How To Create A Winning Team Culture That Drives Results with Colin D Ellis
Creating a great culture at work is a challenge that requires great strategy, creative relationship building and often, new ways of thinking. While it’s tempting to go through the motions and do what has always been done, taking an innovative approach can be the best way to create a winning team culture that really drives results.
Today I’m joined by Colin D Ellis, a world-renowned culture change expert, international speaker, and bestselling author of four incredible books which include Culture Fix and Culture Hacks. Colin works with organisations around the world to help them change the way they get things done, and his insights around creating a great workplace culture are thoughtful, clarifying and so very practical.
In our conversation, we cover the single biggest obstacle that organisations face when it comes to building a happy and healthy team, and Colin discusses his thoughts around the importance of mindset change amongst senior leaders. He shares how he’s witnessed leaders who understand the value of investing in their teams and cultivating the best workplace environments.
We discuss how hybrid work is impacting organisational culture and exactly how, step-by-step, you can start to change your team's culture.
Colin shares his methods of helping a workplace culture thrive, including taking his team offsite for days at a time to ensure their wellbeing and create a sense of belonging. We talk about understanding when collaboration is necessary, and when working alone bears the most productivity.
When it comes to building relationships between people or re-establishing them, empathy is the glue that holds great teams together. Appreciating our differences is a great driver for connection, and Colin emphasises how adopting inclusivity can build the strongest working relationships.
Our conversation is jam-packed with incredible wisdom and so many valuable lessons from Colin. Whether you're a first time manager or a seasoned senior leader, I just know you’re going to feel energised and inspired on your own journey in creating successful culture change.
Kate: [00:00:00] [00:01:00]
Hi, hi. Welcome to another episode of The New Way podcast. It's awesome to be in your ears today. I'm so thrilled we are together. It has been freezing cold in Canberra this past week. Honestly, I can't believe that we're only at the beginning of winter. Oh, it's crazy. And I'm, you know, especially feeling worried about that when I go out for my walk early in the morning.
If you are out walking right now too, or maybe you're driving the car, maybe you're cooking or doing your meal prep for the week, you're in luck. Whatever you're doing, this episode is the perfect companion for you today. My guest today is Colin D Ellis. He's an international speaker, a world renowned culture change expert, and he's a bestselling author of four books, four of them.
He's been really busy. His book titles include Culture Fix and [00:02:00] Culture Hacks. He works with organisations around the world to help them change the way they get things done. We had such a fun and really useful conversation as well. But oh my gosh, there are so many laughs here. Uh, as you're about to discover, Colin really knows his stuff.
His insights around what it takes to create a great culture at work are really thoughtful, very clarifying, so clear, very practical. We covered the single biggest obstacle to building a great workplace culture, how appreciating difference is critical to building your team culture.
And in fact, Colin shares a really great way for people managers to kick this off in a really, really practical sense. I loved it. We also covered how hybrid work is impacting organisational culture and exactly how step by step you can start to change your team's culture. Whether you're a first time manager or a seasoned senior leader, you're gonna [00:03:00] get something out of this conversation.
It was so good. I am thrilled to share it with you. So let's dive in now.
Colin. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Like I was telling you just before, I'm so stoked that we're chatting today.
Colin: Yeah, me too, Kate and for people haven't heard podcasts before, there's literally about 30 minutes of talking before we do a 20 minute podcast. So thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, it's great.
Kate: No, of course. Now listen, I wanna dive in with the important stuff straight away, and I have to ask, is it true that you were a bank teller in your first job?
Colin: Yeah, that was my, that was my very, very first job. I couldn't, I was terrible at school. So like, you know, school just wasn't my thing, you know? I was one of those kids in, in his reports who promised a lot, but delivered little. And I remember it's like a million years ago now. And a little known story, I got suspended for gambling in school, which paints me in a terrible light, but I didn't know. I kind of lost my way. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I remember coming home and my dad was like, right, that's it. [00:04:00] Enough is enough. You have to get a job. Dad was, you know, he's, he's a working class, old school guy. He said, you're gonna be a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician. Or we'll write and get you a job and listen. Long story short, I wrote to a bank in the days where you could, and, you know, basically my, my letter was, you know, I'm not a serial killer. Can I have a job, please? And they wrote back and were like, yeah, sure. When can you start? And that was it. Yeah.
