The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

Vulnerability

They spend so much time managing status that they fail to grasp the essence of the problem

But when you view them as a single entity, their behavior is efficient and effective. They are not competing for status. They stand shoulder to shoulder and work energetically together. They move quickly, spotting problems and offering help. They experiment, take risks, and notice outcomes, which guides them toward effective solutions.

The kindergartners succeed not because they are smarter but because they work together in a smarter way. They are tapping into a simple and powerful method in which a group of ordinary people can create a performance far beyond the sum of their parts.

Skill 1—Build Safety—explores how signals of connection generate bonds of belonging and identity. Skill 2—Share Vulnerability—explains how habits of mutual risk drive trusting cooperation. Skill 3—Establish Purpose—tells how narratives create shared goals and values.

Felps has brought in Nick to portray three negative archetypes: the Jerk (an aggressive, defiant deviant), the Slacker (a withholder of effort), and the Downer (a depressive Eeyore type).

Hey, this is all really comfortable and engaging, and I’m curious about what everybody else has to say.

Jonathan’s group succeeds not because its members are smarter but because they are safer.

“Human signaling looks like other animal signaling,” Pentland says as we sit down at a coffee table in his small homey office. “You can measure interest levels, who the alpha is, who’s cooperating, who’s mimicking, who’s in synchrony. We have these communication channels, and we do it without thinking about

Are we safe here? What’s our future with these people? Are there dangers lurking?

Given that our sense of danger is so natural and automatic, organizations have to do some pretty special things to overcome that natural trigger.”

The key to creating psychological safety, as Pentland and Edmondson emphasize, is to recognize how deeply obsessed our unconscious brains are with it. A mere hint of belonging is not enough;

Another experiment analyzed a competition in which entrepreneurs pitched business ideas to a group of executives. Each participant presented their plan to the group; the group then selected and ranked the most promising plans for recommendation to an outside group of angel investors. Pentland found that the sociometers—which tracked only the cues exchanged by presenter and audience and ignored all the informational content—predicted the rankings with nearly perfect accuracy. In other words, the content of the pitch didn’t matter as much as the set of cues with which the pitch was delivered and received. (When the angel investors viewed the plans on paper—looking only at informational content and ignoring social signals—they ranked them very differently.)

“The executives [listening to the pitches] thought they were evaluating the plans based on rational measures, such as: How original is this idea? How does it fit the current market? How well developed is this plan?” Pentland wrote. “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? And the second set of information—information that the business executives didn’t even know they were assessing—is what influenced their choice of business plans to the greatest degree.”

“This is a different way of thinking about human beings,” Pentland says. “Individuals aren’t really individuals. They’re more like musicians in a jazz quartet, forming a web of unconscious actions and reactions to complement the others in the group. You don’t look at the informational content of the messages; you look at patterns that show how the message is being sent. Those patterns con...

Overall Pentland’s studies show that team performance is driven by fi...

1. Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keepi...

2. Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and ...

3. Members communicate directly with one another, not just wi...

4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.

5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.

Just hearing something said rarely results in a change in behavior. They’re just words. When we see people in our peer group play with an idea, our behavior changes. That’s how intelligence is created. That’s how culture is created.”

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

It was normal. Google personnel were interacting exactly as the kindergartners in the spaghetti-marshmallow challenge interacted. They did not manage their status or worry about who was in charge. Their small building produced high levels of proximity and face-to-face interaction.

Google didn’t win because it was smarter. It won because it was safer.

They were an unmistakable signal: This is a safe place to connect. You hand over your cellphone—and create a connection—without thinking.

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.

We are the same. We are safe. I’ll go halfway if you will. And so they did.

All these signals were small—a personal question about their best times at work, an exercise that revealed their individual skills, a sweatshirt embroidered with their name. These signals didn’t take much time to deliver, but they made a huge difference because they created a foundation of psychological safety that built connection and identity.

However, if we look at missileer culture through the lens of belonging cues, the picture shifts. Belonging cues have to do not with character or discipline but with building an environment that answers basic questions: Are we connected? Do we share a future? Are we safe? Let’s take them one by one.

Are we safe? The biggest risk in the missileer’s world is not the missiles but the constant barrage of proficiency, certification, and nuclear-readiness tests, each of which requires near-perfection and each of which might scuttle their career. These tests often involve memorizing a five-inch-thick binder filled with two-sided sheets of launch codes. Missileers must score 100 percent on certain portions of the tests, or else they fail.

Seen in this way, missileer culture is not a result of an internal lack of discipline and character but of an environment custom-built to destroy cohesion.

“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.”

“It’s so easy to be insulated when you’re a professional athlete,” Buford says. “Pop uses these moments to connect us. He loves that we come from so many different places. That could pull us apart, but he makes sure that everybody feels connected and engaged to something bigger.”

One misconception about highly successful cultures is that they are happy, lighthearted places. This is mostly not the case. They are energized and engaged, but at their core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together.

Researchers discovered that one particular form of feedback boosted student effort and performance so immensely that they deemed it “magical feedback.” Students who received it chose to revise their papers far more often than students who did not, and their performance improved significantly. The feedback was not complicated. In fact, it consisted of one simple phrase. I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.

it contains three separate cues: 1. You are part of this group. 2. This group is special; we have high standards here. 3. I believe you can reach those standards. These signals provide a clear message

The most successful projects were those driven by sets of individuals who formed what Allen called “clusters of high communicators.”

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.

Overcommunicate Your Listening:

Spotlight Your Fallibility Early On—Especially

This kind of signal is not just an admission of weakness; it’s also an invitation to create a deeper connection, because it sparks a response in the listener: How can I help?

Embrace the Messenger:

“In fact, it’s not enough to not shoot them. You have to hug the messenger and let them

Preview Future Connection:

Overdo Thank-Yous:

Be Painstaking in the Hiring Process:

Eliminate Bad Apples:

Create Safe, Collision-Rich Spaces:

Make Sure Everyone Has a Voice: