The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

For example, many groups follow the rule that no meeting can end without everyone sharing something.

One of his first acts was to hold one-on-ones with each of the ship’s 310 sailors for thirty minutes. (Completing all the meetings took about six weeks.) Abrashoff asked each sailor three questions: 1. What do you like most about the Benfold? 2. What do you like least? 3. What would you change if you were captain?

Pick Up Trash:

This is what I would call a muscular humility—a mindset of seeking simple ways to serve the group. Picking up trash is one example, but the same kinds of behaviors exist around allocating parking places (egalitarian, with no special spots reserved for leaders), picking up checks at meals (the leaders do it every time), and providing for equity in salaries, particularly for start-ups.

Capitalize on Threshold Moments:

When we enter a new group, our brains decide quickly whether to connect. So successful cultures treat these threshold moments as more important than any other.

Avoid Giving Sandwich Feedback:

In the cultures I visited, I didn’t see many feedback sandwiches. Instead, I saw them separate the two into different processes.

They handled negatives through dialogue, first by asking if a person wants feedback, then having a learning-focused two-way conversation about the needed growth. They handled positives through ultraclear bursts of recognition and praise.

Embrace Fun:

They demonstrated that a series of small, humble exchanges—Anybody have any ideas? Tell me what you want, and I’ll help you—can unlock a group’s ability to perform. The key, as we’re about to learn, involves the willingness to perform a certain behavior that goes against our every instinct: sharing vulnerability.

So far we’ve spent this book in what you might call the glue department, exploring how successful groups create belonging. Now we’ll turn our attention to the muscle, to see how successful groups translate connection into trusting cooperation.

The fascinating thing is, however, these awkward, painful interactions generate the highly cohesive, trusting behavior necessary for smooth cooperation.

While Set A generates information, Set B generates something more powerful: vulnerability.

At some level, we intuitively know that vulnerability tends to spark cooperation and trust. But we may not realize how powerfully and reliably this process works, particularly when it comes to group interactions.

“It’s about sending a really clear signal that you have weaknesses, that you could use help. And if that behavior becomes a model for others, then you can set the insecurities aside and get to work, start to trust each other and help each other. If you never have that vulnerable moment, on the other hand, then people will try to cover up their weaknesses, and every little microtask becomes a place where insecurities manifest themselves.”

The interaction he describes can be called a vulnerability

they all follow the same discrete steps: 1. Person A sends a signal of vulnerability. 2. Person B detects this signal. 3. Person B responds by signaling their own vulnerability. 4. Person A detects this signal. 5. A norm is established; closeness and trust increase.

Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it precedes it.

The mechanism of cooperation can be summed up as follows: Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway through which trusting cooperation is built.

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.”

those conditions for his teams. His approach to nurturing cooperation could be described as an insurgent campaign against authority bias. Merely creating space for cooperation, he realized, wasn’t enough; he had to generate a series of unmistakable signals that tipped his men away from their natural tendencies and toward interdependence and cooperation.

“The real courage is seeing the truth and speaking the truth to each other. People never want to be the person who says, ‘Wait a second, what’s really going on here?’ But inside the squadron, that is the culture, and that’s why we’re successful.”

Givechi’s interactions with her teams take place largely in what IDEO calls Flights, regular all-team meetings that occur at the start, middle, and finish of every project. (Think of them as IDEO’s version of the BrainTrust or AAR.) Givechi approaches each Flight from the outside in. She does her research, mostly through conversations, to learn the issues the team has been wrestling with, both from a design perspective (what are the barriers?) and from a team-dynamics perspective (where is the friction?). Then with that landscape in mind, she gathers the group and asks questions designed to unearth tensions and help the group gain clarity about themselves and the project.

The word she uses for this process is surfacing.*1 “I 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

Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often:

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?

Overcommunicate Expectations:

Collaborate and Make Others Successful: Going Out of Your Way to Help Others Is the Secret Sauce.

Deliver the Negative Stuff in Person:

When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments:

1. The first vulnerability 2. The first disagreement

Listen Like a Trampoline:

the most effective listeners do four things:

1. 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 sugges...

In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value:

This means having the willpower to forgo easy opportunities to offer solutions and make suggestions.

Use Candor-Generating Practices like AARs, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming:

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 di...

Aim for Candor; Avoid Brutal Honesty:

candor—feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful—it’s

Embrace the Discomfort:

emotional pain and a sense of inefficiency.

Align Language with Action:

Build a Wall Between Performance Review and Professional Development: