Behind every great team is a great culture

An Apple-Disney merger.  Disney CEO Bob Iger, in the excerpt from his forthcoming memoir “The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons From 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company”, says he believes Disney and Apple would have merged if Steve Jobs hadn’t died in 2011.

What a world that would be! But, alas, we’re in this world.

The cultural element in M&As' integration process has been identified as one of the key issues that may help explain the failure of many mergers and acquisitions. In short, culture isn't just one thing. It's everything.

It's why Apple is famous for its maxim, "Culture beats strategy." You have to have the right strategy, of course, but it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy is successful.

Think about your work environment for a moment. What words come to mind? Words like fun, freedom, creative, energized? Or bureaucratic, stifling, drab, pressured?

Our most important job as a leader is to create a culture. We are creating culture every moment of every day by what we think, say and do. Everything we do - or don't do - is examined in all quarters. People are going to examine everything about us. We, as leaders set the tone and decide what the team values and stands for, but it's important to note that our culture is brought to life and created by everyone on our team.

I wish I had been a leader then that I am now but, unfortunately, I wasn't. I didn't know how important culture was to the success of a team. I now know that building a great team begins with creating a great culture. I changed. I was a hard driver and all about the results. These days I make culture my focus and we work to become a great team instead of just a bunch of individuals who wanted to meet our goals.

You may not have the most talented team, but you can work to create the best team culture. There's a lot you can't control, but you can control how much time, energy and care you invest in your culture. I'm not going to lie and say that talent isn't important to be a successful team. But I've seen many teams with a lot of talent and a bad culture perform badly. Too many teams focus on the fruit of the tree - the results, the numbers. They ignore the root - their culture, people and relationships. They think it's the numbers that matter most.

What they don't realize is that it's not the numbers that drive the culture; it's the culture that drive the numbers.

Research from Harvard University supports the idea that the emotions you feel are contagious and affect the people around you. Your team is likely to catch your bad mood and on the flip side, they will catch your good mood as well. As a team member, your attitude, energy and leadership are contagious, and has a big impact on your culture and team.

My team today is connected by a common culture. There is a tremendous amount of sacrifice from this group of individuals. The results we continuously achieve would never had been possible without the dedication of the team, belief instilled by leadership and the connection to common culture. The power of the team comes from how committed they are to one another, and from how unified they are with the common goal.


I feel more like a team member than a leader because the team members lead each other.

The key to success is relationships

60,000 people packed into an Olympic stadium for jack Ma's retirement party. China's richest man, Alibaba's cofounder donned a wig and leather jacket for the occasion which was also his 55th birthday and the Chinese e-commerce giant's 20th anniversary.

Jack Ma once said at a forum organized by the De La Salle University that despite knowing "very little about technology" the key to his billion-dollar success is knowing how to work and deal with people. “If you want to be successful, you should have great EQ (emotional quotient). Because you’d know how to work with people."

How are you relating? How are your relationships?

Life is a journey and along the way, you will meet many people. Some of them you will help, assist, advise. Others will help, assist and advise you. It has been my experience that when you think you are there to help someone else, chances are they are really there to help you. Our students make the best teachers.

Without the help of others, you will never make this journey. It is a funny thing I have observed about life - mistakes are almost always and inevitably one's own responsibility, but one's success, triumphs and worthwhile achievements are rarely accomplished without the help of others.

Empathy lets us better understand the people we are trying to serve or work with and gives us perspectives and insight that can drive greater and more effective actions. Some of us are born with an overwhelming degree of empathy, while others are callous or even blind to the perspectives of others. The rest of us fall somehwere in between. But empathy is more than just a natural talent; it can also be a process, a learned skill, developed and applied when and where needed.

You see, people are very willing to go the extra mile for someone they trust but they won't even consider doing so for someone they don't trust. When the trust level is high, people feel confident that the situation is going to be win-win. On the other hand, if there is no trust, people automatically assume the situation is going to be win-lose, that they will simply be taken advantage of. 

Trust, not money, is the currency of business and life. Trust can accelerate and mistrust can destroy any business, team or relationship. No matter what your role is, trust affects your influence and success.

When the trust level is high, people see very clearly that working hard to help their leader pursue his or her objective (ie extraordinary results) is also the vigorous pursuit of their own. In  other words, they know the leader isn't going to take advantage of them and is going to reciprocate in some meaningful way. As a result, they can become highly motivated to direct their best efforts toward this pursuit. Without this connection, there is absolutely no reason for them to get excited about helping their leader achieve extraordinary results, so they don't.

While it may sound trivial, the most important thing you do to demonstrate you care is to ask for their thoughts and opinions, listen to what they have to say, and then take whatever constructive action is required. You see, leaders who achieve extraordinary results are not arrogant or superficial, they don't play games, and they are not powermongers. Instead, they are real, and that's how they come across to people.

At the end of the day, it is not who you know, but who knows you that counts.

Your career depends on the image you're projecting

Golden Helmet. That was what Donald Trump's old hair was called until his brand new, slick-back 'do. At the recent G7 meeting, Boris Johnson, who is famous for his unattractive and badly-styled hairdo, revealed a new hairdo which looked so much like Trump’s infamous comb-over - and the internet went unsurprisingly ballistic.

Let's face it, work simply isn't what it used to be. No matter how good your business credentials and solid your achievements, they're only the minimum requirement. 


Like it or not, perception is everything in the business world. How we look, sound and behave, how we handle ourselves and others, are more important in business today than how capable or clever we are. Don't get me wrong, God-given talent and proper training are valuable variables for success. Talent alone may tee up high-level performance to get you in the door, but it is not sufficient. Character will keep you in the room. 

According to Harvey Coleman in his book Empowering Yourself, The Organizational Game Revealed, although Performance is the entry ticket to the party, Image is three times more important as a driver for career success. Successful impression management can generate a number of important personal and organizational benefits, like career advancement, client satisfaction, better work relationships and group cohesiveness.

If you have been effective, reliable and knowledgeable thus far in your career, are these values enough to gain new chances of leadership and progression? If not, what new "brand values" do you need to adopt: to look, sound, behave and project?

In my experience, the key to successfully projecting  a professional image is to always be true to your authentic self. If projecting an image feels forced and phony, chances are it will come across as forced and phony.

Case in point: to demonstrate that you care about the person, one would be genuinely focused on what that person is saying, not just pausing to be polite. This is not something you can fake - at least not consistently. I see examples of passive listening every day; it has become so common with each passing year. It has become routine to walk into meetings and see half dozen attendees punching the keys of their laptops. Many of them could be taking notes, but from my perspective they could be clearing emails or playing computer games. Similarly for the person you're talking with to zone out and start typing on the mobile phone in the midst of a conversation.

Everyone can project a more positive image.

Everyone can develop a winning brand.

Everyone can develop a professional presence.

However, this image must be consistent with who you really are as a human being.