When I was at university, I spent two years working for a homeless charity. It was the making of me. Aged 20, I had the privilege of supporting a huge range of people who had far more life experience; I learnt so much from them and about myself. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was formative , and a welcome contrast to ‘student lifestyle’. But before that, I had a few ‘rite of passage’ jobs. I pulled pints during the Cheltenham Gold Cup. I did in-bound telesales for a large broadband firm. And, of course, I did a bit of agency temping.
On many occasions I was sent to an office to do menial administrative tasks, often for hours on end. I usually arrived, was kept waiting in a sterile reception area, and then ushered to a lonely desk by someone who couldn’t care less who I was or what I was doing there. With minimal instructions, I’d be given my task and be left to crack on. What followed was often hours of monotonous work with very little social interaction. I wasn’t engaged. I didn’t check twice to see if I’d done everything properly. I left on time, without anyone really noticing.
If you want to observe workplace culture, go in as a temp! A bit like observing a school through the eyes of a supply teacher or agency cover.
But during a recent chat with the wonderful Arthur Moore, I rekindled a memory of something special. On one posting, I arrived at a company that visually looked the same as the others. White walls, dull office layout. Expectations were low. I knew that role was to call up every bathroom shop in the South West of England and check if their contact details were accurate, working through the directory until I finished. Yes, really!
But upon arrival, I was greeted by a middle manager, Denis – a lovely chap in his fifties who asked me to meet him in the board room. This was new, but I assumed it’d be a fire safety talk or something compliance related (and boring).
I was wrong. Denis said “I know you’re just here for a couple of days, but I wanted to tell you a bit about us as a team. We call it: The Spirit of our Team“.
He then spent 15 minutes telling me about the work they are doing, why it’s important, and how the employees work together for their goal. He showed me a one-pager which discussed this ‘spirit’, in their words: values, principles, goals. It was the early 2000s so the one-pager design was yuck, but the sentiment was uplifting.
And here’s what I loved the most. I had never been made to feel even remotely welcome during temp work. And here I was, with a coffee and biscuit in a boardroom, having a meaningful human interaction. That would have been enough for me. But beyond that, I was being included in the ‘way we do things here’ approach for this team. Me. A 19-year-old temp. I felt part of something. I knew I was only going to be cold-calling bathroom shops for two days, but now I had an affinity with the team. Denis went through how they interact with each other as a group, but also customers, visitors, and any other stakeholders. There was a DNA here – and he was modelling it with me every step of the way. Now I understood them and wanted them to succeed. Now I knew how to conduct my interactions on the phone, even though most conversations wouldn’t go far enough for them to even know where I was calling from.
At the time that I had a flashback of this memory, Arthur and I were talking about how some teams have inconsistent personnel, or people coming and going, for example on project teams. It can be tricky to build meaningful shared understanding of ‘how we do things here’, or even the core aims and remit of the team without that ongoing time to work together and align.
But the anecdote above about The Spirit of Our Team is compelling testimony for us to consider how we introduce people into our teams. I was a (probably hungover) student with very low expectations about what temp work would mean for me that day; I had prior experiences which meant my motivation was low and felt that I didn’t want, or need, to have any connection with the company to crack on with my job.
But once I was included, everything changed. I was more engaged, positive, and comfortable. That made me confident to be cheery and upbeat. And once I knew how they worked and what they were aiming for, I felt compelled to do the job well, to their standards. I felt a sense of accountability.
So, to use their words, what is the ‘spirit’ of your team?
We’ve hopefully all considered our values and how we live them, and how that feeds into the way we work. We’ve hopefully built clear, shared, ambitious goals that everyone is actually aware of and keen to chip away at.
Perhaps we’ve talked about behaviours and actions that will be consistent with following our values and achieving these goals.
But this desired culture, this ‘way we do things here’, this ‘spirit of our team’, only spreads and becomes a norm when everyone understands it. And is not only invited to be part of it, but expected to be.
So the better question, I think, is how do we induct people into our teams so that they can understand and align with how we work?
I’m sure we give them everything they ‘need’ to perform their role in terms of resources and plans. But do we give them the ‘spirit’?
During those two days, it did cross my mind that they’d probably never know if I just entered inaccurate details in the mega spreadsheet that I was working on. After hundreds of calls, I was tired. I thought about cutting corners. I’m not perfect; I have a good work ethic but my mind was naturally starting to wander. But I stayed on task. I was compelled to keep going not just because it was right, but because I actually cared about this team. All it took was 15 minutes, an open, shared approach, and a biscuit. Plus some subsequent lovely interactions with staff that proved to me that the one-pager was in fact, lived not laminated.
If you like thinking about teams and culture, check out my blog, my book The Power of Teams, or find me on LinkedIn and X
Thanks for reading
Sam
Sam Crome 