The Art of Manliness - #388： Why Group Culture Is So Important to Success

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00:01:15.860 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Have you ever been

00:01:34.400 part of an organization where everyone and everything just seemed to click? People are

00:01:38.000 motivated and things get done. Contrast that experience with being part of an organization

00:01:42.260 that feels toxic. Demoralization, cynicism, and infighting emotionally drain the people who work

00:01:46.960 within it, and dysfunction reigns. Why do some organizations thrive and others flounder? My guest

00:01:51.720 today argues that it all comes down to culture. His name is Daniel Coyle, and he's the author of the

00:01:55.800 book The Culture Code. Today on the show, Dan and I discuss how cultures are formed and what the famous

00:02:00.020 Christmas truce during World War I can teach us about culture formation. Dan then shares the factors

00:02:05.000 that create positive group cultures, including action steps you can take to implement these in your

00:02:08.800 organization that you lead or belong to. If you're a leader in any capacity, this includes being a dad.

00:02:13.520 You don't want to miss this episode with a lot of actionable advice. After the show's over, check out

00:02:16.940 the show notes at aom.is slash culturecode. And Daniel joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:02:22.740 Daniel Coyle, welcome to the show.

00:02:40.600 Hey, thanks for having me, Brett. It's great to be here.

00:02:42.720 So I've long been a fan of your work. Your book, The Talent Code, had a big impact on me.

00:02:47.520 You've got a new book out, The Culture Code. So you spent most of your career putting out books

00:02:52.580 about the science of talent. Curious, what led you to shift to how groups work and function? And

00:02:58.600 is there a connection between the two topics? Yeah, it's kind of funny you ask that, actually,

00:03:01.940 because there very much is. I can pinpoint it, actually. It was just a certain moment that I

00:03:07.240 saw that got me going on this. I was visiting this Russian tennis club called Spartak that's

00:03:13.060 produced all these champions. And I was at a talent hotbed trying to see how they do what they do,

00:03:17.200 an individual talent. But I was there watching their coach. And a little girl walked into the

00:03:24.540 tennis club. And she was about eight years old. And she had a tennis racket in a shopping bag.

00:03:29.020 And it was obviously her first day coming to be part of this talent hotbed. And the coach walked

00:03:33.800 over and did just this 10-second interaction. She said, hey, introduce herself and said, I want you 0.96

00:03:40.000 to do something for me to the little girl. And she said, I want you to catch this ball. And she tossed 0.99

00:03:44.620 the tennis ball. And the little girl caught it. And it was just real simple interaction. But it was

00:03:49.460 huge. It changed that tennis place from this scary new place into a home. And it made it safe. And it

00:03:57.060 made her connect with this group. And you saw those kind of connections in these talent hotbeds that I

00:04:01.860 visited. They weren't just extraordinary individual talent. They were doing something as a group that

00:04:07.160 seemed really powerful and really mysterious. Because as we all know, when you're around a great

00:04:13.400 culture, a group of super cohesive people, it kind of feels different. It feels awesome.

00:04:18.400 If you're in a great restaurant or a great school or around a great family, there's a vibe. And we

00:04:22.700 have all these words for it. We'd say, oh, they have great chemistry. But what's that made of?

00:04:27.300 That's not magic. That doesn't come from outer space. That actually is a thing that you can understand,

00:04:32.660 study, learn. And as I explored in the book, you can learn to do it. It's a skill.

00:04:39.240 You know, and so visiting, it sent me on this journey of visiting these super cultures. You

00:04:44.600 know, these cultures like Navy SEAL Team 6, like Pixar, like the San Antonio Spurs, who consistently

00:04:51.220 have a knack for being way more than the sum of their parts, who are able to create this amazing

00:04:56.140 chemistry and cohesion. And there's a pattern to how they do it. And that's kind of what the book is

00:05:01.280 about. That pattern, how to learn how to do that.

00:05:03.640 So it sounds like a good group culture allows individuals to flourish and express their talents

00:05:10.220 to their fullest ability.

00:05:11.900 Exactly right. Exactly right. And we typically think of culture as being kind of just super

00:05:16.980 personal, like connected to their identity. Like, oh, the SEALs are the SEALs because they're

00:05:21.220 SEALs, man. You know, it seems really, or like, you know, San Antonio Spurs, like they've just got that

00:05:26.960 feel. But it turns out that's not true. You know, they're doing it because of the way our brain is

00:05:32.840 wired. You know, there's some very simple signals that leaders send in those places. And at these

00:05:39.440 places, I kept encountering these leaders who were incredibly good at sending these special three or

00:05:45.560 four simple signals that would let people's defenses drop, that would create connection and

00:05:51.000 cohesion and therefore help people grow. In most workplaces, in most groups, everybody has a sort of

00:05:58.180 secret second job. And their secret second job is protecting their status and being careful and

00:06:05.140 watching their place. And in these places, they're able to achieve so much because nobody's worried

00:06:10.660 about that because they have communicated in such a way as to create safety and create cooperation

00:06:15.660 and trust. And that doesn't happen by magic. That happens through signals.

00:06:19.900 Right. So these signals, we'll talk about what they are. And some, as you will highlight,

00:06:23.840 a lot of leaders are very intentional about this, but I'm curious, do group cultures form,

00:06:28.000 even if you're not consciously or intentionally forming one? And if so, what's the default that

00:06:32.660 we usually go to in groups?

