Please, Stop. Your team isn’t a family.
Diamonds laid out to be set - my final day at that job.
It was an excruciating 5 seconds where we locked eyes, hugged, and backed away. I’ll never forget it. My boss had just figured out that the person who used to have my job was sabotaging my efforts, and her solution was to have us hug it out.
TL:DR - it didn’t work. My colleague never stopped trying to make me look bad - until the day she was fired.
At that moment I knew that the family mentality at work - even at what was a family business - was fundamentally flawed. I should have never been asked to hug an employee, and certainly not as a solution to a toxic environment. It didn’t solve anything, but it did make me feel obligated to keep up pretenses, to pretend that the abuse wasn’t happening, and that I couldn’t trust that colleague, or my boss, to have my back.
The business was a family business - many people from the founder’s family were involved - which meant that in some way employees that weren’t family were treated to the worst of a family dynamic. Expected sacrifice, mood swings, lower salaries, and the feeling that we should protect our bosses emotions and ego the same way we might do for a family member. It made for a very uncomfortable environment. It wasn’t all the time - it was certainly the most professional environment I had been in up until that point - and it did teach me a lot about how different businesses run. I maintain a lot of respect for the founder of that company, and the expertise on those teams. However, one thing I did know, is that I would never. EVER. call a team a family.
We would do a lot for our families that we should never do for our teams. And confusing those lines is bound to cause issues.
Resentment
Manipulation
Weird and challenging behaviors
Poor work boundaries
Often calling your team a family is a substitute when you don’t know what else to say, but want to see a certain culture. A culture of care, following up, going above and beyond, and belonging.
Calling your team a family doesn’t foster a sense of belonging. But building culture intentionally does.
Culture will exist at your company whether you build it intentionally or not. Culture is just the lived reality of any group of people built up out of their beliefs, actions, rituals, and practices. Any time a group of people is together, there will be a culture developed between them.
The fastest way to start building your culture is to answer the following question:
What are the behaviors I would love to see?
Followed quickly by,
Do I exhibit the behaviors I’d love to see?
Once you establish some answers there, it’s time to dig deeper. This is where using the values of your company can really shine.
Values establish the “how” of working together. In a group of people from varied backgrounds, company values highlight what behaviors and ideals we will rally behind as a group.
But it’s never enough to just SAY the values once and expect people to get it. They have to be a living and active part of the organization. People should be able to identify when a value is in play - or equally important - when people are acting out of alignment with the values. This is what starts to create that foundational sense of belonging - when a group of people can agree on how we behave and treat each other, and can see those ideals as upheld.
Once the team can see the values as being upheld in day to day interactions, corporate policy, and overall decision making - it’s time to move onto phase two of team building:
Help each employee see how their tasks flow through and impact the company goals.
Everyone wants to be on a winning team, and also to know that their work matters. Being able to see that other people are relying on your good work is a critical motivator - and not a manipulation. Being able to clearly explain company goals, how the individual team contributes, and then how the individual employee contributes allows each person to both individuate and see themselves as essential, but then also extend that to their broader team. It connects their day to day life with meaning. They understand how they fit and what their impact is.
You cannot copy/paste your culture - it’s built every day through the small actions. Make them count - this is the challenge of leading.
What it can’t be — what it should never be — is a pale imitation of someone else’s culture. Ever put a shoe on the wrong foot? You can’t get very far.
If you’re ready to do this work — the kind that’s messy and real and rooted in who you actually are — I’d love to support you. And we can do it in your language, on your timeline, in your rhythm.
