Signs Your Team's Culture is Dangerous and How to Fix It Part 2

Success is a gift, but it is also a test. Success tests whether you will protect discipline when you do not feel the pressure of failure. It also shows what will happen when you face a challenge. Will you answer with comfort? Or will you attack the challenge head-on? The culture you built during comfort will either sustain you or expose you through those seasons. In the second part of my series on the dangers of success, I share five questions you can ask during times of success to help you identify potential issues in your culture, and five ways to fix a struggling culture before your KPIs reveal a problem.

5 Diagnostic Questions for Leaders in Winning Seasons

Question 1: Are you giving feedback proportional to performance, or proportional to profit?

Your team’s performance will slip before it affects productivity. Do not wait for your profit to dip.

Question 2: Where are we tolerating good enough because growth hides it?

Ensure you do not allow bad behavior or poor results, even from your best employees. Success often covers problems.

Question 3: Would our accountability survive a downturn?

If you would suddenly start enforcing your standards if margins tightened tomorrow, your culture is situational. Healthy cultures are principle-driven, not panic-driven.

Question 4: Are our high performers energized or exhausted?

Your strongest people know exactly where accountability is weak. Ask them what they are carrying and where they see weaknesses. If you ignore their insights, they will become disengaged, or worse, quit.

Question 5:  Is feedback normalized or rare?

In strong cultures, feedback is not dramatic or explosive; it is clear, consistent, and expected. If feedback feels heavy every time it happens, that is a sign it is not happening often enough.

Q: What other questions can you use to diagnose potential problems in seasons of success? When have you been part of a company that was profitable but suffered from a bad culture? Did the company adjust? If so, how?

How to Correct Your Feedback Culture

1. Re-anchor to standards.

Don’t just focus on revenue targets; think about behavioral standards. Consider what excellence, ownership, and accountability look like on your team and communicate them.

2.     Normalize firm feedback at every level.

Feedback should not feel like a special event; it should feel like leadership. When feedback becomes normal, it stops feeling personal.

3.     Model the feedback culture you want at the top.

If senior leaders are not receiving feedback, the culture will not sustain it. Usually, people hesitate to give feedback to senior leaders because they fear hurting their relationship and losing future opportunities. You must ask your team questions directly, such as: What am I tolerating that I should not be? Where am I unclear? Where am I avoiding tension?

4.     Reward accountability publicly.

Celebrate the person who owned the mistake, recognize the leader who had the hard conversation, and affirm the team that raised the standard. What gets celebrated will get repeated.

5.     Address drift immediately.

Don’t wait for a major issue. Enforce your company’s culture of feedback every day, holding people to standards of both accountability and respect.

Q: Why do you think leaders struggle to build a feedback culture? What role does receiving feedback play in a healthy feedback culture? Describe the feedback culture at your organization. What habits help reinforce that culture for better or worse?

Application Activities:

1. Identify several leading indicators. What data supports the development of problems before you see them? Use these indicators as early warning signs of problems, even when your profit margin is still good.

2. How can you better reinforce a culture of feedback? What strengths do you have when it comes to giving/receiving feedback? What are your weaknesses? Come up with one habit you can start this week to improve and set a better example of a feedback culture.