00:06:34.580 They do. We're built for it, right? We're just built for it. If that's how the human brain is

00:06:38.700 wired evolution, it was really helpful to combine into groups for the last hundred thousand years of

00:06:43.240 human history, right? If you were by yourself, you probably weren't going to survive. If you're in a

00:06:47.240 group, you probably could. So we're wired to form culture just like that. So, and culture kind of

00:06:52.720 abhors a vacuum. It will fill. And the default culture would be whatever the pop culture is at

00:06:57.240 the time. Whatever the most default behaviors are that the most powerful people happen to have in

00:07:03.100 that group, they will follow that culture. It's almost like, I don't know, a sled going down a

00:07:08.380 snowy hill. It will just fall into those tracks of whatever the powerful people are and what the

00:07:13.360 popular general stream culture is. The danger of that, of course, is that you're not ready to

00:07:19.740 actually accomplish anything. It creates comfort, which is what you're sort of seeking,

00:07:24.620 some kind of status and safety and comfort. But if it comes to doing a job, good cultures are more

00:07:30.600 like, they're not just about being comfortable. They're more like, they're sort of like athletes.

00:07:35.500 Like if you think of each culture as an entity, and that entity is kind of like an athlete in that

00:07:40.200 it sees a target. It works together toward that target. It connects together. It moves in a

00:07:46.800 coordinated fashion, not kind of a haphazard way. And the best cultures are able to get way

00:07:52.880 beyond that default status. The default status works for the time being, but it doesn't work

00:07:56.880 when you've got a challenging goal, when you've got a threat, when you've got a real opportunity,

00:08:01.040 then you've got to have a culture that's got some real fiber to it that actually has got a clear

00:08:07.940 sense of vision, purpose, and connection. Okay. So vision, purpose, connection. So that's what a

00:08:12.740 positive culture looks like. I think oftentimes when, particularly the day when people think,

00:08:16.500 oh, this company has a good culture, like everything, everyone's fun loving, they're happy,

00:08:22.340 they're shooting Nerf guns at each other. Are those things necessary for a positive culture,

00:08:26.400 or is it something else? It's so interesting. When I visited those places, these places,

00:08:30.720 I visited, I visited nine different sort of super cultures. They varied a lot. You know,

00:08:35.540 they were in sports and they were in the military and they were in retail. They were in all kinds of

00:08:39.100 businesses. And the feeling that you got in them, you'd sort of expect that kind of happy,

00:08:45.440 happy, fun, fun. Not true. What you have is people sort of engaged in hard, the engagement of having,

00:08:53.960 solving hard problems together. It's exciting. It's thrilling. It's engaging. There's sort of two

00:08:59.080 kinds of fun. And this is the way to think about it. There's shallow fun, which is Nerf and foosball

00:09:04.440 and laughter. And there's deep fun where you're owning a problem, wrestling with it together and

00:09:10.200 working with excellent people. And at the great cultures, I always saw that second type of

00:09:15.080 engagement, that sort of deep fun. And a lot of people, after they leave those cultures,

00:09:20.180 they miss it so much that they go back. I mean, I talked to numerous people who would leave the

00:09:24.900 San Antonio Spurs or the SEALs to go do something else. And then they would come back. And it wasn't

00:09:29.220 because the SEALs and the Spurs are these joyful, fun, lighthearted places to work. They're not.

00:09:34.600 They're really hard. But to have a group of super connected people trying to achieve something great

00:09:40.200 is an addictive thing for certain people. And so it's that addiction that they end up sort of

00:09:45.120 craving and unable to give up. And that's the kind of bond that they're able to create.

00:09:50.200 Yeah. And you talk about, you mentioned the Spurs, Greg Popovich. Guy has a temper. He's like former,

00:09:54.700 I think, military. And he just, you know, yeah, he's got a short temper. But people, his players

00:10:00.080 love him. So what is he doing? Is he just making people feel engaged and a part of the team?

00:10:07.080 Oh, it's so incredible what he's doing. It's great. What you say about a temper is absolutely

00:10:11.200 right. I mean, there's this collection of YouTube clips. If you feel like Googling Greg Popovich

00:10:16.220 screaming or yelling, it's fantastic. Like, he erupts like nobody else has erupted. And he directs most of

00:10:22.220 his lava at his players. And it is not pretty to look at. It's very, very tough feedback. But

00:10:30.140 what he actually does at the same time is he loves them. He takes care of them. On the day that I

00:10:38.700 visited, he did a couple things that really embodied that. They had lost the night before.

00:10:43.260 A guy had missed a couple big shots. Popovich walks in and he immediately starts connecting to players,

00:10:48.600 going around, physically touching them, wrestling with the guy who had made the bad shot, asking where

00:10:54.700 they ate dinner last night. Food is actually his vehicle for connection. He is constantly creating

00:11:00.880 moments around food, gathering the team around food, making reservations for them, ordering the wine.

00:11:07.180 At the end of the year, all of his coaches get a keepsake book of all the places they've dined

00:11:11.000 together and all the wines they've drank together. He turns that in a vehicle for connection. But he also

00:11:15.960 does a thing where he explores them as individuals. The day I was there, they got in the room to watch

00:11:24.180 a video. And I thought they were going to watch a video of the game film. But what popped up on the

00:11:29.460 screen was a video from CNN about the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights March. And he

00:11:35.660 then starts a discussion about that. These are all educated, highly educated, mostly African-American

00:11:40.900 athletes. And he's asking them tough questions like, what would you have done back then? He takes

00:11:45.400 them seriously as individuals and he cares for them in very simple ways and in very deep fatherly ways.

