Establish a shared identity, cultivate trust and safety, and improve communication while reducing conflict.
Your culture is your organization’s DNA, encoding the unique identity that shapes how your people work together. CultureSmithing simplifies the creation of this code. Our five-session process, replaces outdated rules-based cultures with trust-centric ones. Shaping your cultural DNA in this way improves your hiring, cultivates a sense of belonging, and creates authentic accountability.
Decode what makes your organization thrive. Reap the benefits of a high-performing, cohesive team grounded in psychological safety. Take advantage of our free demo to learn more about the 5-step process.
Culture is the shared beliefs and behaviours of a group working to solve a common and meaningful problem. It’s what separates you from all other groups. Here are the most Frequently Asked Questions that explain how we’ll create this through our CultureSmithing process:
Imagine your team as a big family. Sometimes families fight, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still want to stay a family.
CultureSmithing, is like a special family meeting where everyone learns how to understand, respect, and trust each other more. It's like learning new rules for playing together nicely.
As the leader of this ‘family’ you will gain a simplified understanding of you team's dynamics and how to shape them to replace ambiguity with alignment.
Most of these services focus on plans and strategies. The value is having an unbiased third party in the room to referee conflict and keep the sessions moving along without going down rabbit holes or veering off track.
We go deeper - and explore the biases and blindspots others who lack our tools and expertise cannot.
Additionally, from the moment the door closes, we begin distilling everything uncovered into a simplified, shared language. While all planning sessions result in at least some increased clarity, ours is one of the few with the proven emotional intelligence tools that ensure the clarity ensures long after the session ends.
Vision and mission statements are like the destination on a map; they tell you where you want your organization to go.
Core Values are meant to be speed limits and traffic signs that keep you on track as you progress to that destination. Unfortunately they routinely fail to deliver.
Ask yourself - why do we have speed limits? To keep people safe. Then ask yourself how often you speed, and how many times you’ve hurt someone while speeding.
Each time you speed and no one gets hurt, the value of speed limits gets disconfirmed by your brain.
Each time a leadership team sets Collaboration and Integrity as Core Values, and someone intentionally cc’s the boss on a email to get someone in trouble…the value of your core values gets disconfirmed too.
CultureSmithing reveals the observable behaviours that are the non-negotiable drivers of your company’s success. There is simply nothing else like it.
Well, as the name implies, this is not team-building. It’s CultureSmithing. And that’s something we take seriously.
Team-building and communication workshops are often band-aids. People feel great during and shortly after the session, but the sessions themselves offer information and education over real behaviour change.
Our service is more like a vaccine - it addresses the root cause and helps prevent future problems from arising. You will walk away with a concrete sense of what’s important, why it matters, the discipline required to achieve it, and the emotional blindspots that will do everything they can to make that discipline fall apart.
The entire process is spread over five sessions 3-hour sessions, with 30 days between each. During these 30 day windows, self-directed work is sent to all participants to keep everyone engaged, but moving at their own pace.
We have specifically engineered the entire program to minimize the amount it interrupts your regular workflow. However, all time spent in the program should be considered an investment of time now to save a lot more time dealing with conflicts and misunderstandings later.
A growing company means more people. People with their own unique personalities, emotions and needs.
When a team grows fast, these differences often leave people feeling lost or disconnected. Our process helps everyone find their place and understand how they fit in the bigger picture. It creates a shared identity that transcends physical workspaces, offering a deep sense of belonging and connection.
Not only does this crystallize your culture, when paired with our HireEQ service, it allows you to rapidly assess and screen new employees ensuring the culture we help you build through this process remains intact as you continue to add new people to it.
The shared identity our process helps you establish does two things in this regard.
First it kills ambiguity which is a major cause of low safety in teams.
Second, it enables all conflict within teams to go from unhealthy relational conflict, to ultra-healthy task-based conflict.
It is a myth that psychologically safe teams are those free of conflict. Psychologically safe teams are the ones with enough safety established for conflict to happen without it tearing the team apart.
If you are a leader who has heard about the virtues of psychological safety, but haven’t yet figured out how to make it happen for your team - this is the service you’ve been looking for.
Build, Align, AND Sustain A Trust-Centric Culture.