Kate: I love that you've just joined that. I immediately see the link, I got in trouble for gambling and then I moved into banking. It was just an interest in money and finance.
Colin: It just felt like a natural progression to go from gambling to banking. Yeah.
Kate: But, so I'd love to know, when you think back about that time, my first job was a million years ago as well. I understand. Is there like a key kind of theme for you, something that you learnt that put you on a particular track from that first job?
Colin: Oh, there's a couple of things, Kate. I think, you know, when you kind of grow up in the Liverpool kind of region, like you [00:05:00] wanna be a footballer, it's just like, you wanna be a footballer or a musician that, that's it for Liverpool or a comedian. But you come to that later in life and so you learn a lot about teamwork from a very, very kind of young age, so individually you've gotta be really, really good, but you've also gotta be a good team player.
So I think that was the first thing that I learnt and when I'd left school and joined the bank, I. I guess a couple of things happened. Firstly, I really enjoyed being part of a team, like multi-generational people from different backgrounds. I kind of, I love that and I loved building relationships and I, you know, I was really interested in, well, how do we build something that we can be individually proud in?
You know, when I think back, individually proud in, like I balanced my till, but also those great camaraderie. Uh, so that was the first thing. And then the second thing really, and maybe there's an element of, oh, I need to prove myself because I didn't do very well at school. Yeah. I was ambitious. You know, I felt like I wanted to progress. You know, I wanted to manage [00:06:00] people. My first manager was really bad. And so I was like, I think I could do better. And so, yeah. So that, they were the two things that immediately stuck out for me when I, when I started work.
Kate: Everyone has got a bad manager story in their past, don't they? Like, and it really does shape things, I think, for you. I was curious to know, and I can kind of see some of the threads there, because I know these days your focus is particularly on workplace culture, changing culture as well as project management, a little bit kind of in the mix there as well. What inspired you to move into that area?
Colin: I was given this opportunity, so this was in my kind of, you know, I was 27, it was in the late twenties I suppose. I was, I was selling advertising space for the local newspaper and they asked me to become a project manager for the year 2000, which, like about 5% of listeners will remember. So year 2000, the world end.
I had no idea what a project manager was. And you know, the way that they [00:07:00] sold it to me was the benefits I would get. Oh, you get a car, you get a phone, you'll be away from home for, four years, you'll get a expense account. I'm like, I am so in. And they'd employed me because of my team building capability. You know, I remember my, first boss there said to me, he's like, listen, you're a really good person. We didn't say human. You know, you're really good person. People like you and you build good teams.
We need that for projects, you know, and when I first went in, you know, my role was in building relationships with stakeholders and I, I was managing software developers and I had no idea how to do that. I'd only worked in extrovert environments, really in a team leader capacity. And it didn't work to begin with.
And my boss was like, remember going in and saying, oh, these guys are all idiots. And he's like, oh, explain what you've done. And I've done all of the extrovert things, invited them to drinks, organised the karaoke night, organised go-kart, and no one wanted to go. Okay. I'm like, what's wrong with these guys? And he said to me, he said, your job is to build a team, not impose your kind of will on [00:08:00] them. He's like, this is what you want to do, but that's not what teamwork is. You have to work with them to build something. And so this was in the late nineties and I got this real interesting team dynamics and all of this kind. And I would, you know, I'd get books from the library back in the day, pre-internet and so that always stuck with me. So then, I'd like to think that I was a pretty good manager. It's not for me to say whether I was a leader or not, it's for other people. Right? I just hope I'm not one of those bad management stories that people talk about on podcast. Ah, this one guy once, I really believe, you know, so arrogant.
Kate: I'll let you know. If I ever have a conversation and someone says, God, I had my manager, his name was Colin, and...
Colin: You were like, oh my God, he was on this podcast spouting about how great he was. I know what you mean. And so, you know, my, my focus then became, in every team that I led after that, you've kind of gotta build the team first. My project management approach was build a team, build a plan, deliver the project, you know, and that was very much my approach.
You can't build a great plan if you don't have a great team. And you definitely can't deliver the project unless you have a [00:09:00] great team. It's only a great team if you agree how you're gonna work together. So, you know, in my career, and I've worked in the senior management roles in the private sector in the UK.