00:11:51.180 And those signals are the ones that go right next to the screaming and yelling. As one coach said,

00:11:57.520 he does two things. He tells you the truth and he loves you. Those two things. And because he delivers

00:12:05.360 both of those signals at once, they both can take, they both can have an effect. If you just had a

00:12:10.520 coach who's all about love, that doesn't create any learning. If you just had a coach that's all

00:12:15.060 about screaming, that doesn't create any connection. By delivering love and truth at the same time,

00:12:20.020 he's able to build relationships. I mean, relationships are like a sport. There's a physics

00:12:27.960 beneath it that he has absolutely mastered. And it's about those two things, love and truth at the

00:12:33.620 same time. And that's why his players love him so much. Well, speaking of this idea of connection

00:12:38.860 and the importance of it in forming a positive group culture, you highlight or you look to the

00:12:44.720 Christmas truce, the famous Christmas truce that happened during World War I. First,

00:12:50.000 kind of for those who aren't familiar with it, kind of explain what happened and what went on there

00:12:54.280 that allowed that truce to happen in the first place. Yeah. It's sort of the most kind of insanely

00:13:00.100 sentimental moments in the history of the planet, right? You see it sometimes on cheesy television

00:13:06.240 stations and it's usually rendered as this highly sentimental thing. You had groups of troops in World

00:13:10.740 War I in the, in the Belgian and Flanders in this horrible cold mud. And on Christmas Eve, they both,

00:13:17.780 and they've been sort of killing each other for months on Christmas Eve, they both get both sides,

00:13:21.960 get out and meet and exchange gifts and warm conversation. And it's this, this beautiful

00:13:28.020 sort of coming together of adversaries. And it's a famous, famous incident. Now, normally that's

00:13:33.380 usually interpreted as this, as this, you know, sort of heartfelt, you know, beautiful thing about

00:13:37.980 the power of Christmas, which it is, it's, it's true, but there's something deeper going on there.

00:13:42.620 When you look closely at the Christmas truce, it really shows you the power of what I would call

00:13:47.300 belonging cues that when you are in proximity with someone and when your identities are linked and

00:13:53.000 you're sort of doing the same thing as these soldiers were on both sides, they both felt the

00:13:57.240 cold, the same. They both were sort of being or bossed around by far off generals. They spent

00:14:02.180 weeks in close connection, listening to each other, saying, listening to each other, move that has a

00:14:08.660 massive effect. Proximity works like a drug on us. Proximity works like a drug. And so that's what

00:14:14.860 this showed to really be a, that you put two people as different as they might be in, in close

00:14:21.140 proximity to each other, even if they're trying to kill each other, um, and give them some shared

00:14:26.180 meaning of Christmas, some shared thing. It will ignite the kind of connection that you see in good

00:14:31.780 cultures. It will ignite warmth. It will ignite, you know, brotherhood and fraternity. Proximity is

00:14:37.080 much more powerful than we think it is. And so finding ways in our own groups to create these kind of

00:14:43.040 moments can, can go a long way toward making people connect. You know, right now in America,

00:14:47.400 we have this huge divide between red and blue, between Trump and not Trump. And it seems unbridgeable.

00:14:53.900 It seems absolutely unbridgeable. But in fact, I think we'll find that, um, there are ways to,

00:14:59.560 there are ways to get around it that aren't that different from what we saw, um, in Flanders and

00:15:03.580 World War I. So, I mean, that brings an interesting point. Proximity, physical proximity. This isn't just

00:15:08.120 like, you know, online proximity. Like you're, you're saying it has to be physical proximity for

00:15:13.400 this to actually happen. That's what you see in great cultures. It's a challenge in the, in a

00:15:17.100 digital world, but that's what you see in great cultures. There's no drug like face-to-face

00:15:20.640 contact for creating connection. That's how we're built. You know, a video conferencing can be a

00:15:25.040 powerful tool, but it doesn't replace person-to-person contact. There's so much more information there.

00:15:30.780 There's so much more emotion there. I mean, that's what you see in these great groups.

00:15:34.140 There is not a lot of video conferencing. They are together. There's something and an effect there

00:15:40.200 called the Allen curve, which really shows the relationship between the number of interactions

00:15:46.200 and the amount of creativity and physical distance. And the closer the physical distance goes, the

00:15:51.820 number of the amount of creativity and the number of connections go off the charts. Being on the

00:15:56.640 different floor of a building is like being in a different country, but you can measure your

00:16:01.120 creativity by measuring sort of the relative proximity of, of talented people.

00:16:05.620 All right. So get together. And we've had people on the podcast before to discuss that. For example,

00:16:09.460 there's a veterans organization called team RWB. And what they do is they just get together,

00:16:14.600 get veterans and civilians together to exercise together. And they say that, that is just like

00:16:20.160 shared suffering. Like that really brings people together, no matter their background.

00:16:25.600 That's think of CrossFit. Think of soul cycle. Think of all these things that have,

00:16:29.500 these businesses that have taken off like rocket ships, their real asset is what you just talked

00:16:34.400 about. Suffering together creates bonds. And if you think about any business that's gone through a

00:16:40.000 crisis, and certainly some of the places I studied in the book had gone through crisis. Pixar went through

00:16:45.160 a crisis. The SEALs have gone through a crisis. Those crises end up being this fuel for relationships

00:16:49.960 and connection that ends up driving the organization for years to come. So, you know, there's a lot of

00:16:55.140 cliches about pain being gain and about suffering being opportunity and about crisis being a wonderful

00:17:01.840 thing. They happen to be true when it comes to culture and relationships. They happen to create

00:17:07.240 this kind of connection that you do not get in normal life.

00:17:11.520 So let's talk about an organization. Well, we talked about the Germans and the British

00:17:15.100 having this truce. Keeping on with this military theme, you also highlight the US Minutemen

00:17:20.800 Misslers as an example of culture going bad. What's going on there? Is there a lack of connection

00:17:27.640 there, a sense of belonging? First, tell us about the state of the culture in the Missler program,

00:17:32.220 and why is it so bad? Yeah. Well, as part of the book, I went around looking for the worst culture 1.00

00:17:36.960 ever. And I was looking for several bad cultures. But ironically, the one I found was the culture of the 1.00

00:17:42.380 people who are taking care of our nuclear arsenal, unfortunately, that they have had a series of

00:17:48.060 mishaps, terrible morale, drug busts, cheating scandals that would rival anything anywhere.

00:17:54.060 And so I spent some time researching and investigating why that is. These are officers

00:17:59.440 in the military? Why do they keep misbehaving? Why is the culture there so awful? And it turns out 1.00

00:18:06.460 that what is driving that culture is a fear. The fear, a lack of future, and a lack of connection.

00:18:13.800 It basically is sort of the perfect opposite of what happened at the Christmas truce.

00:18:18.340 Here, you've got people isolated in these silos for hours on end and days on end as they monitor

00:18:23.800 the missiles. They're down at the bottom of these sort of giant silos. They are tested. And if they

00:18:29.280 don't score perfectly, they're punished severely. So it's long, very, very complicated sequences of code

00:18:36.580 that they have to memorize. If they miss up one time, because this is zero tolerance,

00:18:40.300 this is nuclear weapons, they get pitched out. That causes a tremendous amount of anxiety,

00:18:44.900 fear, and ultimately cheating. And the other thing is they don't really have a shared future.

00:18:49.260 The nuclear threat that they were built to combat has largely gone away. More lately,

00:18:56.220 maybe they've been a little bit more better, but there's no real future for them in the Air Force.

00:19:00.780 So they've got this combination of no future, no shared connection, and intense levels of fear and

00:19:05.800 perfectionism. And it absolutely destroys the culture. The conditions destroy the culture.

00:19:10.900 These are not bad people. When they leave the service, they're decent people. But if you had

00:19:15.340 to create perfect conditions to demolish safety, and safety really is at the absolute core of any

00:19:22.460 culture, a sense of safety, security, and connection. Without that psychological safety,

00:19:27.480 they can't function. And they do a terrible job, and the culture is terrible because of those

00:19:32.380 conditions. Have there been steps made to correct that?

00:19:36.780 Interestingly, the first step was kind of this top-down, you guys got to shape up,

00:19:41.120 fear-based, and that absolutely didn't work. The next inspection after that, they found the people

00:19:46.980 playing video games on their phones when the specters arrived. So they did not improve.

00:19:51.680 There's been a more recent attempt to really reckon with the fact that we need to provide these people

00:19:57.340 a path into this and out of it, a future that goes beyond it. We need to reconsider the testing

00:20:02.880 system, which now punishes anything less than perfectionism, to make it more human. And there's

00:20:07.600 been some great work done by Bruce Blair, a former missileer who now teaches at Princeton to change

00:20:13.000 the culture there. But any culture change is slow, so it's hard to make that change.

00:20:17.700 Well, let's talk about the culture change. Let's say there's a guy listening to this show right now.

00:20:21.200 They're in a work team that the culture is toxic, or maybe they're in a volunteer organization where

00:20:26.940 the culture is just terrible. Can one person have a lot of influence in turning that around,

00:20:33.540 or is it just too late and you just have to eject and cut your losses and try again somewhere else?

00:20:39.000 I hate to say it. I think the answer is B. If you're not a leader, it is really, really hard. If you

00:20:43.360 are one person in a big toxic culture, the healthiest thing you can do is leave. It's very,

00:20:47.580 very difficult to turn around a train that is moving down the tracks. If you are in a position

00:20:51.740 of leadership or have access to a position of leadership or the leadership actually wants

00:20:55.660 to change, that's a very different equation. Changing a culture is sort of like coaching

00:21:00.060 an athlete. You have to figure out where you're at, figure out where you want to go, identify some

00:21:04.900 key behaviors you want to change, celebrate those changes, facilitate and franchise out those changes.

00:21:10.600 There are cool ways to do it that I get into in the book.

00:21:13.020 Yeah. So say if you're a leader and you're in that position, I mean, what are a few,

00:21:15.860 just like a few of the things that you've seen leaders who've turned cultures around? What did

00:21:20.040 they do? I mean, what were like the big things? Yeah, totally. They start by listening. Like

00:21:26.420 they get one of the best examples. They start by really figuring out where the culture is at and

00:21:29.920 why. You can't really change a culture without understanding where it's at and why. And one of

00:21:34.760 the more effective ones I've done, this was a captain of a Navy destroyer. His name was Mike

00:21:39.500 Abershoff, who's written some great books himself, but he was put on this destroyer. They were

00:21:43.820 terrible. They were, they were one of the worst performing ships in the Navy. And the first thing

00:21:47.280 he did was he had everyone come in his office and he asked him three questions. What should we keep

00:21:51.920 doing? What should we stop doing? And tell me one other thing that I might not know. And whenever,

00:21:58.420 when anyone made a suggestion that he thought was good enough to apply, he would apply it instantly.

00:22:03.880 He would announce it over the loudspeaker. So when you talk about giving people voice and creating a

00:22:09.600 sense of belonging and safety, which is really the core of any, that's the first skill of culture.

00:22:14.820 As I talk about in the book, the, that is number one, to give voice, to, to figure out where you're

00:22:20.720 at. And then from there, you have to identify some key behaviors, just like with a coach, coaching an

00:22:27.720 athlete, you have to identify key moves that you want to make and get better at. And I, and really

00:22:33.420 define the change you want to make, make that extremely, extremely explicit. And there was a healthcare

00:22:38.900 company that did it recently. And what they came out with was we really need to change the way we,

00:22:43.680 we innovate. And we really need to change how the speed of our innovation, that was the key behavior

00:22:48.100 that they felt like they needed to change. And they came up with a way of describing that,

00:22:52.120 which is a corny catchphrase, which is when you visit great cultures, there actually are lots of

00:22:56.800 corny catchphrases. And this one was good health comes first. And the good health comes first became

00:23:01.520 the thing that they encanted. And that, that message ended up being the key, ended up helping them

00:23:06.980 identify some key behaviors around innovation that they wanted to, that they were able to change.

