How to Get Your Team Working Toward the Same Goals | Lessons from The Culture Code with Tessa Kampen)

In this episode, I sat down with Tessa Kampen to talk about what happens when purpose isn’t clear on a team.

Because when people define success differently…
 you start to feel it.

Priorities compete
 Communication gets messy
 Work slows down

Not because people don’t care.
 Because they’re aiming at different targets.

We pulled from The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle,
but really this is about what we both see happening on teams every day.

The gap between effort… and direction.

In this episode:

•  Why teams feel off even when everyone is doing their job 
•  How unclear purpose shows up in day-to-day work 
•  What causes teams to drift in different directions 
•  How to bring people back to the same goal 

Resource mentioned:
The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Connect with Tessa Kampen 

This podcast for managers is here to help you:

• Grow your leadership development
 • Navigate team management with confidence
 • Learn how to handle conflict at work
 • Apply real, practical leadership tips

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Transcript

Desiree (00:01.334)
All right, friends, we are back with Tessa. We are gonna cover the third and final core skill from Daniel Coyle's The Culture Code. And I mentioned this at the end of the last episode. This is one of my favorite ones to talk about because we are, I feel like I'm inundated with helping teams build psychological safety and helping teams build up this shared vulnerability. But sometimes we run out of time before we get to this next part about the establishing the purpose.

And I think we could read that in one of two ways. And I think there's stories within this book of purpose of the team as an overall whole, but then purpose of the individual, making sure that they are staying engaged through understanding the purpose that they have on the team. But Tessa, why don't you share your immediate thoughts on this topic with us?

Tessa (00:51.325)
Yeah, I think both contexts can fit. One of my favorite lines is clear as kind. And so when I think of establishing purpose and great cultures, you need to make sure that people know why things matter and what's important. And I think when you lack that, when you will lack purpose and communicating that to your team, that's when you see a lot of cultures where

There's chaos because everyone's maybe going in a direction they feel is best based on their knowledge of where we're going. But when you lack that clarity, it can feel very chaotic inside of an organization. And I've seen that on so many teams when we lack the clear purpose of where we're going. And even a person to your point, where a person's going.

Desiree (01:39.502)
Yeah, I see this a lot with like departmental divides of, you know, there's silos, there's teams that aren't getting along with each other. They're great within themselves, but then they can't seem to get along with the other. And I think a lot of it comes down to they expect that they have different purposes. Like, you know, a sales team might say we need to these sales numbers and that is the number one priority that we have.

Tessa (01:45.691)
Yes.

Desiree (02:06.316)
But then the actual quality team is like, yeah, but we actually have to get these things out to them. And if we can't make them in time to have good quality, it kind of defeats the purpose. And so they're fighting because their purposes don't align with one another because they either have forgotten about or we haven't been clear enough about the overall priority of the team. We're not using that language to actually do anything with it. And this is I literally just had a conversation with someone this morning whose two teams are just butting heads like crazy.

Yeah, so do you experience that with department divides a lot?

Tessa (02:39.674)
Yeah, I had a similar experience in a recent workshop too. you I love, you and I both love Patrick Lanzione's work and in The Advantage, right? He has these five critical questions and he's got some really great frameworks around that. But I suggested to them because there was a lack of clarity on like, what do we work on? And I just said, well, what is your thematic goal? Like, do you have something that you are all working towards?

in next 90 days. Now, of course, you all have your individual roles within that. But when everyone knows, like in the next 90 days, our focus is client engagement, then it doesn't matter if you're in sales or operations or this or whatever, all of your work is going to touch that in some way. And as long as we're all working towards that and it's clear and we know why it matters, then

we're all moving in the right direction. But as soon as we just look at our job as like this little silo within the company, we tend to put our blinders on and we're just like, I need to make sure that this gets done. And they don't really think about how their department impacts someone else's department.

Desiree (03:52.686)
And I think sometimes that's where employees feel a lack of engagement, a lack of purpose for their job. It's like, I just spent two weeks working on this thing that got glanced over and then wasn't even used. And it was my entire life's purpose to get this thing done. But in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter. And if we're not clear about someone's role in a project, if we're not clear about the overall impact that it's going to make, our expectations don't meet the reality, which is what gets people really frustrated in their jobs.

They want to have a role. want to be a bigger part of the whole picture. And if we're not telling them the clear priorities, then it's, I don't know, it gets missed.

