Have you ever heard someone in corporate America give you the advice… “Just do what everyone else is doing, and you’ll fit right in”? What does that really mean? Is it good advice? Well, that really depends on the situation, but in many cases, that advice is given without deeper meaning or a broader understanding of the corporate environment… It may well be bad advice. Or at least premature advice.

In the best corporate cultures, an environment exists that allows each team member to bring their full self for the good of the team. That means that they can express themselves in a way that capitalizes on their unique qualities and qualifications. This doesn’t mean, however, that an individual is unconstrained in their behavior or manner of communication. Every successful culture has a set of norms and expectations of its contributors. As leaders, we often expect people to recognize the positive attributes of a culture and channel their efforts and engagement to support this culture. The problem in many organizations is that culture means different things to different people. Describe the current culture within your organization or department. What goes on in and around the organization? What types of behaviors do you see? Which of these behaviors are considered “good” and which are considered “undesirable”? What norms are being exhibited?

The next big thing that a leader needs to ask about what they’ve observed is… “How much of my team will be able to recognize the same conditions when they examine our culture?” Herein lies the problem, if each person in the culture is running around identifying different elements and focusing on different components as the most important elements of the culture, how can it be reasonable to ask anyone to adapt and embrace elements that aren’t even commonly recognized?

The reason so many corporate cultures are disjointed is that they quite often are a culture that exists by default rather than by design. And the reason that they often are a culture by default is that it can be quite overwhelming to try to consider all of the possible characteristics and components that would make up an ideal culture. While it’s far too complex and comprehensive to cover everything that makes up a great corporate culture in this brief video, we can take a look at the five essential elements of a great corporate culture and give you a place to start with the evaluation and analysis of your own corporate culture. Every truly great corporate culture that I have observed has five key elements in common. First, the culture realizes that various team members are motivated in different ways and proactively seeks to gain profound motivational insights into each team member. Great corporate cultures have an environment of extraordinary trust. They have a well-defined means of exceptional communication. They practice relentless risk assessment to empower and protect the organization. And lastly, they are capable of impeccable execution. So now go back and ask yourself the same questions of observation about what’s going on and around your organization. What are the key types of behaviors that you see and what are the norms that are being exhibited? Ask those questions through the lens of greater insight into what’s motivating your employees, promoting higher levels of trust, working on clearer and more efficient communications, redoubling your efforts to embrace smart risks and mitigate extreme risks, and empowering your team to achieve impeccable execution. Once you have the answers to some of those questions, then, and only then does it make sense to tell a new team member to engage in whatever it is that everyone else is doing.