00:23:11.140 But it's just like with, just like with an athlete, you need to identify those key moves,

00:23:15.980 name them, celebrate them when they happen and, and start measuring them hopefully.

00:23:21.120 And it's going to take a while. Don't expect this to happen in a month. It might take years.

00:23:25.180 If you had to teach somebody with a terrible golf swing to have a great golf swing,

00:23:29.080 you would not expect it to happen overnight. And that's what this is. You've got organizations that

00:23:34.400 are used to doing things a certain way and changes as we know is really, really, really hard. So

00:23:40.520 great cultures over communicate. They're not, they said they find many, many ways to send the signal.

00:23:48.060 You know, it's funny. We talked about the Spurs earlier and they've got a saying that some of your

00:23:52.700 listeners might know, pound the rock, pound the rock. That's there. It comes from a, from a book that

00:23:58.140 Greg Popovich read about a stonemason. Someone asked him why he was pounding this rock. And the answer

00:24:03.380 the stonemason gave was because when it splits, I won't know if it's the first blow or the last blow

00:24:09.080 that did it. That's why I keep pounding the rock with my hammer. So when you go to San Antonio,

00:24:14.080 you walk in their practice facility and you hear people saying that pound the rock, pound the rock

00:24:18.160 in the lobby, they have an actual rock and an actual sledgehammer in the hallways. They have that

00:24:23.720 quote written and posted in every language that the team speaks. And the team, the players at San Antonio

00:24:29.580 is like five different languages, different ethnicities represented. So they have it in

00:24:33.080 Serbian and they have it in French and they have it in Portuguese. That message is, it's like

00:24:38.960 ringing a bell. They, they ring it over and over and over and over again. So over communicating is

00:24:45.440 standard procedure. And I think that comes as a surprise to a lot of us who feel like, well,

00:24:50.120 we can just sort of say something a few times and hope people catch on.

00:24:53.940 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. All right. Part of getting ahead

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00:26:22.260 And now back to the show. So if you have that cheesy catchphrase, say it over and over and over again.

00:26:28.460 Exactly right. Because it's not really cheesy if it's a well-designed catchphrase.

00:26:32.600 It only seems cheesy. And so that kind of flooding the zone with kind of filling, think of it as

00:26:40.040 filling your people's windshields with navigational signals. It's really like GPS. You're trying to

00:26:45.420 teach them how to solve problems, how to react when there's a problem, what the goal really is.

00:26:50.320 And if you flood the zone with those in a really clear way, you'll soon see them making the right 0.83

00:26:55.220 response and then mimicking each other. And it grows from there.

00:26:58.520 So we've been talking about communication. So there's connection, which leaders can have a lot

00:27:02.660 to do and making people feel like they belong. One of those things is communication from the top

00:27:08.200 down, right? So making sure everyone is clear about the values and the missions of the group

00:27:12.360 through catchphrases that you repeat over and over. But what about communication within the group?

00:27:17.200 What do groups with great cultures, how do they communicate differently from

00:27:22.040 groups with bad or weak cultures? It's really striking. I mean, when I went there,

00:27:27.100 when I visited these places, I sort of thought they were going to be really smooth and they'd have

00:27:34.600 everything dialed in and they'd be perfect. I kind of expected to see that when you see the Spurs and

00:27:40.040 the Seals and Pixar. In fact, I saw something really different. They all had this moment where it was kind

00:27:45.640 of awkward, where they would have these awkward conversations, where they would be vulnerable with

00:27:50.680 each other. And they'd admit weakness. I didn't expect that. I expected it all to be about like,

00:27:55.540 they would just present as being really smart and strong. And they always knew the answer.

00:27:58.360 That's not what they do. Actually, they are constantly creating what are called vulnerability

00:28:02.900 loops, where one person admits a problem, a weakness, a truth, they're candid, and the other

00:28:09.460 person does it in return. Now, this is the way we're wired is we're kind of allergic to these moments,

00:28:14.740 right? Especially at work, most of us want to present ourselves as being competent. And we want to be

00:28:20.660 trusted and we want to say, everything's good. I got this. No problem. It turns out in great cultures,

00:28:25.460 you don't do that. You do the opposite. You say, hey, I'm really worried about this. Hey,

00:28:31.060 this isn't working. And it creates this incredible energized moment when, especially with leaders,

00:28:37.860 when a leader opens up and says, hey, what did I do wrong there? Anybody got any ideas?

00:28:42.700 But that is the fuel of good culture. Because when you admit weakness, you create closeness.

00:28:50.900 It's the ultimate strength, actually, to admit weakness to each other. And for the book, I've

00:28:56.060 ended up meeting the Navy SEAL commander who trained the guys for the bin Laden raid,

00:29:00.700 trained the teams for them. And through telling the story of the helicopter, the preparation,

00:29:05.820 the training, he happened to mention, he said, I screwed up. I screwed that up. That was his

00:29:11.080 phrase. I screwed that up are the most important four words a leader can say. I thought that was

00:29:15.420 just incredibly profound because I saw it every place I went. I screwed that up. It's the opposite

00:29:20.560 of what we want to say as a leader. We want to say, oh, I'm good. This is great. But in fact,

00:29:24.980 when you say that, you ignite an incredible amount of closeness and cooperation. It's kind of like,

00:29:29.440 that's just how our brains are built. And so great cultures take advantage of that wiring

00:29:34.060 and are able to create closeness through candid exchanges.

