The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

We focus on what we can see—individual skills. But individual skills are not what matters. What matters is the interaction.

The kindergartners succeed not because they are smarter but because they work together in a smarter way.

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.

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

Nick behaves like a jerk, and Jonathan reacts instantly with warmth, deflecting the negativity and making a potentially unstable situation feel solid and safe. Then Jonathan pivots and asks a simple question that draws the others out, and he listens intently and responds. Energy levels increase; people open up and share ideas, building chains of insight and cooperation that move the group swiftly and steadily toward its goal.

we tend to think group performance depends on measurable abilities like intelligence, skill, and experience, not on a subtle pattern of small behaviors. Yet in this case those small behaviors made all the difference.

He doesn’t perform so much as create conditions for others to perform, constructing an environment whose key feature is crystal clear: We are solidly connected. Jonathan’s group succeeds not because its members are smarter but because they are safer.

When I visited these groups, I noticed a distinct pattern of interaction. The pattern was located not in the big things but in little moments of social connection. These interactions were consistent whether the group was a military unit or a movie studio or an inner-city school. I made a list: • Close physical proximity, often in circles • Profuse amounts of eye contact • Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs) • Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches) • High levels of mixing; everyone talks to everyone • Few interruptions • Lots of questions • Intensive, active listening • Humor, laughter • Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors, etc.)

Belonging cues are behaviors that create safe connection in groups. They include, among others, proximity, eye contact, energy, mimicry, turn taking, attention, body language, vocal pitch, consistency of emphasis, and whether everyone talks to everyone else in the group.

Belonging cues possess three basic qualities: 1. Energy: They invest in the exchange that is occurring 2. Individualization: They treat the person as unique and valued 3. Future orientation: They signal the relationship will continue

“We have a place in our brain that’s always worried about what people think of us, especially higher-ups. As far as our brain is concerned, if our social system rejects us, we could die. Given that our sense of danger is so natural and automatic, organizations have to do some pretty special things to overcome that natural trigger.”

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

the belonging cues sent in the initial moments of the interaction mattered more than anything they said.

Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short. 2. Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic. 3. Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader. 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.

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

Let’s take a closer look at how belonging cues function in your brain. Say I give you a moderately tricky puzzle where the goal is to arrange colors and shapes on a map. You can work on it as long as you like. After explaining the task, I leave you to your work. Two minutes later I pop back in and hand you a slip of paper with a handwritten note. I tell you that the note is from a fellow participant named Steve, whom you’ve never met. “Steve did the puzzle earlier and wanted to share a tip with you,” I say. You read the tip and get back to work. And that’s when everything changes. Without trying, you start working harder on the puzzle. Areas deep in your brain begin to light up. You are more motivated—twice as much. You work more than 50 percent longer, with significantly more energy and enjoyment. What’s more, the glow endures. Two weeks later, you are inclined to take on similar challenges. In essence, that slip of paper changes you into a smarter, more attuned version of yourself.

Varsity Swimmers write a note to the TV swimmers to give them advice gang into the practice. May be captains?

Those six words—I’m so sorry about the rain—transformed people’s behavior. They functioned exactly the way Steve’s tip did in the puzzle experiment. They were an unmistakable signal: This is a safe place to connect. You hand over your cellphone—and create a connection—without thinking.

“A small signal can have a huge effect,” Walton says. “But the deeper thing to realize is that you can’t just give a cue once. 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. It’s a narrative—you have to keep it going. It’s not unlike a romantic relationship. How often do you tell your partner that you love them? It may be true, but it’s still important to let them know, over and over.”

When we sense a threat, the amygdala pulls our alarm cord, setting off the fight-or-flight response that floods our body with stimulating hormones, and it shrinks our perceived world to a single question: What do I need to do to survive?

“The moment you’re part of a group, the amygdala tunes in to who’s in that group and starts intensely tracking them. Because these people are valuable to you. They were strangers before, but they’re on your team now, and that changes the whole dynamic. It’s such a powerful switch—it’s a big top-down change, a total reconfiguration of the entire motivational and decision-making system.”

ASCA presentation

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

The star model focused on finding and hiring the brightest people. The professional model focused on building the group around specific skill sets. The commitment model, on the other hand, focused on developing a group with shared values and strong emotional bonds. Of these, the commitment model consistently led to the highest rates of success.

“The process of mutual empathy among antagonists was facilitated by their proximity in trench war, and, further, was reinforced as the assumptions made by each of the other’s likely actions were confirmed by subsequent events. Moreover, by getting to know the ‘neighbor’ in the trench opposite, each adversary realized that the other endured the same stress, reacted in the same way, and thus was not so very different from himself.”

Each cue, by itself, would not have had much of an impact. But together, repeated day after day, they combined to create conditions that set the stage for a deeper connection.

The experiment went like this: Several hundred new hires were divided into two groups, plus the usual control group. Group one received standard training plus an additional hour that focused on WIPRO’s identity. These trainees heard about the company’s successes, met a “star performer,” and answered questions about their first impressions of WIPRO. At the end of the hour, they received a fleece sweatshirt embroidered with the company’s name. Group two also received the standard training, plus an additional hour focused not on the company but on the employee. These trainees were asked questions like What is unique about you that leads to your happiest times and best performances at work? In a brief exercise, they were asked to imagine they were lost at sea and to consider what special skills they might bring to the situation. At the end of the hour, they were given a fleece sweatshirt embroidered with their name alongside the company’s name.

What would group 2'S retention plan look like for a high school swim program?

