somebody just urge everyone to hurry up and take off running? Or do they stop and say, ‘Look, we’re gonna get hammered for being late anyway, so let’s take a minute and get our gear tight, so when we show up we’re a hundred percent ready.’ There’s something about that second guy that we want. We want to be with him because he’s not thinking about himself; he’s thinking of the team.”

“It’s more than just teamwork,” Freeman says. “You’ve left yourself wide open. Everybody on your team knows who you are, because you left it all on the table. And if you did well, it builds a level of trust that’s exponentially higher than anything you can get anywhere else.”

You are all supporting actors. 2. Always check your impulses. 3. Never enter a scene unless you are needed. 4. Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece. 5. Your prime responsibility is to support. 6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.

Trust. Trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself.

Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help, what can best follow, or how you can support it imaginatively if your support is called for.

Every rule directs you either to tamp down selfish instincts that might make you the center of attention, or to serve your fellow actors (support, save, trust, listen).

Authorities were also impressed by something else: In a line of work not known for loyalty, the Panthers seemed to have a genuine attachment to one another. On rare occasions when they were apprehended, they were immune to police attempts to get them to turn state’s evidence. In 2005, a Panther named Dragan Mikic escaped from a French prison when a group of men—presumably fellow Panthers—used ladders, rifles, and wire cutters to break into the prison and free him. As one prosecutor said, “These guys don’t care about being put in jail. They know they are going to escape.” As another observer put it, “They think with one brain.”

Pink Panther Story

The Panthers were a self-assembling, self-governing, free-range mix of middle-class people, former athletes, and small-time criminals. One had been a member of Serbia’s national youth basketball team. Another had attended law school. What they had in common was the experience of living through a hellish war, an instinct for action, strong friendships, and the realization that they had nothing to lose.

Each team was built around a set of well-defined roles. There was a zavodnik, a “seducer” who scouts the location (usually a woman); a magare, or muscle for getting the jewels; a jatak, who arranged logistics. While there were leaders on each team, they did not issue orders. Instead, they operated according to a simple rule that one Panther explained to Marking: “We all depend on each other.”

other words, the Panthers were a little bit like comedians doing a Harold, or SEALs doing Log PT—small teams solving problems in a constant state of vulnerability and interconnection.

The problem here is that, as humans, we have an authority bias that’s incredibly strong and unconscious—if a superior tells you to do something, by God we tend to follow it, even when it’s wrong. Having one person tell other people what to do is not a reliable way to make good decisions. So how do you create conditions where that doesn’t happen, where you develop a hive mind? How do you develop ways to challenge each other, ask the right questions, and never defer to authority? We’re trying to create leaders among leaders. And you can’t just tell people to do that. You have to create the conditions where they start to do it.”

When Cooper gave his opinion, he was careful to attach phrases that provided a platform for someone to question him, like “Now let’s see if someone can poke holes in this” or “Tell me what’s wrong with this idea.” He steered away from giving orders and instead asked a lot of questions. Anybody have any ideas?

Cooper began to develop tools. “There’re things you can do,” he says. “Spending time together outside, hanging out—those help. One of the best things I’ve found to improve a team’s cohesion is to send them to do some hard, hard training. There’s something about hanging off a cliff together, and being wet and cold and miserable together, that makes a team come together.”

AARs happen immediately after each mission and consist of a short meeting in which the team gathers to discuss and replay key decisions. AARs are led not by commanders but by enlisted men. There are no agendas, and no minutes are kept. The goal is to create a flat landscape without rank, where people can figure out what really happened and talk about mistakes—especially their own.

“It’s got to be safe to talk,” Cooper says. “Rank switched off, humility switched on. You’re looking for that moment where people can say, ‘I screwed that up.’ In fact, I’d say those might be the most important four words any leader can say: I screwed that up.”

You have to ask why, and then when they respond, you ask another why. Why did you shoot at that particular point? What did you see? How did you know? What other options were there? You ask and ask and ask.”

“Look, nobody can see it all or know it all,” Cooper says. “But if you keep getting together and digging out what happened, then after a while everybody can see what’s really happening, not just their small piece of it. People can share experiences and mistakes. They can see how what they do affects others, and we can start to create a group mind where everybody can work together and perform to the team’s potential.”

Cooper uses the phrase “backbone of humility” to describe the tone of a good AAR. It’s a useful phrase because it captures the paradoxical nature of the task: a relentless willingness to see the truth and take ownership. With an AAR, as with Log PT or a Harold, group members have to combine discipline with openness. And as with a Log PT or a Harold, it’s not easy. But it does pay off.

When I visited groups for this book, I met a lot of people who possessed traits of warmth and curiosity—so many, in fact, that I began to think of them as Nyquists. They were polite, reserved, and skilled listeners. They radiated a safe, nurturing vibe. They possessed deep knowledge that spanned domains and had a knack for asking questions that ignited motivation and ideas. (The best way to find the Nyquist is usually to ask people: If I could get a sense of the way your culture works by meeting just one person, who would that person be?) If we think of successful cultures as engines of human cooperation, then the Nyquists are the spark plugs.

like the word connect,” Givechi says. “For me, every conversation is the same, because it’s about helping people walk away with a greater sense of awareness, excitement, and motivation to make an impact. Because individuals are really different. So you have to find different ways to make it comfortable and engaging for people to share what they’re really thinking about. It’s not about decisiveness—it’s about discovery. For me, that has to do with asking the right questions the right way.”*2

year ago IDEO decided to scale Givechi’s abilities across the organization. They asked her to create modules of questions teams could ask themselves, then provided those modules to design teams as tools to help them improve. For example, here are a few: • The one thing that excites me about this particular opportunity is • I confess, the one thing I’m not so excited about with this particular opportunity is • On this project, I’d really like to get better at

The interesting thing about Givechi’s questions is how transcendently simple they are. They have less to do with design than with connecting to deeper emotions: fear, ambition, motivation. It’s easy to imagine that in different hands, these questions could fall flat and fail to ignite conversation. This is because the real power of the interaction is located in the two-way emotional signaling that creates an atmosphere of connection that surrounds the conversation.