00:29:38.200 So if you're a leader, set the tone for that candidness by admitting when you mess up and

00:29:42.940 looking for feedback from others. But you also highlight Pixar and some other organizations

00:29:47.480 where that candidness, where people would say outright to people, they were very frank.

00:29:53.880 Yeah.

00:29:54.380 Right? Like, that sucks. I mean, I think you talk about the example in Google where some guy just 0.99

00:29:58.900 posted, like, this product sucks. 0.98

00:30:00.820 Yeah, right. 1.00

00:30:01.820 Right?

00:30:02.060 And you think, like, oh, in positive cultures, like, everyone be nice and friendly. But no,

00:30:06.120 you say, like, no, it actually is very awkward. It can be very, you know, the sting of criticism

00:30:11.020 can, I mean, from an outside perspective, like, whoa. But you actually argue that that's necessary

00:30:16.400 for group cohesion. So talk about that.

00:30:18.660 Absolutely. Well, the word vulnerability is really the word here. Great cultures share vulnerability.

00:30:24.160 It's not enough just to be vulnerable. They have to share it. And the word vulnerability comes from

00:30:29.880 the Latin, vuln, which is wound. So it really does hurt. Like, it really does hurt. But what I've found

00:30:36.640 in good cultures is that pain ends up when you sort of repeat it, make a habit of this, you end up sort

00:30:43.320 of getting used to it, almost like it's an emotional gym workout. Right? You sort of go to the gym and

00:30:49.500 your arms hurt when you lift a heavy weight, but you sort of expect it and you actually enjoy it.

00:30:54.280 And so what you end up seeing in moments like that, like the SEALs team, when he says,

00:30:58.940 I screwed that up, he almost, he's, he's okay with that. Like he said that a million times at

00:31:03.720 this point, and he expects to get hard feedback and he's ready for it. And so that pain sort of goes

00:31:09.040 away. But the, the deeper ways to help that pain, to help mitigate that pain beyond simple

00:31:14.520 repetition is to have the leader go first. Always. That's why, that's why Dave Cooper, this,

00:31:21.040 this Navy SEAL said, it's the most important four words a leader can say, because that gives

00:31:25.080 permission for everybody else to say it. If the leader folds his arms and pretends like there's

00:31:29.140 no problems, it's going to be really, really difficult to get people to be vulnerable in

00:31:33.000 that room and to expand and to, and to name weaknesses that everybody can see. But if the

00:31:38.120 leader goes first and the other thing you can do is to sort of celebrate failure. You know,

00:31:43.300 there's some places that have got a failure wall and they will post examples of, Oh, I, you know,

00:31:48.020 I made this call and it didn't work out or I'm screwed up with this client or whatever it might

00:31:51.520 be. And then the third way you can do it is to really enshrine it in habit, to make it a regular

00:31:58.680 meeting, a regular part of the meeting where people share what they screwed up on. It's in the Navy

00:32:04.460 SEALs do it. They call it an AAR, which stands for after action review. And it's a routine huddle

00:32:10.680 afterwards. And it's based on where do we screw up? What are we gonna do differently next time?

00:32:14.580 Well, it's very simple, short, quick. It's very frank. It can sometimes get embarrassed and heated

00:32:20.780 and emotional. But after you do a bunch of them, it becomes kind of routine and you begin to crave

00:32:25.300 it in the same way a good athlete begins to crave feedback on how it can be, how, how that athlete can

00:32:31.720 get better. Because that's what this is. This is about, you know, it's no longer sufficient for

00:32:38.200 businesses to simply sort of stand pat and execute. It's a learning contest, you know,

00:32:45.220 and business is a learning contest. And that means it's a culture contest. And if you have a

00:32:49.200 culture that is always hiding weaknesses, and is always sort of turning away from the truth,

00:32:54.640 and always trying to protect its feelings, that is not going to perform. And if you have a culture

00:33:00.780 that is doing the opposite, that is constantly sharing that weakness and constantly admitting where

00:33:05.660 there's a problem, that's a culture that has a chance to perform.

00:33:08.660 The Pixar example was one that I kept going back to. And I took my family to go see Coco last week.

00:33:14.920 Phenomenal movie, like every other Pixar. But you talk about in the book, like most Pixar movies that

00:33:18.640 have ever been made, like they started out terribly. And they've had to scrap it from the beginning,

00:33:23.720 because they have these sessions, these brainstorm sessions, or brain trust sessions,

00:33:27.460 they just viscerate, you know, just like totally tear down. And they go back. And because of that,

00:33:32.720 they've been able to put out these great, spectacular works of art because of that.

00:33:37.220 I think it's the brain trust meeting is like the greatest creative machine ever invented in

00:33:43.100 entertainment. It is absolutely, and as Pixar founder Ed Catmull says, it's the most important

00:33:48.540 thing we do, this meeting, which is awkward and tough and difficult. But it's where movies go from

00:33:54.500 being, as he says, from sucking to not sucking. That's the way Ed puts it. And he's right. And one of the 0.71

00:34:01.360 interesting rules of the brain trust that kind of might apply to some of your audiences,

00:34:05.480 the people who make the suggestions, or the people who point out the problems, like it's a meeting

00:34:10.860 designed to point out flaws. So everybody watches the movie, and everybody points out the flaws.

00:34:15.120 When Woody, the character from Toy Story first came up, he was really unlikable. Like he was,

00:34:19.700 the first versions of him were really harsh. And so everybody would say that, like, I don't like

00:34:22.960 this guy. This guy seems like a jerk, this character. I hate him. And that's where that gets 1.00

00:34:28.140 pointed out. But here's the rule. The person who points that out cannot suggest the fix,

00:34:33.300 is not allowed to suggest the fix. I can't say, well, he's not likable, but here's what you should

00:34:38.300 do. You should make him more Texan. I can't suggest that. I can just point out the flaw.

