The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

CULTURE: from the Latin cultus, which means care.

Skill 1—Build Safety—explores

Skill 2—Share Vulnerability—explains

Skill 3—Establish...

being smart is overrated,

showing fallibility is crucial,

being nice is not nearly as important as y...

Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.

sociometer.

Belonging cues possess three basic qualities:

Energy:

Individuali...

Future orien...

These cues add up to a message that can be described with a single phrase: You are safe here

It’s possible to predict performance by ignoring all the informational content in the exchange and focusing on a handful of belonging cues.

the content of the pitch didn’t matter as much as the set of cues with which the pitch was delivered and received.

“While listening to the pitches, though, another part of their brain was registering other crucial information, such as: How much does this person believe in this idea? How confident are they when speaking? How determined are they to make this work?

Normally, we think words matter; we think that group performance correlates with its members’ verbal intelligence and their ability to construct and communicate complex ideas. But that assumption is wrong.

Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected

Bill Gross. Gross had pioneered the field of Internet advertising. He had invented the pay-per-click advertising model, written the code, and built Overture into a thriving business that was generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits,

By 2014, the AdWords engine was producing $160 million per day, and advertising was providing 90 percent of Google’s revenues. The success of the AdWords engine, author Stephen Levy wrote, was “sudden, transforming, decisive, and, for Google’s investors and employees, glorious….It became the lifeblood of Google, funding every new idea and innovation the company conceived of thereafter.”

All the changes in motivation and behavior you experienced afterward were due to the signal that you were connected to someone who cared about you.

This is all about establishing relationships, conveying the fact that I’m interested in you, and that all the work we do together is in the context of that relationship.

amygdala isn’t just about responding to danger—it also plays a vital role in building social connections.

When you receive a belonging cue, the amygdala switches roles and starts to use its immense unconscious neural horsepower to build and sustain your social bonds. It tracks members of your group, tunes in to their interactions, and sets the stage for meaningful engagement. In a heartbeat, it transforms from a growling guard dog into an energetic guide dog with a single-minded goal: to make sure you stay tightly connected with your people.

All this helps reveal a paradox about the way belonging works. Belonging feels like it happens from the inside out, but in fact it happens from the outside in. Our social brains light up when they receive a steady accumulation of almost-invisible cues: We are close, we are safe, we share a future

a model for understanding how belonging works: as a flame that needs to be continually fed by signals of safe connection.

Cohesion happens not when members of a group are smarter but when they are lit up by clear, steady signals of safe connection.

the founding cultures of nearly two hundred technology start-ups in Silicon Valley. They found that most followed one of three basic models: the star model, the professional model, and the commitment model.

The commitment model, on the other hand, focused on developing a group with shared values and strong emotional bonds.

Microtruces began in early November.

The tacit cease-fires grew to include supply lines (off limits), latrines (same), and the gathering of casualties after a battle.

stentorian

psychological safety that built connection and identity.

scuttle

“A lot of coaches can yell or be nice, but what Pop does is different,” says assistant coach Chip Engelland. “He delivers two things over and over: He’ll tell you the truth, with no bullshit, and then he’ll love you to death.”

as long as it delivers the message he wants it to deliver: There are bigger things than basketball to which we are all connected.

he uses food and wine as a bridge to build relationships with players.

“Food and wine aren’t just food and wine,” Buford says. “They’re his vehicle to make and sustain a connection, and Pop is really intentional about making that connection happen.”

I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.

Just nineteen words. None of these words contain any information on how to improve. Yet they are powerful because they deliver a burst of belonging cues.

three types of belonging cues.

Personal,

Performance

Big-picture perspective

blight.

“twin projects,” where two or more engineering firms tackled the same complex challenge,

He measured the quality of their solutions, then attempted to find the factors that successful projects had in common.

All these factors would seem to make sense, but Allen could find none that played a meaningful role in cohesion. Except for one. The distance between their desks.

the more he explored the data, the clearer the answer became. What mattered most in creating a successful team had less to do with intelligence and experience and more to do with where the desks happened to be located. “Something as simple as visual contact is very, very important,