Tessa (04:34.652)
Well, and it speaks to over communicating what really matters, right? I think a lot of times, I think it may have been Jeff Henderson, leaders are repeaters. He shares that in one of his books. And I love that because it's like, you can't just say something once and expect people to just remember it, because you said it even last week in a team meeting. Like you need to over communicate what matters. And when high performing cultures,

hear that over and over, right? When they're rich in these clear priorities, when they know with clarity, this is what's important here, this is what matters, this is what we're striving towards, then you're right, you don't have ambiguity on the team and people will, I think, work more cohesively knowing that we're all working towards this thing and we're doing it together, right? Like the boat analogy.

Desiree (05:28.142)
Yeah, and Lynchoni has a saying too. It's like, we're all chief reminding officers. Like one of our main priorities as a leader is to continuously and almost annoyingly repeat ourselves in the goals that we have so that it never gets lost in translation. Like it is clear beyond measure.

Tessa (05:32.805)
Yeah.

Tessa (05:46.555)
Yeah, and I love the question, you know, if you're not clear, how does this connect to our mission or how does this connect to our 90 day goal or how does this connect to our whatever you want to connect it to, but it needs to be connected to something within your organization. And if you don't know, then maybe it's not something you should be working on or go ask, right? Like get the clarity you need.

Desiree (06:07.928)
Yeah. So one of the other things that it was talked about in this book was the difference between are we currently focusing on proficiency or are we focusing on creativity? And I think that gets mixed a lot, too. So Tessa and I are both working genius facilitators, and there's kind of that wonder and invention of it all, which is very much in that creative headspace. And then there's the enablement and tenacity of it all, which is very much so in the tactical piece. And if we're not clear about what the goal is,

of are we trying to be creative and come up with new solutions and poke holes in potential challenges, et cetera, we're all fighting to default to what we would normally think about in those situations. So it needs to be clear. We need to, again, use language around what's the actual purpose of even just this one conversation, not even the whole team in the overall grand scheme of things, but in this one conversation, getting more clear about the purpose of it.

Tessa (07:01.978)
Yeah, and I mean, we both love the Working Genius. We've done podcasts on that. But I think that's really important, especially in those meetings. Like, where are we right now? Where are we in this project? When, you know, having those clear expectations around the expectations. I think there's just a lot of, a lot of us will withhold and kind of interpret what we think has to be done. Again, if we go to like last week's on vulnerability,

maybe even asking the question of like, don't fully understand what I'm supposed to do here. So let me just fill in the blanks on what I think I need to do and I'm gonna go do it. And then again, that affects the culture because if we don't perform or get something done that should be done because we weren't willing to risk being vulnerable to ask because we don't have a safe environment where that's welcome. Like you can really see how all three of these fit together.

It depends where you're sitting in one of these three areas. If all three are lacking, no wonder the culture is probably not thriving. But if one of the other two layers are lacking, I lack clarity, but I don't actually feel safe enough to ask the question, then I'm just guessing and filling in the gaps. And that's where problems start.

Desiree (08:20.482)
When you just said the word culture, it occurred to me, you we say this word all the time. We use the word culture consistently and everyone knows that they want it, like a good culture, but I don't know that anyone would know how to define it. And for me, we talked about, you know, high performers and high achievers, really that sense of urgency of we want people to want to get things done.

in a good amount of time and not lulligig just because they don't have anything on their to do list. Those things all come down for me into a culture that expects high expectations or high standards. And that's me. I expect high standards from a lot of people. But one of the points that he actually makes in this book is that we need to focus on bar setting behaviors. In other words, we have to have a.

an expectation for our team on how they behave, how they use those cues that we talked about in the first episode, how they ask questions and show curiosity and give feedback and all the different pieces. And that bar I've seen lowered way too many times for one or two individuals who just have no interest in meeting it.

Tessa (09:31.451)
Yeah, so as you're talking, I'm like picturing this framework in my head. So if we had like high standards on one, like one of these, let's L axis, like try and visualize this. High standards and high warmth, low standards, low warmth. So let's say like care, let's consider warmth like care. I don't think a culture can thrive anywhere but high standards and high warmth. Because if I have high standards and I don't care about you,

Desiree (09:40.77)
Mm-hmm.