00:34:42.640 And that sounds kind of mean, but there's a deeper reason. And the reason is that that rule

00:34:46.780 maintains control for the director of the film. It made the creator, the person who invented Woody,

00:34:53.660 if you don't, if you give him the solution, he'll just do it. And then he's kind of given up

00:34:57.500 control. This is a way of having the person maintain control and accountability, ownership,

00:35:02.620 and responsibility over the project and not just have the powerful people say, hey,

00:35:06.640 put a blue hat on him and have him follow those instructions. So it's really an interesting way

00:35:12.080 of giving tough feedback in a way that maintains integrity of the project.

00:35:16.760 I love that. Let's talk about purpose. We've talked about connection. We've talked about

00:35:19.700 communicating effectively. I'm sure cultures with positive or groups with positive cultures have an

00:35:25.220 overriding purpose. How does that purpose develop? Is it something that can go from top down or do

00:35:31.700 members of the group need to contribute to that purpose? What did you find?

00:35:36.600 Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you typically would sort of think that when you visit these places,

00:35:44.500 that you'd sort of see that purpose coming from inside. You'd think that if you got to the

00:35:49.100 got to the SEALs or San Antonio Spurs, that they would be kind of obviously, you know, having some,

00:35:54.320 it would sort of be in their heart, you know, that they would be kind of living that. But what we

00:35:58.560 actually see is a real concerted effort by leadership to constantly put purpose in their

00:36:03.940 windshield, to constantly be really specific about what they're going after. As human beings,

00:36:08.580 we kind of naturally forget what we're there to do. It's kind of weird to think that the SEALs

00:36:14.620 would have to kind of remind each other that the only easy day was yesterday, or that their job

00:36:19.480 is to shoot, move, and communicate, or that they're the quiet professionals. Those are all the sort of

00:36:23.320 catchphrases the SEALs always use. The SEALs actually say that to each other a lot. You know,

00:36:27.660 they repeat that. It's kind of weird to think that San Antonio has to remind itself to pound the rock

00:36:32.180 because they're playing basketball. They said this, and it's post on the wall, and it's a,

00:36:36.820 they walk by a sledgehammer and a rock every day and practice. But they do. They remind each other all

00:36:41.660 the time. So it's like this vision of leaders as kind of this radio station that is constantly

00:36:48.100 broadcasting, or maybe the windshield is the better metaphor, that constantly putting these signals in

00:36:53.580 the windshield that makes it really clear what it's about. But the other piece of that beyond simply

00:37:01.160 broadcasting it is digging it out, is figuring out what it is. What is the purpose? And how is that

00:37:08.440 changing over time? And that's another role that I saw really smart leaders play, constantly

00:37:14.020 reflecting on what is it we're about? And what stories can I tell that capture that? They were

00:37:22.260 really almost like composers, you know, where they're always listening for the tune and always

00:37:27.940 finding ways to play that tune to their people in ways that were meaningful and connective. It was

00:37:33.720 fascinating. So it was a very, the guy who embodied it the most was a guy named Danny Meyer, who's one of

00:37:39.800 the best restaurateurs ever. He runs Gramercy Tavern, Shake Shack, Union Square Cafe, a number of

00:37:46.180 wonderful places that have wonderful cultures. And he, being around him was almost like being around a

00:37:52.060 songwriter. He was constantly trying to come up with these, these ways of talking about their culture

00:37:56.740 and these stories, and asking people for stories, kind of digging them out of the ground and making them,

00:38:02.580 making them powerful. He would always want to talk about problems and how people reacted to

00:38:07.720 problems. And he came up with this sort of cheesy catchphrase, but it was restaurant servers are

00:38:13.100 surfers and problems are the waves. And he would sort of like to talk about that along with another

00:38:18.880 bunch of other sort of catchphrases that he did. But he was always sort of behaving as that composer

00:38:24.660 in chief, unearthing the stories and putting them in the windshield of his people.

00:38:28.380 So it sounds like what you're saying here is not necessarily do, does everyone in the group need

00:38:33.200 to contribute to the purpose? You hear these ideas like, oh, we're going to have like a, a vision

00:38:37.260 statement meeting where we get input from everybody. You necessarily, you don't necessarily have to do

00:38:41.360 that for there to be a purpose that everyone signs on to.

00:38:43.860 I don't think so. You know, there's a, there's a, there's a narrative element there. There's a story

00:38:48.660 element there that people really do get behind. And sometimes it's a person. It's like, you know,

00:38:54.020 Steve Jobs embodied the culture of Apple. Everybody knew what that felt like, what that,

00:38:58.220 what the behavior should be like, you know, very, very simple. But there are things that you can do.

00:39:03.400 And I, there's one that I've seen used effectively called, you know, culture capture, where you

00:39:08.280 basically try to solicit people's ideas and thoughts on who they are, on who the, who the group is,

00:39:14.440 what the group represents. And it's a wonderful way to kind of get material that the leadership can

00:39:20.380 then reflect back to the group on, and, and really using their voices to describe who they are.

00:39:26.460 It is, you know, those kinds of culture captures often can hinge on a couple of really good questions.

