A Short Course in How Norms& Culture Shape Behavior

Managing the behavior of your teams & your organization can difficult. They often behave according to their culture and group norms often more than your desires as a leader!

This short video will help you understand culture and group norms and put you back in charge.

What are they: they are informal and patterns of behavior that people perceive as necessary to follow, to conform to.

Group norms refer to team and small group behavior and culture to behavior of the entire organization.

Here are some examples normative and culture behavior:

Positive: people consistently listening, speaking freely, being curious about differences.

Negative: people consistently Arguing, Sniping, apathetic, and indecisive, the code of silence, group think: an overemphasis of cohesiveness

People’s desire to belong and be safe pushes them conform to the behavior patterns they perceive. That perception includes the idea that and behaving otherwise could get you kicked out

We perceive the norms from watching, we notice the behaviors that seem standard and behave accordingly.

Some are verbalized: the new work who’s told to slow down or the boss says to dress differently

Driven by our needs to belong and be safe. We go along to get along even when the norms are clearly dysfunctional.

Norms are often no more than myths that have no current reality: E.g., I’ll get fired if I speak up. Must work 12 hours a day . my experience

Norm and culture are Resistant to change by single individuals even leaders. They are human systems phenomena and require group support. We’ll be offering future videos that detail what leaders must do the establish healthy team norms and organization culture.