PROJECT TEAM CULTURE AND TALK

As people work together on a project team, that team develops its unique "feel", culture or climate. If you have worked on a number of different projects, you have already aware that project teams have very different cultures:

• An orientation toward achieving results;
• An overriding concern about avoiding blame;
• An orientation toward following the rules;
• An orientation that stimulates their member's creativity;
• A strong safety orientation.

There are many things that affect the culture of project teams. PMs can't control the culture that evolves as a team matures. However, if we understand this process, there are things we can do to influence the team culture in positive directions.

People bring to a new project a set of work attitudes from their regular jobs or previous projects. It's not unusual for these attitudes to include hostility toward some functional units and empathy with others. The initial attitudes in a group may also reflect different perspectives on the company's mission and on the role of team members' "home" department. Our focus on individual accountability will have some impact on the culture that project team develops, but there are other tools we can use when we understand components of project team culture.