Tessa (09:59.559)
Well, that's like a dictatorship or a very toxic culture where you're just giving me these high standards, but maybe you're not even clarifying the expectations. There's no love there, right? There's no care for me. That's not gonna work. And if we flip that and you have a high warmth and I just care about you, but yet my standards are low, well, you might have a whole bunch of people who love being here, but your work is probably gonna be lacking. And then if...

both of these are low while you have no standards and no one cares. I don't even wanna know what that's gonna look like. So they need to go together. It's like candor and care need to go together, right? Like I can't be candor without any care. Those have to go together. And I think the best cultures will combine psychological safety, which is the warmth, with high standards and relentless accountability. Like let's talk about accountability here, because people...

love to hate accountability. But if we want to create a culture with high standards and establishing purpose, there needs to be accountability that goes with that.

Desiree (11:09.72)
There is, I mean, the entire book is made up of stories of Navy SEALs and Pixar and school teams, et cetera, et cetera. But I would argue to say that the one story that stuck with me the most is about this specific basketball coach. And the reason that this one stuck with me is I saw a lot of myself in him. He's very aggressively friendly, like loves people to death, but isn't scared to say the thing that needs to be said. And so I actually read this story multiple times. And one of the things that he

you know, was loved for was that he would say the hard thing and give the hard feedback. And he would say it literally say, I'm telling you this because I know that you are capable of doing better. And I believe that you can do better. And a lot of people, think if they heard that they would focus on that. I'm not doing enough. But he created such a culture of like, this is just what you get from me. I'm going to give you my heart and my soul and my time and my energy. But I need it back from you.

And I just don't think a lot of us think in that way. It's like we expect any little bit of negative feedback to just set us back 10 notches. And what this coach was saying is like, I'm giving you this because I believe that you can do better.

Tessa (12:23.034)
It's a gift. I think if I didn't care about you, then I actually wouldn't care about what you're doing, if you're doing it well or you're not doing it well. And I feel like you're rubbing off on me, because I feel like I can be aggressively friendly as well in that regard. And I will say the same thing to people, but also my kids, right? And it's like, you can do hard things. I love that line with them when they're not wanting to do something, right? This is hard. It's like...

I'm gonna raise the expectation, but I'm gonna be here to help you through it because you can do hard things. Like, I know you can do this, you know, and just, I don't think enough people speak into people's life in that way. We allow them to then, you're not good at that? okay, well, let's find something else. No, like speak life into them. If you genuinely believe that they can do it, even if it's gonna stretch them, even it's gonna be difficult for them, then raise the bar.

give them that expectation and then come around them giving psychological safety to make mistakes as they're doing this, to ask questions as they're doing this. And I think you will see them rise to that. John, again, John Maxwell says, put a 10 on people's head and let them live up to that expectation. I don't think we do that enough. We go, oh, you're a five? Okay, I'll treat you as a five. Why? Let's treat them as a 10.

Desiree (13:37.997)
video.

Desiree (13:44.992)
One of my favorite authors, John Acuff, he has this saying about kids, but I feel like it's applicable to anything. He says, if you want a 16 year old to be kind, teach them kindness and give them 10 years to practice. In other words, like we have these expectations of people just being where we want them to be in this moment. And if they're not reaching it, like it's their fault. But it's partially an us problem of like we expect this from them. But have we given them the tools that they need in order to get there?

Have we given them the time to practice this thing? And have we given them the support of if they're failing along the way or if they're struggling along the way, like we're there to help them. No judgment, just an overall willingness to help them. It's like, we can't expect something of someone when they haven't been given that opportunity to try.

Tessa (14:35.536)
Yeah, thank you for that. I feel like that's like a, I needed to hear that even as a parent, right? Raising teenagers, my husband is very, very calm and steady and he will often remind me, I'll be like, we've said this like five times, like, yeah, and you'll probably have to say it five more. You just need to keep repeating it, right? And reminding me, you were 18 once or you were 16 once. And that's really what you're saying is let's give people that space. And again, even with purpose,

reminding them of that purpose over and over and over again. Maybe it's for 10 years, you're reminding them of why they're here and why what they do matters. I think that piece is key though. A lot of times we don't remind them of why their work matters. And when we're talking about purpose inside of this culture conversation, if people don't know why their particular role matters inside of the grand, like the bigger picture of purpose,

Desiree (15:32.6)
Mm-hmm.

Tessa (15:32.944)
That's when you can see people disengage, right? And so I can't even remember actually if this was really like an issue that he spoke about in the book, but I think that is something that's really important when we speak to understanding the purpose is understand your individual reason for how you play in the purpose of the organization.