In the face of exponential headcount growth, evolving customer demands, and integration of newly appointed executives, CultureSmithingTM becomes a lifeline.
You will learn how to navigate the underlying dynamics of your organization through our five-session process focused on trust, psychological safety, and belonging. This process will align team behavior and foster a nurturing environment by establishing a shared identity. Here are just a few ways this serves you:
Define & Align Your Culture:
With CultureSmithingTM, shared values and goals become tangible actions.
You and your team will build a roadmap and infuse your workplace with signals of unity and commitment. This will be done through sessions focused on establishing a shared identity and creating belonging. You'll build a cohesive, motivated team that resonates with your organization's mission. Are your team's efforts fragmented without a united organizational culture? Think about what's possible when alignment and synergy are the norm.
Enhance Emotional Intelligence:
CultureSmithingTM cultivates awareness, empathy, and effective communication within your team.
Sessions dedicated to workplace emotional intelligence reveal biases and blind spots, dispel limiting beliefs and empower everyone to operate from a shared emotional understanding. You will foster a collaborative, respectful, and emotionally intelligent organization powered by improved team interactions, compassion, and responsiveness. When your team's emotional intelligence thrives, breakthroughs await. What's the lost potential of this insight going untapped?
Thrive Under Rapid Growth:
The CultureSmithingTM process helps you navigate the chaotic waters of rapid growth.
By defining trust and reframing feedback, the program creates a resilient and flexible cultural framework that can adapt to swift changes. It helps prevent the pitfalls of rapid growth by maintaining a stable, engaged, and trusting team. Foolish leaders underestimate what unchecked expansion does to team morale. Those who 'smith' their cultures realize organizational growth without losing their company's soul.
Ready to ‘smith’ your culture? Redefine organizational success and build something that lasts. Get started by booking a Free Demo today.
The Roadmap To Engagement:
Five facilitated sessions comprise CultureSmithingTM, each addressing a Pillar of Rules-Based Organizational Cultures, creating a trust-centric approach in its place.
1: Establish Identity:
A shared identity is essential when it comes to aligning your culture. We'll first identify the common goals and vision that guide the entire team. Next, we make sure everyone on the team understands and follows the norms that support that vision. Last but not least, we outline how to manage key relationships and connections to keep you moving in the right direction.
2: WorkplaceEQ:
Establishing EQ is all about first recognizing and understanding your personal characteristics, both positive and hidden, that affect how you work with others. Then we will teach you how to identify and confront the beliefs that might be holding you back.As a last step, we'll align individual efforts with team goals in order to foster unity and cohesion.
3: Trust & Psychological Safety:
Our first step will be to help you understand the difference between trust and safety, as well as how they affect relationships on a team.The next step will be to learn how trust encourages risk-taking, while safety ensures that risks can be taken without fear of negative consequences.The result is an environment that fosters growth, where team members feel comfortable expressing themselves and taking risks.
4: Reframing Feedback
The first step is to explain the concept of power dynamics, providing insight into influence and authority within a team and how these factors affect interactions. The next step will be to learn new approaches to viewing failure and success in order to promote learning and growth rather than punishing or overly celebrating them. Finally, you'll cultivate leadership strategies that respond effectively to both failure and success, supporting team development.
5: Belonging
First, you will learn how to promote a sense of belonging by emphasizing the importance of each member of the team.Using psychological insights, you will ensure that team members feel noticed, understood, and valued. Lastly, you will implement strategies to ensure that team members feel deeply connected to the team and a valuable member of the group.
3 & 30
All CultureSmithingTM sessions follow our proprietary 3 & 30 model - a 3 hour, professionally guided facilitation, followed by 30 days of tailored self-directed work.Key concepts are presented in an expert manner to ensure understanding.Learning through self-directed push notifications ensures repetition, leading to retention, without disrupting the learner's workflow. It's the perfect blend of content and delivery.
Culture Rules Without Rules.
Trust-based cultures attract people who stay for what they give. Rules-based cultures attract those who stay for what they get. Learn the difference by booking your free demo today.
