Whether or not you’re in a founding or executive position, understanding and cultivating culture is a key part of your job as a leader. Here are some suggestions for how to approach this issue.
First, define your culture. If you have a set of company values, map those values onto your team. You may add a couple of values that are special to your team, or interpret the values in a way that makes sense for your team. On my tech team at Rent the Runway, for example, we explicitly valued diversity. That meant that we were more interested in what you could do and what your potential was than having you fit a certain set of checkboxes in the screening process. We layered a learning culture on top of our company values, because we believed that this was important for us as engineers. The point of this layering is that every subteam will have its own slightly distinct culture. Some teams are focused on being very professional, are in the office for very regular hours, and work in a very regimented way. Some teams prefer later or earlier hours, or less formal meeting cultures, with more room for chatting and hanging out socially.
Second, reinforce your culture by rewarding people for exhibiting its values in positive ways. People can share core value stories at company all-hands meetings. At our technology department all-hands meetings, we would have people give shoutouts to each other for “keeping it dope” and going above and beyond. Some people find this exercise uncomfortable, myself included. Reach through the part of you that is shy about praising people or embarrassed to share your feelings, and go into the part of you that cares about the people you work with. You can share these stories in a way that is not forced or fake. The stories that we tell as a community bond us together.
One of the most important uses of performance reviews is to evaluate the alignment between team members’ values and the company’s values, and therefore what values should be part of your performance review process. Call out when and how people exhibit some of the core values of the team. This practice reinforces desired behavior in a positive way. It also gives you a sense of who on your team exhibits most or all of the values, and who does not.
Learn to spot people who have values conflicts with the company or team. If your company has a value of “roll up your sleeves and get involved,” the teammate who continually pushes off work to others is not truly following this value of the company. If you have a value of “happiness and positivity is a choice,” the teammate who pooh-poohs every idea and criticizes everything is going to have problems fitting in. Sometimes, people will change to adopt the values. “Happiness and positivity is a choice” is actually one of the core values of Rent the Runway, and I would not say that I came from a work background of happiness. In fact, I came from a fairly professional and critical work culture. But I learned to appreciate the value of looking at things in a positive light. That doesn’t mean that I lost my critical eye, and it was never the easiest value for me to adopt completely, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. Using the core values to coach people in areas where they are misaligned can help you articulate what otherwise may feel like just ambiguous friction.
Finally, use this as part of your interview process. Remind your interviewers of the values of the team, and ask them to look out explicitly for places where the interviewee seems to match or collide with these values. A lot of interviews try to determine cultural fit by what I would call “friendship” markers, such as “Would you like being stuck in an airport with this person?” You certainly don’t want to hire people that your team can’t stand to be around, but cultural fit is not about hiring friends. I’ve had great working relationships with people that I would not want to chat with for hours outside of work, and terrible working relationships with people I would love to be stuck with in an airport. Furthermore, culture fit as determined by friendship tests is almost certain to be discriminatory in some way. Humans form friendships with people who have significant shared background experiences, and these experiences tend to closely correlate with things like schooling, race, class, and gender. The shortcuts you get by hiring friends are not usually the values you need to form a strong team.
So, don’t be vague when discussing fit. Be specific. What are the values of this team, and where have you noticed any match or mismatch? A very smart engineer who really values independence may not be a fit for a team where everyone must collaborate extensively on all projects. Someone who believes that the most analytical argument always wins may not work well in a company that values empathy and intuition over pure analytical skill. I use these examples because all of the values here are compatible in certain situations, and incompatible in others, and that is what makes this a powerful measure. Understand what your company’s values are, understand what your team’s values are, and think about what you personally value. Write the values down if they aren’t already written, and try to be explicit. Use this explicit list to evaluate candidates, praise team members, and inform your performance review process.