We immigrated to New Zealand. I was, you know, I worked as a senior manager in government, in state government, uh sorry, in federal government in New Zealand. My focus was build the team and it was quite a different approach from most of my peers that were like, kind, what's he doing? I would take my team offsite for two days and all of this stuff, and I suppose when I got passed over for a promotion, we'd immigrated to Australia and I was working in state government.
My first job was to change the culture of my team. I did that in seven months or we did that, not me. We did that in seven months. My boss left and I'm like, I'm in a perfect position to get this job. And I got passed over for the job and they were like, oh, we don't want a culture guy. Cause I applied for her job. We don't want a culture guy. And they even did the air quotes. I was like, Right. And at that point I was like, well, I think I've got something that I could help people that's grounded in the reality of day-to-day culture cuz [00:10:00] so many organisations and people talk about culture and they don't really know what it is.
And I was like, I can bring some clarity to this. I can bring some energy to this. You know, people say culture change is hard, but it's not if you know what it is. I suppose that was my pathway is I had this interest in teams. We built really good teams, and then I felt I had an approach that would work really well if I could convince people to invest in it.
Kate: that's so interesting that they didn't want a culture guy. As you say that, my thinking is that culture kind of gets wrapped up in that soft skills, I'm doing the air quotes now, soft skills, culture type of space. But it is something very, very important. I'm sure that we're on the same page, and so is everyone, uh, joining us for this conversation. I know that you listening, you agree culture's really important. Why is it worth an organisation investing in great workplace culture?
Colin: Because all success [00:11:00] stems from those cultural foundations. But worse than that is failure is now visible. Culture failure is now visible. I think when I think back, Kate as a manager myself, no one really talked about culture. We didn't talk about things like emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion. talk about inclusion, and I don't mean that in a sense of, here's an inclusion program. We didn't talk about different people with different ideas contribute into the fabric of the way that we do things. We talked about things like teamwork and collaboration a little bit. What people didn't do was join the dots and say, actually, if you build relationships between people, they know how to have kind of healthy conflict with each other.
We know how to set expectation really well. We understand the value of using technology to support the way that we work together. We recognise that we're only ever as good as the behaviour that we walk past, right? You know, all of these things are culture. This is what [00:12:00] the research shows, right?
What the research shows is when you take the time to define the conditions for success, i.e. the culture, you get higher engagement, higher productivity, higher sales, um, reduced attrition, uh, reduced risk becoming issues. All of these things are directly relatable to a well-defined workplace culture. Right? And there was some research done last year, Kate, 92% of executives agreed that when they took the time to define culture, it, it was directly attributable to success. Right. And only 16% said that their culture is where it needs to be right now.
it's this weird dichotomy. You've got this acceptance that culture is the difference, and you've got this intransigence when it comes to investing in it. You know, and I joke all the time on stage when I'm deadly serious. I joke about the fact that organisations would rather waste a million dollars on a pet project that will add no value than actually to take their staff offsite for two [00:13:00] days and give them the opportunity to define what the culture looks like, so that that project could be successful in the first place.
Kate: Yeah, I don't think that's a joke. I think that that's reality. Why do you think that is? What are some of the barriers or kind of hurdles that you see that are stopping organisations from investing in culture?
Colin: There's just one Kate, and that's attitudes and mindsets of senior leaders. Period. Period That's it. That's it. That like, literally that's it. Every time people ask me the question, what are the barriers? I was like, there's one barrier and that's attitude of senior leaders. The The organisations with the best cultures have senior leaders who understand the value of investing in that culture in the first place. They really do. Now, what you've got generationally with the product of our environment, not only socially where we grow up, but also the way that we were taught how to work, you know, I'm very proudly Generation X, you know, I'll happily talk about John Hughes movies and, and the Manchester [00:14:00] music scene, like, as much as you want, right? You know, I was on a flight recently. I could have watched all these new films, ended up watching The Breakfast Club. I'm like, yes, this is what I need right now. And I think what we do is we take the way that we grew up in the workplace and we say, this is the right way to do things.
And of course, the way that I grew up in the workplace is nobody took anybody offsite for two days to agree the culture. But that became my standard way of doing things every year. I took my team off for two, for two full days. I had to justify it to my manager, but then people started to copy me because they saw how successful it was.
So I'd like to think that there's a group of people that worked with me and for me who are like, we know the right way to do things. Ultimately what we do is we copy what's gone before and what we need is more, I don't wanna use the word maverick, but it is quite maverick for people to invest in culture in that way.