Roshi has the ability to pause completely, to stop what must be going on in her head, to focus completely on the person and the question at hand, and to see where that question is leading. She isn’t trying to drag you somewhere, ever. She’s truly seeing you from your position, and that’s her power.”

“What Roshi does requires a critical understanding of what makes people tick, and what makes people tick isn’t always being nice to them. Part of it is that she knows people so well that she understands what they need. Sometimes what they need is support and praise. But sometimes what they need is a little knock on the chin, a reminder that they need to work harder, a nudge to try new things. That’s what she gives.”

“Concordances happen when one person can react in an authentic way to the emotion being projected in the room,”

about understanding in an empathic way, then doing something in terms of gesture, comment, or expression that creates a connection.”

He is demonstrating that the most important moments in conversation happen when one person is actively, intently listening. “It’s not an accident that concordance happens when there’s one person talking and the other person listening,” Marci says. “It’s very hard to be empathic when you’re talking. Talking is really complicated, because you’re thinking and planning what you’re going to say, and you tend to get stuck in your own head. But not when you’re listening. When you’re really listening, you lose time. There’s no sense of yourself, because it’s not about you. It’s all about this task—to connect completely to that person.”

Marci has connected increases in concordances to increases in perceived empathy: the more concordances occur, the closer the two people feel. What’s more, the changes in closeness happen not gradually but all at once. “There’s often one moment where it happens,” he says. “There’s an accelerated change to the relationship that happens when you’re able to really listen, to be incredibly present with the person. It’s like a breakthrough—‘We were like this, but now we’re going to interact in a new way, and we both understand that it’s happened.’

*2 Robert Bales, one of the first scientists to study group communication, discovered that while questions comprise only 6 percent of verbal interactions, they generate 60 percent of ensuing discussions.

Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often: As we’ve seen, group cooperation is created by small, frequently repeated moments of vulnerability. Of these, none carries more power than the moment when a leader signals vulnerability. As Dave Cooper says, I screwed that up are the most important words any leader can say.

What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do? • What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often? • What can I do to make you more effective?

Head of People Analytucs recommends you ask your people

Overcommunicate Expectations: The successful groups I visited did not presume that cooperation would happen on its own. Instead, they were explicit and persistent about sending big, clear signals that established those expectations, modeled cooperation, and aligned language and roles to maximize helping behavior. IDEO is a good example. Its leaders constantly talk about the expectation of cooperation. (CEO Tim Brown incessantly repeats his mantra that the more complex the problem, the more help you need to solve

the Little Book of IDEO, a copy of which is given to every employee. Among the refrains: Collaborate and Make Others Successful: Going Out of Your Way to Help Others Is the Secret Sauce.

Deliver the Negative Stuff in Person: This was an informal rule that I encountered at several cultures. It goes like this: If you have negative news or feedback to give someone—even as small as a rejected item on an expense report—you are obligated to deliver that news face-to-face. This rule is not easy to follow (it’s far more comfortable for both the sender and receiver to communicate electronically), but it works because it deals with tension in an up-front, honest way that avoids misunderstandings and creates shared clarity and connection.

When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments: Jeff Polzer, the Harvard Business School professor who studies organizational behavior (see Chapter 8), traces any group’s cooperation norms to two critical moments that happen early in a group’s life. They are: 1. The first vulnerability 2. The first disagreement

Are we about appearing strong or about exploring the landscape together? Are we about winning interactions, or about learning together? “At those moments, people either dig in and become defensive and start justifying, and a lot of tension gets created,” Polzer says. “Or they say something like, ‘Hey, that’s interesting. Why don’t you agree? I might be wrong, and I’m curious and want to talk about it some more.’ What happens in that moment helps set the pattern for everything that follows.”

Listen Like a Trampoline: Good listening is about more than nodding attentively; it’s about adding insight and creating moments of mutual discovery.

They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported 2. They take a helping, cooperative stance 3. They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions 4. They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths

How to listen

Zenger and Folkman put it, the most effective listeners behave like trampolines. They aren’t passive sponges. They are active responders, absorbing what the other person gives, supporting them, and adding energy to help the conversation gain velocity and altitude.

“I’ve found that whenever you ask a question, the first response you get is usually not the answer—it’s just the first response,” Roshi Givechi says. “So I try to find ways to slowly surface things, to bring out what ought to be shared so that people

can build from it. You have to find a lot of ways to ask the same question, and approach the same question from a lot of different angles. Then you have to build questions from that response, to explore more.”

In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value: The most important part of creating vulnerability often resides not in what you say but in what you do not say. This means having the willpower to forgo easy opportunities to offer solutions and make suggestions. Skilled listeners do not interrupt with phrases like Hey, here’s an idea or Let me tell you what worked for me in a similar situation because they understand that it’s not about them.

“One of the things I say most often is probably the simplest thing I say,” says Givechi. “ ‘Say more about that.’ ”

It’s not that suggestions are off limits; rather they should be made only after you establish what Givechi calls “a scaffold of thoughtfulness.” The scaffold underlies the conversation, supporting the risks and vulnerabilities. With the scaffold, people will be supported in taking t...

Use Candor-Generating Practices like AARs, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming: While AARs were originally built for the military environment, the tool can be applied to other domains. One good AAR structure is to use five questions: 1. What were our intended results? 2. What were our actual results? 3. What caused our results? 4. What will we do the same next time? 5. What will we do differently?