Desiree (15:54.318)
I don't know if it's in this book, but in Lencioni's book about the employee engagement, I don't even know what it's called.

Tessa (16:00.998)
Yeah, it.

Desiree (16:03.118)
It's on both of our shelves and yet the three keys to employee engagement or something like that. But the concept is one of the three things that they need is to know who they're responsible to in a way. So he gives an example of like, even if you are the person who is making the pizzas behind the counter and you don't get to see the joy on the person's face when you hand them the pizza and everything is perfect, you know, you have a responsibility to the person taking the orders.

Tessa (16:07.164)
Yes. Yeah.

Desiree (16:32.948)
of getting the order correct. You have the responsibility to the person delivering so that they don't get chewed out by the person if the order is wrong. It's like, yes, you might not get to see the very beginning of the process. You might not get to see the end of the process. You might feel like a cog in a machine, but you have so much purpose in helping the people around you on all 360 degrees of view. But if we forget that or if we are not told enough by others that we're appreciated for that, we miss it.

and then we start to resent it and we start to not care.

Tessa (17:04.741)
Yeah, yeah, that's so good. It's so true. And we have to, again, repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. Yeah, like you said, be the chief reminding officer.

Desiree (17:19.128)
This is like firing me up. Like I said, I don't get to talk about purpose as much as I think I think about purpose, but it's making me feel like I need to talk about it more. Cause I'm just like, yeah, let's A lot of passion behind this topic. But is there anything else on this conversation around passion or I don't even think, we talking about, no, we're talking about purpose. I have the passion about purpose.

Tessa (17:28.458)
Hahaha!

Tessa (17:40.975)
Yes, yes.

Desiree (17:43.552)
Yeah, the only other thing that is listed here in the tools from within the book is measure what matters. And that's actually another piece of the puzzle from the employee engagement, too, is we can't just expect that someone can do the same thing every day and not have a goal to reach for because it just gets monotonous. then, you know, that's when quality starts to dip because it's like I'm not reaching towards anything anyway. What's the difference if I make five or ten? If if ten isn't my goal and it's just a nice to have.

But I see this in two ways. First, any responses to that, and then I have a scenario that I'd like to share with you.

Tessa (18:18.769)
Okay, well keep going with the scenario and let me just ponder on that for a moment.

Desiree (18:22.712)
Okay, so I've shared this story before. I was working at a call center in collections and the goals that we had were to make a certain number of phone calls. Like we needed to reach that. That was our purpose on that team. And if we didn't get it, we would get talked to about our efficiency. But if we did reach it, they would up the goal. They would say, you can get 100 calls a day. Let's try for 110.

And that was demoralizing too, because it's like I'm not getting celebrated for doing this great thing. I'm getting in trouble or feel like I'm getting punished with more work. And I don't even know where I'm going with this other than to say, like, if we as leaders are giving our team something to strive for and they hit that thing, we need to celebrate for them. We need to celebrate with them and appreciate them in that, because otherwise, what's the what's the point?

Tessa (19:18.853)
Yeah, well, you're making me think. So let's tie this story into purpose as well. I think if you're giving your team a purpose or a goal of like X amount of calls, you've completely missed the point of this whole topic of purpose, because I don't think. Helping people understand their purpose from a task perspective is the way to even motivate people. Maybe it's like if it was you need to do 50 calls a day, well, why?

Desiree (19:33.272)
Mm-hmm.

Tessa (19:48.444)
Why does that matter? Or what's important about those calls? And if you get people to like, I want you to connect with this many people, depending on obviously the scope of work, whatever that is, but like to solve this particular problem, that to me is now a purpose driven culture, right? Cause I don't think your purpose is to make X amount of calls and do all that stuff. So.

Of course, someone then reaches that and they're just given more, they're going to be like, my purpose here is just to make you a whole bunch of money and, be on a phone all day. I don't want to sign up for that. But if you can connect that, what is the reason for that phone call to, know, why they come to work every day to how you're helping the person on the other side, you're no longer going to have to even up the ante, I think, on those those goals, because they're going to want to do it themselves.

Desiree (20:43.234)
Yeah, I don't. I'm reading like six books right now. I couldn't even tell you where I read it. But there was a book where a customer service team would get like there was a prize for the longest phone call that they took. Do know what book I'm talking about?

Tessa (20:58.883)
No, but I'm trying, as I was telling this story, I was trying to think of it. Yep.

