Favorite Traditions to Create Thriving Culture

This is episode 265 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. And this is a seasonal episode. I want to make this useful for everyone who listens in. The topic today is all about traditions, traditions in order to create culture, really build culture. So I'm going to give you examples today that you can use in your workplace, you can use with your leadership teams, you can use with your family, you can use with friends, anyone that you really want to create the kind of culture that is long lasting, a lifetime bond. So these are some of my favorite, favorite culture building traditions that I've been a part of. And I've been a part of a lot of them, from national teams to ones in my own business, to ones that I've developed within my family. And I think that the magic of having these traditions is that it provides people an incredible ability to rely on something that has certainty that may still stretch them. Because we know that when people are uncertain, then they usually don't feel so great about it. But the, the tradition, the culture building activities, they bring people this amazing ability to have the uncertainty of growth or something new, as well as the certainty of knowing what's coming, the certainty of doing it together, the certainty of having a specific result. So it can be a very, very cool way to develop exactly what you want in those around you. So I'm going to start with a little story. And this is, and first, first and foremost, there are five, I'm going to go into five of these. The top five favorite culture building traditions. And they are in categories. And the first category is a team activity. The team activity. And the team activity is so powerful, as you will probably know from experience, I hope, and if you haven't had an experience like this, well, welcome aboard. Years ago I had an employee who had. He was working in my gym and he was a phenomenal coach. He had great presence, he was very, very connected with the people he was working with. He had a significant knowledge base. He was open to growth and at the same time he had also gotten a little less fit than he was accustomed to. And we had this tradition, this, this annual thing that I had created before he came on with my company of going and collecting groups of clients, anyone who wanted to participate and registering for a ra, a tough mudder like a Spartan race. And we would bond together with lululemon and have some of the people from there do things and get some clients in. And. And then we would train together or train separately for a few months leading into the race so that we could feel our best during the race. And some of us wanted to be very competitive in the race. And so I invited him in on this. But what it meant, what was different is that I made the training program and we trained together for months. We trained together for about seven months before this particular event. And then the two of us wanted to be as competitive as possible. So although we had a group of people participating, they all stuck together and we went separately together in order to compete and, and get our absolute best performance. And I remember we were, we were literally carrying a log up a mountain, the two of us, and we're trotting along because you can't run, you can barely walk. And we're managing a trot because we've gotten so fit and we're trotting along and we're passing a couple of guys and I can be a bit of a smart ass and I really wanted to say, hey, you're getting passed by a girl. But that's. That wasn't. I said it quietly enough so that my partner, who is with me, he could hear it, but the people were passing didn't hear it. And he CHUCKLES along and then as we're going along and we're halfway in and we're three quarters of the way in, and the obstacles are unbelievable. We're going under barbed wire in mud, we're getting electrocuted, we're in cold baths, we are crawling through tunnels in the mud like we're doing all of the things. But he's done this event before, he's done the tough mud before. I had never done the tough mudder before. He's done it before. And he starts saying to me about midway through, thank you, thank you so much. This is amazing. Why? Because the last time he had done this, he was so much less fit that it was a suffer fest. He hated it, it was miserable. This time he was in a conditioned state that was beyond what he'd even remembered in his lifetime, maybe never experienced before. And he was on cloud nine. He was enjoying this experience, he was having fun, he was feeling competitive and we were crushing it. And it created a bond and a memory for the two of us forever. And even years after we've worked together, that business is long since closed. He's moved on to other things, different business, has a family, all of the things. But we have this unspoken bond that stemmed from one of the traditions that we had created in our work environment. Now, that particular story isn't a likely story for a workplace, but it was the story for our workplace because our workplace was one of high performance, of taking people to new levels. And that's what we created there. We created a scenario of doing a summer competition every year. Now, other situations that, or other traditions I should say that we created were things like Laser Quest. We would go on a laser quest as all the employees and some of their significant others and do a Laser Quest fun night. We would do escape rooms. We would do games tournaments in our home family. We'll do a games tournament with all our kids with cards in different rooms. So they'll have a card game in one room, a different card game in another room. People will rotate around. Now that we have a pool table and shuffleboard, we'll rotate people from there with their partners from place to place and see who comes up with the winning, winning crown at the end of it all. And it is absolutely fantastic. I always have resistance going into it. I don't want to do the planning, I don't want to get everybody organized. And at the end, it is so, so worth it. It creates the laughter, it creates the memories, it creates the bonds that couldn't have happened had we not gone into that team activity, that