00:39:33.820 One good question that gets asked in good culture captures is, tell me a story about something that

00:39:39.120 would happen here that wouldn't happen anywhere else, which is such a basic question, but such a

00:39:43.760 powerful one. Tell me a story that would happen here in our group that would not happen in any other

00:39:48.820 group, in our industry or in our world. That can create, that question can create a really powerful

00:39:54.440 response in terms of finding stories that embody the mission and vision of the group. And the other

00:40:00.760 question that can provide a good response is, tell me what gets rewarded here. Tell me what,

00:40:07.020 what behaviors get rewarded here. That tells you a lot about a culture too. So, you know, define the

00:40:12.960 behaviors that get rewarded here. It can be a question that can really help unearth the purpose of a

00:40:18.500 group. So let's talk about this. There's different groups who have different objectives,

00:40:22.380 some are more performance-based where, you know, like the U.S. Minutemen Misslers, right? They have

00:40:27.360 to do certain tasks perfectly or effectively for them to include the job. But then there's more

00:40:32.220 creative type groups like Pixar is a great example. I think a lot of the principles he's talking about

00:40:36.940 applies to both, but are there differences in how culture should change or leadership should change

00:40:41.580 depending on the goal you're trying to reach, whether it's creative or performance-based?

00:40:46.320 That's a great question. No, there really are. There are deep differences. And I think the

00:40:50.040 athlete model will give us some insight into that. Like if you think of your culture as a giant

00:40:55.440 athlete, the whole group is like an athlete that has a task to do. Now, there's basically two types

00:41:01.040 of tasks that groups do. Groups are either good at sort of being very proficient, meaning they deliver

00:41:07.280 the same thing at the same time, in the same way, in the same manner, over and over again, like at a

00:41:12.180 restaurant or at a service industry. Boom, boom, boom. You want to hit the marks. Sort of like

00:41:16.760 making a good golf swing. Like you want your golf swing to be solid all the time. Then you have

00:41:20.820 groups who are about being creative, that want to create something new, that something has never

00:41:26.360 existed before. Somebody that needs to innovate. And that's somebody sort of like, I don't know,

00:41:31.320 like a soccer player weaving his way through traffic, inventing moves as he goes along. It's a very

00:41:35.940 different set of skills. You're not trying to have the perfect Ben Hogan golf swing. You're like

00:41:40.500 trying to be like Leo Messi and faking and fainting and inventing your way down the field.

00:41:46.600 Leadership in each of those cases does a very different set of purpose messaging and leadership

00:41:54.180 skills. When you are talking about creating a culture of proficiency, you need to behave kind

00:41:59.560 of like a lighthouse. You need to send a really clear signal about what behaviors you expect,

00:42:05.580 about how problem solving should be approached, about what you're about. You need to over send

00:42:12.780 all of those signals over and over again so that people understand what that is. You have to be

00:42:17.300 like Danny Meyer, inventing all of these catchphrases that describe exactly the behavior you want to

00:42:22.140 achieve. You want to celebrate those behaviors and capture them as much as you can and fill the

00:42:26.740 windshield with really precise examples of what you want and what you don't want. And when you're with a

00:42:31.600 creative team, you want to do something really different because you're not sure how they're

00:42:35.040 going to do it. You can't really say, we want this behavior because that'll impose on them.

00:42:40.320 Instead, you really focus on team composition. You want to get a team that connects and has this sense

00:42:46.200 of safety and connection together. And you focus on supporting the team, on putting big goals out in

00:42:52.020 front of them and on giving them the resources, the time, the expertise, the space that they need to

00:42:58.300 execute their vision. And giving them time and space is sometimes the hardest thing.

00:43:03.400 Supporting them through times when they don't get anything. You're not a lighthouse. You're more like

00:43:07.260 an expedition climbing Everest where you're sort of making sure their backpacks have got the right

00:43:11.720 crampons and pickaxes in them to climb to this difficult task of creating. A good model for that is

00:43:18.840 the Skunk Works program that we get in a lot of places. Places where Skunk Works, meaning sort of a

00:43:26.240 spinoff and innovation hub that is spun off from the main mothership. It was originally built,

00:43:32.080 it goes from McDonnell Douglas. It was originally to build special airplanes, but a lot of businesses

00:43:36.580 have had success spinning off of Skunk Works because you're able to create that kind of freedom.

00:43:42.000 Leaders are able to support them and leaders are able to attend to team composition keenly

00:43:46.580 and behave in that supportive expedition aspect that's very different from a lighthouse,

00:43:51.920 but that is essential to sort of creating creative teams and creative cultures. Most cultures don't

00:43:57.620 fall neatly into one or the other. There's some creativity inside all proficiency and there's

00:44:02.300 some proficiency inside all creativity. But as a leader, if you reflect a little bit on what kind

00:44:08.100 of signals my people need now, it can really be helpful to think in that terms. What do they need

00:44:13.180 that's like a golf swing and what do they need that's like a soccer player? That's awesome. Well,

00:44:17.140 Dan, there's a lot more we could talk about. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:44:20.300 and your work? Yeah, danielcoyle.com is one place. They can go check out and there's a few things

00:44:27.220 there. There's a culture quiz that people can use to sort of measure the level of safety in their

00:44:33.420 culture and a bunch of other tools and stuff that people can explore. Fantastic. Well, Daniel Coyle,

00:44:37.880 thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Hey, thanks so much, Brett.

00:44:40.940 Really appreciate it. My guest today was Daniel Coyle. He's the author of the book Culture Code. It's

00:44:45.020 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:44:48.860 danielcoyle.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash culture code, where you can find

00:44:54.480 links to resources. We're going to delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition

00:45:07.300 of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of

00:45:11.040 Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the show, got something out of it, I appreciate it

00:45:15.120 if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you.

00:45:18.600 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member. If you think you get something out

00:45:21.960 of it, as always, thank you for your continued support. Until the next time, this is Brett.K.

00:45:25.600 I'm telling you to stay maddening.

00:45:27.160 I'm telling you to stay maddening. 0.98

00:45:34.620 What the heck is it? 0.99

00:45:36.160 I'm telling you to stay maddening. 0.99

The Art of Manliness - March 15, 2018

#388： Why Group Culture Is So Important to Success

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