Desiree (21:02.734)
Yeah, so I don't know the book, but I just thought I was like, going back to that, that you have to get 100 calls a day. It's like you would purposely get off the phone as soon as possible to hit your goal by the end of the day. And it's like the purpose for this customer service team was let's make sure that every interaction that we have, we did everything we possibly could for the person on the other end of the line. I don't care how many calls you take. It was like the quality of the call was what mattered.

And it was hard to measure that, you know, and you don't want to encourage people to just, hey, chit chat on the phone forever. But I thought that was really interesting, a really interesting approach to that measurement piece of making sure that we're talking about the right things.

Tessa (21:47.793)
think it was a John Maxwell book and it's about Zappos. Z-A-P-P-O-S. That's the company, I'm pretty sure. And you're right.

Desiree (21:51.3)
intro.

Desiree (21:56.646)
You're right on the zap. I think I read about it somewhere else. Man, this is going to bug me. have to figure it out.

Tessa (21:59.582)
Okay, we're gonna find it and we're gonna get back and have to link it. But I remember that story and she was like, why did you spend, I think it was like two and a half hours with someone on the phone or something. Okay, it was a very ridiculous amount and that person didn't get in trouble because at the end of the day, they actually did what the purpose of their job was. And I think they said then that person came and bought, what does Zappos even sell? This is terrible. I don't know if it's shoes or something. It is shoes. Okay, good. Got that right.

Desiree (22:07.534)
I think it was like 10 and a half.

Desiree (22:11.886)
It's

Desiree (22:23.982)
Shoes. I think it's shoes. Yeah.

Tessa (22:27.235)
And this person didn't even end up buying shoes. At the end of the story, I think it even says the person didn't even end up buying shoes. But I bet you that that person came back and bought shoes another time and also told everyone that they know how this person spent 10 hours on the phone with them. That is purpose. And I think if we, know, as cultures, I get that we need to make money. all in business. You have to make money. If you don't make money, you don't have a business. But money can't be the purpose of your business.

You and I do work with organization. You and I have done vision mission workshops. When I say what is our purpose or our mission, I will say to them, and it's not to make money. I don't want us to put down to make money. That's not what we're striving for here because maybe someone in the room is excited to come to work every day and just make a boatload of money for this organization. But I guarantee you 85 % of the employees walking through this door

are not coming here because they're making you money. So why do you exist? Like, why do you want people to walk through these doors every day? And if it is about money, then be honest with that so that people also know when they come here, their goal is to make you a boatload of money. And that's okay. But it has to be clear.

Desiree (23:45.57)
Yeah, it's so, good. Now it's really good about me and how much you want to bet it's actually the culture code that we both read that story in about Snap-on. I'm going to have to go and look it up. But yes, so I think the overall arching message here is that

Tessa (23:52.974)
man. Well, if it is, then you all know we just come in here real and you can hold it against us. That's okay. We're just being vulnerable Desiree and we're showing that we don't know everything.

Desiree (24:06.872)
Okay, pause for a second. My internet connection went out. Whatever you just said, can you repeat it?

Tessa (24:11.515)
Yes. Tell me when or do want me to just go? Okay. So there you go. We don't know everything. We just leaned into vulnerability. We're taking live guesses on the air right now. We have no idea where it came from, but I guarantee we will find out and we will let you know.

Desiree (24:29.196)
And I think the overall arching message of this, at least for me, is vulnerability can make things more fun. I just don't understand why you would want to go to work every day and not be able to feel safe and to be able to share parts of yourself and to be able to strive towards things that make you better and make you feel like you have a purpose. And that's the overarching conversation around this entire book. The Culture Code is creating a place where people are excited to show up and they enjoy

what they do and they like the people that they are around and it's an environment that they want to be a part of.

Tessa (25:06.471)
And here's the thing, culture is not what you preach, right? Culture is what you permit, it's what you model, and it's what you repeat. And if you don't like your culture, then maybe look at those three things. What am I permitting? What am I modeling? And what am I not repeating inside of our organization?

Desiree (25:28.728)
Well, there you have it, folks. I hope that you enjoyed this conversation on the culture code. I love to read, Tessa loves to read, and whether or not you ever have a desire to read this book, I hope that you got a lot out of it and at least the main messages of what it provides. But if you do want to read it, which we always recommend, it'll be linked in the show notes for you. But until next time, just remember that leadership is a privilege, but it is also a really big responsibility. And you're the boss now. So what are you going to do with it?