group activity. This is the ideal thing that happens in retreats, the work retreats, where the people who are co workers get together and they get to do the tug of war, they get to do the. The team activity. They get to try something they've never done before, but they're doing it with someone that they work with, and it creates a bond, it creates the laughter, it creates the memories that couldn't have happened otherwise. So I cannot express enough how incredible a tradition of team activities can be. The cultures it tends to create are ones of teamwork, creativity, fun, positive rivalry. You imagine when you've got people who are competing with each other, but they're having fun at the same time. It's not competition to make someone lose. It's competition to elevate each other's abilities, progressing together, and personal growth. Those tend to be the incredible culture traits that come from doing some sort of team activity together. It literally turns the individual stars into a supernova team. So before I go on to the second favorite, team building T. Sorry, culture building, tradition, I want to define tradition. And tradition is quite literally the transmission of customs or beliefs from a generation to generation. So why would I use the Word tradition. In this context, that would include culture building, potentially in the workplace or even at home. I use this definition of transmission of customs and beliefs from generation to generation because what you do in the workplace, what you create in a culture in the workplace literally affects not just you, but everyone you impact. It doesn't just stop in the workplace. The culture that happens in one spot, it, it permeates, it transitions into home fronts, it transitions into how individuals do their day to day activities. It is not just something that is for the workplace. An incredible culture permeates other ways of being, way ways of living and people's lives. So don't think that creating a tradition is only for a family. Creating a tradition is only for the home front. This is why I've intentionally used this description of these favorite culture building traditions, because it permeates so much more when it's a powerful culture. All right, so we've done, number one, the team activity and all of those amazing benefits of the team activity. Teamwork, creativity, fun, progressing together. So let's go into number two. And number two is the give back. This is when we connect humans from themselves to something larger. And examples that I've had in my own personal business and other companies that I've been involved with have been things like clothing drives, food drives. The. I would, in my family, I would make cookies and give to neighbors, make granola and give to neighbors. And it feels so good. But every time that thing happens, there's a transition point. There's a point when you are giving the clothing, the food, the cookies, the granola, the give back of whatever it is, you're giving it to someone else. And that's the moment that an individual or a group of people feel the connection to their contribution to something greater than themselves, their ability to impact something greater than themselves. So other things that we've done is sending even our kids home with food. That can be that small act of. We have leftovers. Here, take this. We have guests here, take this with you. That act of giving, that act of contribution is powerful. Fundraising tournaments. We had done this in our business years ago where we would have a tournament, we'd partner with another company, we'd partner with a couple other businesses and then create this volleyball tournament or games tournament or something within the business as well. And then whatever we raised, that would go to a particular cause. I, of course, loved, love, love to give to the Humane Society or, or any sort of women's shelter, homeless shelter. Those are some of my favorites. But those fundraising tournaments were powerful too. So any of these Give Back activities will create a culture. They'll create a culture of social consciousness. They'll create a culture of contribution. They'll really develop a culture of love and connection to what's greater than ourselves as individuals, what's greater than ourselves as a family, what's greater than ourselves as a company or an entity, a group entity. One of the favorite things in Give Backs that I've really, really been enjoying lately in my life is when I've gone on a trip. So I've done different Platinum Partnership trips through a Tony Robbins mastermind. And that meant that if we were in the Bahamas, if we were in Hawaii, that meant being able to have the opportunity to do a Give Back activity in that space. I was in the Bahamas. I got to help with the local food drive and distribute food in, in a specific environment for people who were needing more fruits and vegetables. So I was in my element, loving it for hours in the heat. And it was the best feeling ever, giving fruits and vegetables to people who were in need. Then there was we. My husband and I went on a relationship trip to Hawaii. And in Maui, they had just experienced experience the fires that had been devastating to certain areas of Maui. And we were lucky enough to be there at a time when we could really make a difference in the cleanup. And so we were loading brush into trucks for the morning in order to help. And they were so grateful just for the extra hands and the ability to carve back time for themselves when these, these activities, these cleanup activities were being done. So those things are immeasurable. I love. I love metrics. I love OKRs and KPIs and things like that. But what happens in the Give Back is immeasurable. It is so profound. So whatever you can do to create a tradition around Give Back, I invite you to do it. In fact, I'm working on that right now with our family vacation. Every year we have a family vacation. And I want to incorporate something that has us Give Back. And I'm not sure how we're going to do that yet, because go to a new place every time, and we will find a way. So that is something that I think you, your company, your family could really benefit from. All right, the next one, number three is the food. Now, I am in a