Is Your Team Culture "Incognito"?

 Incognito:  with your true identity kept secret.

Merriam-Webster.com

With the recent allegations of bullying regarding Richie Incognito of the Miami Dolphins, I started to think about the team’s leadership and its role in creating and reinforcing the team’s culture through its standards of conduct.  What would you do as a leader to define and enforce proper conduct on the job when the industry demands unrelenting, hard-hitting mental and physical toughness and violence?  What is acceptable conduct toward teammates or even opponents?  Are teammates able to navigate the contexts for when hurtful or violent behavior is OK (on the field) and when it is not (with teammates)?  Did the formal leaders (coaches) abrogate their roles by asking one teammate to develop another?

It’s a leader’s responsibility to define, model, enact and reinforce company and team culture.  Culture is the set of shared norms, experiences, and beliefs that distinguish one organization from another.  It defines what is acceptable and not acceptable within the group.   And underlying the culture are shared assumptions about the way the world works.  In some sports organizations, is there an assumption that to be physically tough on the field you have to be physically tough off the field as well?

Leaders, whether formal or informal, reinforce and redefine cultural norms based on how they act, what they pay attention to, what they praise and reinforce in others, and how they react when challenges occur. Richie Incognito is a member of the Dolphins' player council.  So, whether or not the allegations are found to be true, Incognito’s conduct – whatever it really was -- most likely has carried weight with the team to this point.  Arguably, other team members looked to him for how to behave.

In additional to leaders, superstar performers on your team must be held to the same standards as everyone else; otherwise, a mixed message is received by your employees, muddying the waters about what is expected.  Such a mixed message can signal employees that it’s everyone for himself, leading to a lack of trust and a team that doesn’t work together toward a common goal.

Are your team leaders and superstars consistently displaying the kind of behavior that reinforces your team culture?  If not, what are you prepared to do about it?

We don’t know what Richie Incognito’s behavior was at this point.  He could have conducted himself in a very appropriate manner, or he could have crossed the line with his behavior toward his teammate.  Either way, was the Miami Dolphins’ team culture evident in his behavior . . . or was it “incognito”?