What signals do people pick up when they join your team?

What signals do people pick up when they join your team?

November 30, 2025

Every team sends subtle signals of standing out and fitting in. What gets noticed. What gets rewarded. What gets quietly ignored. In every workplace culture, people are reading those cues; trying to work out how much difference is welcome, and how much sameness is required to belong.

This weekend, I was back on campus to teach Leadership & Cross-Cultural Management course. Surrounded by natural reminders of standing out, fitting in and adjustment in action, we shared rich, challenging discussions:

Strong cultures help us know how to work, speak, and succeed together. They give comfort and rhythm. But they can also harden into habits, into language, rituals and norms that define who belongs and who does not. As a manager, it’s worth pausing to notice:

What signals does your team send?
Are your rituals and in-jokes part of your team’s identity or barriers that keep others out?
Is your culture porous enough for new people and new ideas to join, or has the strength you enjoy begun to hold you back?

Leaders, at their best, keep that boundary alive and flexible, helping people both fit in and stand out, so the team keeps learning and belonging grows stronger with every new voice.

What If Your Team Culture Isn’t as Porous as You’d Like?

Recognising that your culture has become too tight is a sign of awareness — and an opportunity for growth. Here are some options managers have when they sense the team’s belonging has become exclusionary or static:

1. Start by naming what’s valued — and what’s missing.
Ask your team: What do we celebrate most about how we work together? and What kinds of ideas or people struggle to find traction here?
This surfaces the unspoken norms that keep the team cohesive — and sometimes closed.

2. Refresh the rituals.
Team culture lives in rituals — how meetings open, how credit is given, how jokes are made.
Experiment with new rhythms that include everyone: rotate meeting chairs, share story time across levels, or invite newcomers to explain what they see differently.

3. Introduce new voices deliberately.
If everyone around the table has been there for years, fresh thinking will struggle to breathe.
Bring in guest collaborators from other functions or locations, even for short projects.
Exposure to different approaches loosens the team’s boundaries and invites perspective-taking.

4. Coach for curiosity.
Belonging deepens when people feel both seen and safe to ask.
Encourage your team to listen for learning rather than confirmation — model it yourself in how you ask questions, summarise others’ points, and respond to dissent.

5. Examine the language.
Team language can be shorthand or a shield. Phrases like “that’s not how we do things” or “that wouldn’t work here” often signal a closed culture.
Invite reflection: What assumptions are we protecting when we say that?

6. Redefine ‘fit’.
Shift the conversation from fitting in to fitting with.
Instead of expecting newcomers to conform, explore how their difference could make the whole stronger.

Porosity doesn’t mean weakness. A porous culture breathes. It allows new air in without losing its core shape. As leaders, our task is to keep that balance alive: firm enough that people feel anchored, flexible enough that the team can keep evolving.

Every culture can become a comfort zone. Leadership begins when you notice that and choose to make it a learning zone instead.

Please contact me here if you would like to discuss how you may go further in this topic through Coaching.