"Culture" gets reduced to perks — the snacks, the Friday drinks, the table tennis. But none of that is culture. Culture is the behaviour you reward and the behaviour you tolerate. It's what happens when you're not in the room. And in a small business, it's set almost entirely by the owner, whether you mean to or not.
The hard truth is that your culture is your worst-behaved tolerated employee. If someone underperforms or treats people poorly and faces no consequence, you've just told everyone else what's acceptable — no values poster can override that lesson. Equally, what you celebrate teaches just as loudly. People watch what you reward far more than what you say.
You don't build culture with a workshop. You build it in the small daily moments — who you praise, what you let slide, how you behave under pressure. Your team is always learning the real rules from you.
The good news: in a small team, culture can change fast, because it flows from so few people. Starting with you.
Leading a team and shaping a culture people don't want to leave is a key part of the Grow and Scale courses.
Free first step: the free Business Stage Assessment.
Annie
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