Team Culture Audit: A Simple Framework for Managers
How to clarify expectations and address misalignment before it derails your team's culture & performance.
Regular Team Culture audits are a powerful tool at a manager’s disposal to maximize engagement and performance.
And most of us wait too long to make it a regular practice.
If you’ve ever:
Been frustrated by someone’s behavior
Wished someone showed up with a better attitude
Felt unsure if you should address a challenging team member
Today is for you. So in other words, it’s for everyone! 🙂
You’re going to walk away with:
A refreshed perspective on Behavior Expectations
A powerful quarterly reflective exercise
3 ideas for action
It’s simple. Not to be confused with easy.
Before we jump in…
2 time sensitive reminders:
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Alrighty, here we go…
There are 3 categories of expectations that managers are responsible for creating with their people:
Which of these is easiest for most managers?
Typically Role Expectations.
It’s easier to talk about quotas and SLAs etc. Project Expectations follow as a close 2nd.
And then, which is, time and again, the category of expectations managers struggle with YET has the greatest impact on their team?
Behavior Expectations.
Most managers offer these thoughts on the difficulty with creating mutually understood (and followed) Behavior Expectations:
It’s more personal.
It feels like I’m attacking their personality.
It’s subjective and up for interpretation.
For this reason, we typically a) miss out on the opportunity to explicitly co-create these with our people and b) our people typically build their understanding of accepted behaviors via observation.
Our mission?
To remove the guesswork and more intentionally mold the behaviors and attitudes we want to see within our people.
How?
It starts with an intentional exercise.
The Quarterly Reflective Exercise We All Need
3 places I want you to look.
What are the behaviors/attitudes I expect of my team?
What are the behaviors/attitudes I celebrate & recognize?
What are the behaviors/attitudes I allow?
Let me illustrate this activity using my own experience.
My Expectations
With my L&D team at Opendoor, it was my expectation that we set the bar of excellence in the L&D space. That meant innovative, engaging trainings with high attention to detail. I also expected we were the model for collaboration across the company. Responding to inbound requests with partnership and urgency.
What I Celebrated
Reflecting back, it was the creative new ideas, the engaging trainings my team built, that got the praise.
What I Allowed
At times, I allowed slower responses to emails sent to our team alias. I allowed commiseration about particular business decisions that we didn’t agree with.
Now look at the table below. When I put my example into a different format, what do you see?
What opportunities did I have to both reinforce AND change behavior within my team?
Here’s what I hope you see:
Increase Celebration - look for the inputs. Look for people exhibiting the behaviors you want repeated. What gets recognized gets repeated.
Intentional Behavior Correction - address and own when behaviors are outside of expectations. That might be a 1:1 feedback conversation, it might be a topic of discussion in a team meeting. Address it, own the role you’ve played in enabling it, and commit to pivoting moving forward.
That’s my example.
You’re next.
Will you reflect on Expected, Celebrated, and Allowed behaviors to determine where you have an opportunity to reinforce AND change behavior?
3 Actions You Can Take
1. Co-Create Your Team Brand
If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know I’m a fan of the Team Branding Exercise.
The gist is this: as a team, align on what you want to be known for and discuss the actions that create and detract from that brand.
The full set of instructions is here.
When your people are involved in co-creating the team’s culture, they’re more likely to want to carry the culture torch within the team.
2. Schedule Reminders
Until it’s second nature, create calendar reminders for yourself to pause and look for the behaviors you expect.
These are the inputs.
Can you spend 15 min every Wednesday and Friday reflecting on who you’ve seen asking thoughtful questions, who has offered a creative idea, who has modeled flexibility in the heat of the moment.
These behavior inputs create the team culture outputs you desire.
Look for them and praise them.
3. Look In The Mirror
This one might sting…
Where are you with what you expect for yourself and what behaviors are you allowing yourself to get away with?
Consider these:
Where and when are you at risk of falling outside of your own behavior expectations?
What conditions pull you away from your best self?
Maybe that means you’re short with someone. Maybe that means you’re at risk of being less collaborative. Maybe you can have a tendency to dig your heels in.
Know where you are and hold yourself accountable to your own bar of excellence.
Summary
Your team’s culture isn’t created by chance—it’s shaped by what you expect, what you recognize, and what you let slide.
The most effective managers regularly audit that alignment to ensure they’re reinforcing the behaviors that drive performance and connection.
If you’re serious about leading with clarity and intention, carve out time to reflect on the gap between your expectations and your reality.
Culture isn’t a one-time conversation—it’s an ongoing practice. Start small, stay consistent, and remember: what you tolerate teaches just as much as what you celebrate.
As always, be human and have high standards.
- Katie
I’m Katie!
I help leaders drive stronger business results through group training & coaching
I'm also a mom, triathlete, & cowgirl who loves country music and good martinis.
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Great article. What you celebrate, expect, or even quietly permit sends the loudest signals about culture.
Katie, great content and I’m inspired by your story as I think about launching a coaching business alongside my corporate career. We have a lot of synergies in our content. Look forward to following along!