The Tools We Use To ‘Smith’ Cultures:
Several organizations support our mission of transforming workplaces into centers of emotional wellbeing.For most organizations, reimagining their culture is the first step. We have been able to help them because of our collective experience and expertise which has resulted in the creation of the following tools:
The Cognitive Colours
The Cognitive Colours provide leaders with a better understanding of their team members' individual traits and tendencies, which are crucial aspects of their self-identity. Through this baseline understanding, they can connect each individual's self-identity with the shared identity created through the CultureSmithing process, creating the type of behavioural alignment that no other service can match. [Learn More].
Uncommon Norms
You can redefine and reshape team norms with Uncommon NormsTM, identifying positive behaviours that lead to negative outcomes.By identifying those misleading approaches, you can counteract them and guide your team toward real success.Through this change, you will boost team cooperation and performance and reduce turnover and constant supervision, creating a productive work environment. [Learn More].
Uncommon Competencies
Uncommon CompetenciesTM is a powerful toolkit that helps your team develop the essential skills they will need for the future, turning ordinary efforts into extraordinary results.With 36 key competencies at your fingertips, you can guide the development of your team, step by step, from novice to expert.You will witness more than just on-time results; you will witness the transformation of your team. [Learn More].
MoodSwing
MoodSwing transforms potential obstacles into growth channels by revealing the secret language of emotions. We use these emotions to create a vibrant, responsive, and positive workplace as part of our flagship CultureSmithing service. This creates trust-based accountability, a sense of belonging, and emotionally stronger teams. [Learn More].
CultureSmithing's magic lies in its ability to quantify both Culture and Competence in measurable ways. Creating the right team without this can be like randomly placing pieces in a puzzle, resulting in costly trial and error. Creating benchmarks for both culture and competence allows you to categorize individual contributors into four distinct groups (A, B, C, and D Players), which allows you to build a cohesive and effective team.
A Players are the superstars of your team, excelling in both culture and competence. They align with the company's values and consistently demonstrate top-notch skills. You can trust them to lead the way, embodying the spirit of the organization while delivering remarkable results.
B Players share the values and spirit of your organization but may need a little help sharpening their skills. They're committed to the team and show high potential. With targeted training and support, B Players can grow into exceptional contributors, fully aligned with the company's mission.
C Players have the skills and expertise to get the job done, but they may not quite fit the cultural vibe of your organization. They perform well in their roles, but their attitudes or behaviors may clash with team values. While they are tolerated for their competence, a keen eye should be kept on their cultural alignment to ensure team harmony.
D Players struggle in both competence and alignment with the company's culture. They may lag in performance and often seem disconnected from the team's values and goals. While it's a difficult decision, terminating D Players may be necessary to maintain the team's integrity, opening opportunities for others who fit better with the organization's vision.
How many A Players do you have?On paper, they look the same as C Players. Quantifying your culture is the only way to know for sure. Find out how easy this can be with a free demo.
Pricing Options & Guarantee:
Billed Monthly
Pre-Paid (Discount)
Build A Level 1 Culture
3 Month Program
$5,995 / mth
$12,975 flat
Save $5,000 When You Pre-Pay
Designed to fit all companies
Align all employees across a Shared Identity (Uncommon Norms).
Cognitive Colours Profiles for all staff.
Unlock Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Empathy and Accountability through enhanced EQ.
Each session = 3 Hour live facilitation followed by 30 days self-directed learning for all.
You should only pay for what you need. It's why we offer transparent pricing. Get the entire 12 month Uncommon Enggement program for less than you’d pay to recruit a single leader through a recruitment firm. Take advantage of our pre-pay option to save even more. Curious what your current team’s alignment is but don’t need the full training? Our engagement audit is the perfect fit.
At CultureSmithing, we know that promises alone won't work to build a thriving organizational culture. So we asked leaders like you what results they needed to trust our process. Reduced turnover, less unnecessary conflict, and increased psychological safety were the top answers.
Combining deep expertise with an understanding of barriers that hinder these outcomes, we make change a reality.
How certain are we? If you follow our recommended behaviours and these guaranteed outcomes do not materialize, we will not only refund your money, but also work with you for FREE until they do.
We're committed to creating an environment where your team will thrive.When you invest in CultureSmithing, you aren't just investing in ideas; you are investing in the future of your organization. Get started today by booking your free demo.