position where I'm recording this. It is late November. It is cold. We have just started to put up the Christmas tree. And it means that Christmas is approaching. And for our family, we have food traditions. So there are some things that literally is this food that Goes straight to the heart. What I mean by that is it's a food that means to the person who's eating it, comfort. It means home, it means holidays, it means connection. Food can literally be this connection straight to the heart. So some of the things that we've done in the workplace in the past, we've done healthy recipe sharing in our family. We do some of the same desserts for same treats every year. And then also one of the things that's really powerful is teaching others how to make those traditional meals or those. Those traditionals or sharing that recipe. Those things create this culture of learning. It creates a culture of. Of pleasure, the comfort foods, the comfort alone of having that someone else making it for you. And it creates a culture of bonding. If there are certain flavors or you learn about someone else that they have favorites of fruit or strawberries or baking or whatever it is, you discover their favorites, it creates a greater bonding for those two people. We want cultures where we're not just siloed in the same exact environment. Let's say you only see this person in the same meeting each week over and over again. Food creates a greater conversation. It creates telling about your own history. It creates the ability to learn something about the other person that you would not have known. Knowing them deeper, knowing them in a way that's a little more personal. So food straight to the heart. That is number three of my favorite culture building traditions. And number four, the rules. So how. How are the rules a culture building tradition? The rules are something that create the structure that's repeatable. When you have certain rules, whether it's in your workplace, in your home, these rules can be fun, they can be quirky, they can be structure based. But the rules can be something that develops culture. For instance, if somebody gets a high five every time they have sent out the board meeting minutes, or someone gets a sticker every time, whatever. These are some of the rules that can be a part of reinforcing, a part of supporting the celebrating progress, celebrating the wins. So that everyone knows that every time this happens, then we do the high five, then we put the sticker up, then we acknowledge the person they get. Employee of the month, whatever those rules are, they get to wear the funky crown. Or if someone messes up on something, there's a funny thing that they all the whole group embraces. So here are some of the ones for us in, in our family, Christmas span of time. So let's say the two weeks around Christmas, ideally, I've gotten all the baking done. Ideally, there are at least five things to choose from. And because when the kids were so little, we couldn't have one per. It had to be fair when people picked, because there were five children who all would have wanted first pick, five children who might have taken all of the things and left somebody with nothing. So to embrace fairness, to. To avoid meltdowns, we created a system of. I had them pick from one to however many people there were, and then we all drew our number, and that's the order that we went. And when we went in that order, it went in rotation. So if you got to pick first, you ended up being last. The next time, we picked the dessert. So we would do the desserts after lunchtime, we would do the desserts after dinner time. And every single time, the rotation kept moving so the next person got the pick. So if you were fifth in line, eventually you'd work your way up to being the first pick, and you could pick your favorites that way. Now, I realized that as time went on, I realized that as adults, because now these children are adults, they may not want to be forced to be picked fourth or to have a pick fifth or whatever it was. And so I gave them the option years ago to say, hey, you know, you're. You're young adults. You're teenagers. Do you still want to do the picking order? Because really, you know, I know you're not gonna grab everything in one grab, and I know people don't care as much who picks first and that kind of thing. But we had done this for years, and what shocked me was that everybody wanted to do the exact same thing. They wanted these rules that were in place because it was funny, it was fun. Everybody enjoyed the pick. It made things light. People would have banter around it. Oh, you know, who picked that one? Because we would go around twice, everybody would get to pick their second treat. And if something had disappeared, it created a lot of fun. So the rules can be fun. They don't have to be something that are only confining, if you will. So the picking of the dessert, we also. Back in the day, when I owned my gym, I had no coffee in the gym. The employees that I had, who were coaches might want to walk around with a coffee while they were working. And I did not want that. I wanted them completely focused on the client, on the national team, on the patient, on the person they were working with. And so we literally removed the coffee. If they wanted coffee, it could be in the office, but it was not going to be in the clinical space. It was not going to be in the gym space. It was not going to be floating around while you're working with a team. It just wasn't going to be there. Another rule that we have is when we're in a group environment playing a game called president, there's another name for it. I won't bring it out. We've also called it dumbo. But when the person gets to be president or when they get to be dumbo, they have the crown. So it's a fun way of building in those rules. And then another one that we've had that has built in a really profound culture is the whining jar. Years ago, when I was working with the men's national volleyball team, we were in an especially challenging time of training, building into an Olympic qualifier. And the people who were in this full time training center were working day in and day out. It was getting extremely challenging. And eventually somebody started