But I want more people to look at these great cultures around the world and go, You know, why do people invest? You know, Daniel Ek, right? So, Daniel Ek is the [00:15:00] CEO of Spotify. The reason that Spotify have been so successful is because he invests time, money, effort in giving staff the opportunity to define the conditions for success.
It's no secret. One of the things that, that always gets leveled is, oh the CFO, the CFO wants to justify every last cent when it comes to paying for culture. In my experience, the CFOs are the people that get it. And I'm working with two clients right now, big clients, and the CFO was the catalyst for the work. They were like, we'll make the money available. You've gotta make sure that your people do it. we could address the attitudes and mindsets of senior leaders, more time, money, and effort would be put into developing the kind of cultures that people would want to be a part of that are safe to fail, uh, and ultimately contribute to future success.
Kate: Yeah, that's a great point. Thank you. I love your clarity on that. You've mentioned a couple of times taking people offsite for two days and I'm curious, in your mind, is time together outside of typical day-to-day work [00:16:00] environment, is that a really important part of building a great culture?
Colin: Oh, it's crucially important. What you're saying to people is we recognise the importance of relationship building. We recognise the importance of creating a clear vision. We recognise the importance of agreeing behaviors and how we're gonna collaborate, and there's no better demonstration of that than removing people from the office or wherever they normally work, bringing them together in an environment that's different than that to they're used to, and then running a creative process whereby the end product is a fully defined way of working that people feel a sense of belonging to. You can't do culture in 30 minutes in the boardroom because it's not enough time and you've done it in the boardroom. So the mindset doesn't change. I wanna make it absolutely clear, this is not a sales pitch where I'm like, eh, you gotta bring me into the... because this is something that I used to do as a manager with my own [00:17:00] team, with no outside help. Any manager can do this work. You know, I, I wrote Culture Fix. That is a sales pitch. I wrote Culture Fix in 2019 because I wanted to provide, here's a blueprint for how to create a great culture yourself. Here's the book that describes how to do it. but I think making that commitment to staff every year, they're just like, this is so good. And people look forward to it.
People are like, when are we going away? What activities are we doing? How are we gonna do the social thing? What plans are we gonna make? And what you create then is the basis for accountability throughout the year.
Kate: Mm-hmm. We are going to link to Culture Fix. I see it in the background behind you right now, but if you are not seeing the background of Colin's, uh, where he's sitting right now, we're gonna link to all of it in the show notes so you can go check it out. You just mentioned that creative process, so taking people away from their day to day. I agree. I think that's an amazing thing to do because it is a literal display of the investment and the focus that this theme of [00:18:00] work, how important it is, and that all the people that you're taking with you to have that conversation how important they all are to the conversation. Makes sense to me. What are some, let's say I'm a manager. I've taken my team offsite. I've got it in the calendar. It's finally, it's approaching, when you talk about that creative process, what are some of the key things I should cover during that time? When I've got my team and we're focused entirely on culture?
Colin: So what you want to do is, is either build or reestablish relationships between people. Um, you know, empathy is the glue that holds great teams, great cultures together, Kate. So what you want to do is make sure that you start the day by having some kind of relationship building. Think, listen, I use personality profiles in my program.
I don't teach it the way that other people teach it. There's a whole heap of fun involved. But that's a good way of, of forcing a little bit of self-awareness so people understand their strengths, opportunities for improvement, and they can talk about that with the people next to them. I think what [00:19:00] you want is an appreciation of difference.
Cognitive diversity has been proven to be one of the greatest levers for vibrant cultures and by doing that work at the start, what you're saying is, Hey, listen, the way that we need to engage with each other really depends on our different preferences, our communication styles, all of these things.
And what we want is for you to have an appreciation of that when you're collaborating. And so a simple thing could be getting people to do, like I do 60 second introductions where it can be no less than 45 seconds, no more than 60 seconds. You can get people to talk about facts that people don't know about them.
You know, what's something that other people don't know about you? Anything to inject a little bit of fun, a little bit of humour at the start of the day, but also a little bit of vulnerability. Small groups work best for relationship building, unless it's a team of six to eight people, in which case you can have a bit of a round table. But every, I guess every culture workshop, whatever you wanna call it, has to start with that relationship building because that's the glue that will keep people together, not only for the [00:20:00] workshop, but also them moving forward.
