Team Culture
And how to create a great one...
Hi and welcome to this week's newsletter!
Last week, in reference to the previous newsletter, my darling sister - who is a legend - reminded me about Radical Candor, i.e., "feedback that incorporates both praise and criticism." I agree that this is a hugely powerful approach to management, something that I would encourage any leader to make use of.
This discussion got me thinking about other things I've done or observed in teams over the years that have been effective in creating loyalty, engagement, and a great team culture.
I've just published a list of the fifteen most useful tips I could think of on the Kempt & Co site, and I'd genuinely be interested to hear if you have any suggestions to add. But for this week's newsletter, I wanted to talk about the overall approach that I think works best and why.
I believe that creating a good team culture is all about showing that you care - about the work that people do, the people that do it, and the environment in which it's done.
So, it's about things like recognising success as well as (or more than) failure, respecting people's input, listening, and communicating clearly and effectively to ensure that people have a clear vision of what success looks like. It also involves investing in shared culture in various little ways, e.g., pens, books, getting artists to display their work, showcasing awards with pride, keeping mementos from shared experiences, and even occasionally baking or cooking for the team.
In all honesty, some of it is a bit like being a parent :)
That last sentence shouldn't be surprising, though. Human beings have had social and family groups for far longer than they've run businesses, so it's only natural that some of the effective behaviours should be shared.
Well, that's it for this week. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this or the list of tips. Next week, I'll be returning to more mobile game-focused thoughts with some templates I've been working on for modelling the finances of F2P games—if I get them finished, that is :)
Further Reading:
Team Retention & Culture Tips: https://www.kemptand.co/content/culturetips
Radical Candor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Candor
Chat GPT proof-reading thread for this post: https://chat.openai.com/share/169cb879-312a-484f-8f7f-766b11c9377e