to break down and it was, I can't do this anymore. This is so hard. And on it went and, and I said, no, I think we can stop this right now and we can get through this and it's going to be worth it. And we had a conversation. However, the point of this story is that the next day, that same athlete came back with an emptied out peanut butter jar with a hole cut in the top and a label pasted on the side of it. And it was called the wine jar. And it had rules next to everything on that wine jar. No crybaby, no this, no that. And the beautiful thing that transpired after that and developed the culture in that moment and beyond was that people would start to whine or maybe complain or maybe say, why? And another athlete would simply go and grab the jar and hand it to them. And then that person would have to put a dollar in or two dollars in or whatever. And so there was this, this money collecting and this joke being created that was coming from a new culture being developed around these rules. It was fun, it was great. And it was contributing to a culture of supported, supported commitment to a higher standard, supported commitment to everyone being in their best self and supporting each other in doing that, even though some of us as individuals would fail. And that's where we would pick each other up, use this rule for fun, and away we went. So that's another example of the rules that can be fun. And these create a culture of structure, a culture of uniqueness, a culture of discipline and can be fun. Rules do not have to be miserable. They can be fun. And number five, what else? What else? Can create culture, building traditions. It's the environment. Now, I told you that it's. It's late November and we started putting the Christmas tree up. However, we have a cool, windy day with a light bit of snow on the ground, and most of the Christmas decorations are up. And our house has this element now of this cozy, warm and festive, inviting, welcoming experience. This look to it, this feel to it. The environment creates your energy. And creating traditions around the environment that creates something that our senses can rely on, our energy can rely on. It can help us go into high work mode, it can help us go into relaxing mode. So my favorite number five here is the environment for creating the energy that is of the culture that you desire. So one example that I just gave was a Christmas tree. Familiar decorations. So things that are familiar and remind people of. Of a same experience. Gathering places. So you can create environments of gathering places that create elements of the culture that you want. So for instance, if I want fun and play and connection, gathering places of our lower level of our home have a big sectional couch that's cozy with throw blankets and pillows on it for watching movies or playing video games. And it's got the fish tank and it's got the pool table and it's got the shuffleboard. And all of those things in that environment create a culture. They create a space of relaxation, of fun, of all the things that we're looking. Looking for in that environment. When we. The last gym that I had, I've created a couple of gyms in my business. And the last one I had was very intentional around the gathering space, because in the first gym that I created, everyone would be milling about, this national team would be milling about in one spot while a different national team was finishing up. And what it created was this environment where there wasn't a real spot for that to happen. And so in the second gym that I opened, I created a middle point where it was intentionally for connecting with the teammates, connecting with the other clients, connecting. And then the other space was for the workspace. So this middle space had a couple of couches and a bench and cubbies for the. Their personal items. And. And it enabled people to have a spot for the beginning and the end of whatever session they had just been doing, Whether it was a treatment, whether it was a training session or mental coaching. Whatever it was, they had this buffer zone of being able to transition and connect with other people. So it could be quiet spots, it could be patios, it could be something where it's just for social connection in the midst of the workspace. It could be a space that's just, just for brainstorming, a space that's just for fun, a space that's just for work, but creating those environments that can create the energy that you're looking for within the culture that you are consciously creating. So this will create or could create depending on what the environment is. It is the creation of peace or calm or fun or welcoming or inviting or beauty or connection. But you create that environment. So those are the five favorite traditions of mine for building incredible cultures. I invite you to be intentional about your traditions. I invite you to tweak those traditions or try something new. I invite you to open your mind to what's possible because you literally can create the, the certainty, the feel good, the togetherness of the cultures that you want via the traditions that you create. This is a beautiful time of year to reflect on the traditions that you have, see how they're serving you in your environments and see how you might want to adjust them or enhance them, maybe make them bigger, make them better, or really nurture what's already there. Reinforcement Force it. This is the time of year that I think that you really, really can step into consciously creating the culture that you want in your workspace, in your business and in your homes. It makes a huge difference for not just your life, but everyone's life lives around you. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Enjoy stepping into whatever season that you're going into this holiday season, whoever it's going to be with, and have a wonderful, wonderful Monday. Go be empowered. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results alongside other leaders. The Empowered Team runs year round to learn more about our leadership consulting for business and our Empowered Team group coaching. Head to www.thempowered CA/empowered learn more. That's www.thempowered CA empowered learn more. We can't wait for you to join us. Let's go.