01
Name the contribution and the person
Say what was done and who did it. A contribution nobody can trace back to a person can't make that person matter.
The Culture Curriculum
Everything a leader teaches, they teach through one of seven behaviors.
Here are all seven, as questions you can answer about your own team.
The seven behaviors
01
PRIORITIZE
Behavior 01
PRIORITIZE
What gets prioritized within your team?
Behavior 02
MODEL
What characteristics do leaders model?
Behavior 03
REWARD
What actions get rewarded?
Behavior 04
PUNISH
What behaviors get punished?
Behavior 05
TOLERATE
What behaviors get ignored, or that leaders don't do anything about?
Behavior 06
PROTECT
Who or what is protected from having to meet the guidelines or the values you've written down?
Behavior 07
CELEBRATE
What actions or behaviors get celebrated?
The rule is that you answer with evidence, not opinion. An audit you can pass by feeling good about yourself isn't an audit.
Each question has an evidence standard behind it — the documents you pull, the window you look at, what counts as an answer. That's the part we work through together.
Four map onto Schein's primary embedding mechanisms. Schein (1990), American Psychologist 45(2).
The two questions
Everyone is asking two questions.
Most organizations only answer the first.
← No · Am I one of you? · Yes →Up: is the thing I'm good at wanted here?
Useful, not welcome
They want your work. They don't want you.
Actually included
Both things are true.
Outside
Neither one is true.
Absorbed
You fit in — but only the average parts of you count.
They knew they belonged. They didn't know if they mattered.
Shore et al. (2011), Journal of Management 37(4).
Leading toward mattering
See it. Raise it. Close it.
02
Give them the harder version
Work is rewarding when it's also challenging. If someone did something well, the real reward is the next thing that stretches them.
03
Close the loop
Come back and tell them what their work produced. Recognition before the outcome is encouragement. Recognition after it is proof.