Promoting a Diverse Team Culture

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(bright music) So, how can you promote a diverse team culture? In these lessons, we'll look at the tenants of inclusion, adopting a diversity-focused mindset, getting to know your team members, dealing with negative behavior, and promoting positive behavior. A positive team culture results in a flourishing organization. But how do team culture, dynamics, and individual behaviors in diverse teams foster cohesion? A team culture is defined as the values, attitudes, and action the team shares. Team culture is important because it sets the stage for high productivity. However, teammates can have personalities that negatively affect the team culture, which results in poor diversity and inclusion. One such personality is the complainer. This person is often not satisfied with the team, outcomes, or progress towards goals, and often makes this known to the rest of the team. This person can bring down the team's motivation. People who don't tend to meet the team's expectations can also hinder progress if they don't meet deadlines or take responsibility for their actions. Unhelpful team members only look out for their own interests. This type of team member has a negative effect on the rest of the team because they're often disengaged, poor communicators, and possibly just wanna do their own thing. A gossiper can be detrimental to the team's wellbeing. This person spreads rumors and may share personal information about others. This type of team member spreads mistrust, which adversely affects culture, inclusion, and coherent team identity. Being a know-it-all is also generally seen as a negative team behavior. The know-it-all isn't good at listening to feedback, which creates inclusivity issues, because they're often unable to see outside of themselves and how their behavior may affect others. They also might be unwilling to listen to other's ideas, which cuts down on the number of ideas being heard at one time. This type of behavior can alienate team members, removing team cohesion and identity. Other examples of behavior that can cause team identity to remain undeveloped, unfunctional, or just plain poor, include allowing blatant discrimination against diverse team members, leaving team members out of conversations and decisions, and other types of harassment. There are several ways that you, as the leader, can help foster and develop an inclusive culture that embraces positive and productive behavior. You can ensure that your team and the organization have a clear mission and values, foster positive communication and collaboration, ensuring that no team members are left out of conversations and decisions that they should be part of, ensure all employees are offered the same opportunities for rewards and promotions, and focus on the benefits of a cultural fit within your organization. A cultural fit means making employees happy and engaged, increasing productivity and commitment and higher profits.