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If you lead a team, listen up. In physics, we teach laws. In leadership, we teach patterns. Heres a pattern: Teams dont outperform their leaders. They reflect them. Sure, you can find brilliant performers on a poorly performing team or pockets of high performance in a failing organization. But show me a team that consistently outperforms its leader, and Ill show you a leader with an expiration date.

You set the tone, you create the vibe, and you shape the prevailing norms. By virtue of your position, you either lead the way or get in the way. Punctual leaders create punctual cultures. Put-down leaders create put-down cultures. Respectful leaders create respectful cultures.

But what if you dont want to be the architect of the culture? Well, thats not a choice you get to make. You cant abdicate that part of your role unless you abdicate all of your role. Its embedded in your stewardship; your positional power amplifies every word you speak and every move you make. You radiate influence and theres no switch to turn off that radiation. Its always on.

Your choice is to create culture by design or by default. Approach it intentionally or ignore it and see what happens.

The Two Levers of Influence

The single best synonym for leadership in the English language is the word influence. In its purest sense, leadership is influence directed toward worthy and meaningful goals. But how? There are many sources of influence, and yet two of those matter more than all the restmodeling and coaching. Everything else?strategy, structure, systems, roles, responsibilities, resources, policies, procedures, incentives, technology. Scaffolding. All of it.

The Two Levers of Influence

The First Lever: Modeling

The most important factor in the formation of team culture is the modeling behavior of the leader. This is Newtonian physics applied to organizational behavior. Its always true. The psychologist Albert Bandura said, Most human behavior is learned observationally through modelingfrom observing others.

Make no mistake: You are your teams clinical material. Youre the case study. Your modeling behavior is the curriculum. When the chief resident consistently washes her hands to prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infection, the other doctors do it too. No words. Just action.

The Second Lever: Coaching

The second most important factor in culture formation is your coaching behavior. Coaching is the way you guide your team members, give them feedback, and hold them accountable.

One manager I know touches base with her people only when theres a problem. She doesnt connect before she coaches and she has a didactic and intimidating style. Consequently, her people avoid her and shes bleeding out top talent.

A second manager I know checks in with each of her people several times a day. Her touch points are frequent and brief, her energy is contagious, and she has cultivated a habit of asking questions and listening with empathy and focus. Her people feel validated and listened to. They release their discretionary efforts.

Now What?

To assess the culture of your team and inform your modeling and coaching behavior, let me suggest one best practice that works across cultures and demographics: Stop conducting your own meetings and take on the role of cultural anthropologist. Hand the wheel to one of your team members and keep rotating the responsibility. This will give you the best possible opportunity to dual monitor the content and group dynamics of your team. Take notes on what you see. Monitor verbal and non-verbal cues. Pay close attention to the way team members respond to you versus the way they respond to each other. Pull out the patterns and then ponder the adjustments you need to makeand then make them. Remember, your teams culture is the lengthened shadow of you.

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Why Your Teams Culture Is The Lengthened Shadow Of You - Forbes