The answer is belonging cues. The trainees in group one received zero signals that reduced the interpersonal distance between themselves and WIPRO. They received lots of information about WIPRO and star performers, plus a nice company sweatshirt, but nothing that altered that fundamental distance. The group two trainees, on the other hand, received a steady stream of individualized, future-oriented, amygdala-activating belonging cues. 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.

Key words individualized and future oriented

As one missileer told me, “Every deviation is treated as if it’s violating a presidential launch order. Make a critical error? You’re done. You’re the shitty guy. There is no such thing as doing an outstanding job. You either do it right, or you get punished. If you admit a mistake or ask for help, you ruin your reputation. Everyone walks around like scared puppies. So you get a feedback loop. Something bad happens, everybody screams and yells, then they institute more evaluations, which makes everybody more demoralized, more tired, so you make more mistakes.” It all adds up to a perfectly designed storm of antibelonging cues, where there is no connection, no future, and no safety. 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. Indeed, the former launch officers I spoke with were smart, eloquent, thoughtful people who seemed to have found successful and fulfilling lives once they left the broken missileer culture. The difference wasn’t in the content of their character. It was in the lack of safety and belonging in their culture.

Sailors in submarines have close physical proximity, take part in purposeful activity (global patrols that include missions beyond deterrence), and are part of a career pathway that can lead to the highest positions in the navy. Perhaps as a result, the nuclear submarine fleet has thus far mostly avoided the kinds of problems that plague the missileers, and in many cases have developed high-performing cultures.

Popovich, sixty-eight, is a hard-core, old-school, unapologetic authoritarian, a steel-spined product of the Air Force Academy who values discipline above all. His disposition has been compared to that of a dyspeptic bulldog, and he possesses a temper that could be described as “volcanic,” with much of the lava being funneled at his star players. Some of his more memorable eruptions are collected on YouTube, under titles such as “Popovich Yells and Destroys Thiago Splitter,” “Popovich Tells Danny Green to Shut the F— Up,” and “Popovich Furious at Tony Parker.” In short, he embodies a riddle: How does a cranky, demanding coach create the most cohesive team in all of sports?

Doesn't exactly round like a Ted lasso. Is there a balancing act? .

(Their scouting template includes a check box labeled “Not a Spur.” A check in this box means the player will not be pursued, no matter how talented he is.)

Character> quality of performance

Then he sets down his plate and begins to move around the gym, talking to players. He touches them on the elbow, the shoulder, the arm. He chats in several languages. (The Spurs include players from seven countries.) He laughs. His eyes are bright, knowing, active. When he reaches Belinelli, his smile gets bigger and more lopsided. He exchanges a few words, and when Belinelli jokes back, they engage in a brief mock-wrestling match. It is a strange sight. A white-haired sixty-five-year-old coach wrestling a curly-haired six-foot-five Italian.

Relationships an interactions. Every day is a new day. Find a lifeline to hold. High proximity collisions - with physical contact to boast conneehen. Eddie Reese's "claw".

He fills their cups.”

“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.”

What does that look like on a pool deck? '

He always asks questions, and those questions are always the same: personal, direct, focused on the big picture. What did you think of it? What would you have done in that situation?

Morning meetings? Need a base of sample quester that are general enough that they will workfor anything.

There are bigger things than basketball to which we are all connected.

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.

But how do Popovich and other leaders manage to give tough, truthful feedback without causing side effects of dissent and disappointment? What is the best feedback made of?

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

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.

You are part of this group. This group is special. I believe you can reach those standards.

“He looked as sad as I’ve ever seen a person look,” Marks recalls. “He’s sitting in his chair, not saying a word, still devastated. Then—I know this sounds weird—but you can just see him make the shift and get past it. He takes a sip of wine and a deep breath. You can see him get over his emotions and start focusing on what the team needs. Right then the bus pulls up.” Popovich stood and greeted every player as they came through the door. Some got a hug, some got a smile, some got a joke or a light touch on the arm. The wine flowed. They sat and ate together. Popovich moved around the room, connecting with each player in turn. People later said he behaved like the father of a bride at a wedding, taking time with everyone, thanking them, appreciating them. There were no speeches, just a series of intimate conversations. In a moment that could have been filled with frustration, recrimination, and anger, he filled their cups. They talked about the game. Some of them cried. They began to come out of their private silences, to get past the loss and to connect. They even laughed. “I remember watching him do that, and I couldn’t believe it,” R. C. Buford says. “By the end of the night, things felt almost normal. We were a team again. It’s the single greatest thing I’ve ever seen in sports, bar none.”*3

It's okay to feel dissappantiment and emoters. But compartmentalizing And then being able to Model the mindsets care, and empathy needed is hugely important

“He keeps things really simple and positive when it comes to people.”

Collisions—defined as serendipitous personal encounters—are, he believes, the lifeblood of any organization, the key driver of creativity, community, and cohesion.

When an idea becomes part of a language, it becomes part of the default way of thinking.”

proximity functions as a kind of connective drug. Get close, and our tendency to connect lights up.

Closeness helps create efficiencies of connection.

When they’re talking, I’m looking at their face, nodding, saying ‘What do you mean by that,’ ‘Could you tell me more about this,’ or asking their opinions about what we should do, drawing people out.”

The key is to draw a distinction between interruptions born of mutual excitement and those rooted in lack of awareness and connection.

you should open up, show you make mistakes, and invite input with simple phrases like “This is just my two cents.” “Of course, I could be wrong here.” “What am I missing?” “What do you think?”

At the end of each basketball season, for example, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich takes each of his star players aside and thanks them for allowing him to coach them. Those are his exact words: Thank you for allowing me to coach you.

Thank you for allowing me to be your coach '

the performance of the restaurant depends on the person who performs the humblest task.