The Culture Playbook

Forbes: One of the best books of the year

“If you are a leader – or if you work with one – and want to understand how to build psychological safety, trust, and a sense of purpose for your team, then you need this book.”

—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better

The ultimate handbook for fostering and cultivating a strong team culture, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code and The Talent Code.

Building a team has never been harder than it is right now. How do you create connection and trust? How do you stay focused on your goals? In his years studying the ways successful groups work together, Daniel Coyle has spent time with elite teams around the world, observing the ways they support each other, manage conflict, and move toward a common goal. In The Culture Playbook, he distills everything he has learned into sixty concrete, actionable tips and exercises that will help your team build a cohesive, positive culture.

Great cultures, Coyle has found, are built on three essential skills: safety, vulnerability, and purpose. Within this framework, he shows us how we can better serve our teammates, ourselves, and our shared purpose, including:

  • scheduling regular team “tune-ups” to place an explicit spotlight on the team’s inner workings and create conversations that surface and improve team dynamics
  • creating spaces for remote coworkers to connect with their colleagues to foster a team spirit even across distances
  • holding an anxiety party to serve as a pressure-relief valve, as well as a platform for people to connect and solve problems together

With reflections, exercises, and practical tips that will prove invaluable to companies, athletes, and families alike, and replete with black-and-white illustrations, The Culture Playbook is an indispensable guide to ensuring that your team performs at its best.

How to Find True Fulfillment at Work

Bloomberg and Library Journal Best Book of the Year

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PRAISE

If you are a leader – or if you work with one – and want to understand how to build psychological safety, trust, and a sense of purpose for your team, then you need this book.

— Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better

An invaluable companion to Dan Coyle’s classic, The Culture CodeThe Culture Playbook offers an integrated set of simple, powerful exercises for anyone serious about creating a culture where people can thrive and do their best work. Refreshingly practical, this is really a workbook with a playful bent and taking it seriously will help any group succeed.

— Amy C. Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School

As an entrepreneur and founder of a new investment bank led by women, The Culture Playbook has been an invaluable asset for me, providing tools and techniques as I work to unleash my team’s full power and potential in an ever-evolving workplace. Dan Coyle has given us all a game plan for success.

— Anne Clarke Wolff, CEO/Founder Independence Point Advisers

‘Your Culture = Your Actions.’ With that simple phrase, Dan Coyle nails the most important and elusive element of building great cultures, and then delivers concrete actions you can take—today—to ensure that you’re building an amazing culture every day.

—  Laszlo Bock, former SVP of People at Google, and author of Work Rules!


THE BIG IDEA

You might think that culture is “the soft stuff”—the warm and fuzzy intangibles. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Science has shown that strong culture is created by the continual exchange of three key behaviors.

1. Building Safety

Strong cultures are built through the exchange of belonging cues—small, vivid behaviors that send a crystal-clear message: We are connected. We share a future. You matter.

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2. Sharing Vulnerability

Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it comes before. Taking a risk, when done alongside others, causes the solid ground od trust to materialize beneath our feet.

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3. Establishing Purpose

Creating a sense of purpose is extensive, collaborative, and organic. The process: to continually reflect together about what matters most, and then to translate that meaning into tangible signals.

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