Kate: Yeah, that's a great tip. That makes a lot of sense and I, um, that's so interesting to hear you mention those kind of personality diagnostics and, and using it in that context in terms of being able to appreciate the diversity that they showed. That's an amazing tip. That is such a practical great, great tip.
There's so many lovely ones out there and I'm sure you are much more over this than I am. I. have great success using Strengths Finder because it's all about strengths. We're talking all about positives. We're not talking about the negatives but I'm sure you have many others.
Colin: And I don't believe as, as humans, we've got weaknesses. I think listen, we all make mistakes from time to time. If we understand our strengths, then not only can we bring those to the fore, but we can use them as a basis to help and coach other people.
But we also need to understand that difference between kind of comfort zone and growth zone. And actually, if we make time to grow other strengths throughout the year, not only will we become more [00:21:00] well-rounded as humans, actually it's a demonstration to kind of the rest of the team that we are prepared to do things differently or think differently, in order to contribute in different ways.
Kate: Yeah. I have a question for you about, obviously Covid came along and shook everything up and now we have a lot of hybrid teams and I notice in our conversation so far when we are talking about culture and building culture and kind of creating a space and opportunity where we can define those conditions of success and agree on them as a team. There's a face-to-face element there. How you think, are hybrid work environments, are they helping us with culture or are they making things more tricky, or is it not having any impact at all? What do you think?
Colin: Oh no. It's making things way more tricky. Okay. Like way more tricky. And, and all of the statistics show that, you know, the biggest issues with hybrid working environment, well firstly is, uh, is loneliness. That's the biggest issue. [00:22:00] So people aren't surrounded by people. As humans, we're hardwired to be around other people.
Right. Uh, but the second issue is a real lack of a sense of belonging. So people don't feel like they belong to anything cuz they're not seeing people. I wanna make it clear, by the way, I'm a big fan of, of hybrid working. I just don't think many organisations firstly know how to do it well or are mature enough, in the way that they do things.
Hybrid working is a brand new thing. It's something we've never done before, and the organisations that flourished through Covid were the ones that reset their cultures right at the start. So people always say to me, oh, you know, it must have been really bad through, Covid for you, like with your culture workshops.
I had a culture workshop every week for two years. What was really bad for me as an extrovert is not being in front of a room full of people. All these workshops I was doing in a basement here in Melbourne, it was a nightmare cuz I had no one's energy to steal. I'm like a dementor from Harry Potter. I steal people's energy. Um, [00:23:00] there's nothing, shine a light on your culture like a crisis. I have never been busier, never been busier, and so for organisations that are moving more to a model where they've got people in the office and people out of the office, right? I, I like to call it a high, highly flexible model, right?
I don't think people are really doing hybrid, a highly flexible model. You have to redefine your culture so that people understand how to stay connected when they're together and when they're not. Also to talk about what's dumb collaboration when you're not in the office and how to make the most of that time together?
You know, I work with clients who, when they're in the office, they have back to back meetings. What a waste of time. You could do that sat at home. When you are in the office together, what you need is to do highly collaborative work where you're bouncing ideas off each other. Innovation, continual improvement, workshops.
What are the things that you need to do together, and what are the things that you can do when you are apart? And what that requires is a reset of cultures such that you get the most out of [00:24:00] hybrid or highly flexible working.
Kate: Yes. That's very insightful. I agree. Uh, there's clearly a need to reset those team agreements and working agreements about that. Gosh, I feel like I could keep asking you questions all day, but I'm gonna wrap up and ask how can people get in contact with you? Because I'm sure, listening right now has just as many questions as I do, and they want to keep the conversation going.
How can they connect?
Colin: They can, they can connect with me on LinkedIn, Kate. So it's Colin D Ellis, D for David. That's my dad's name. Uh, they can go to the website, which is colindellis.com, uh, or they can sign up for the newsletter, colindellis.com/boom.
Kate: We are gonna link to all of that, all of it. So it's super easy. Thank you so much, Colin. I, this was such a wonderful conversation. Thank you for dropping so much gold.
Colin: My pleasure. Okay, thanks for having me on.
LINKS
Books mentioned:
CONNECT WITH COLIN:
Website: https://www.colindellis.com/
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/company/colindellis
CONNECT WITH KATE:
Download my Energy Management Toolkit here!
Website: https://www.everchange.com.au/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ever-change-and-communication