Ep 117 Teamwork: Understanding your team’s cognitive and emotional culture

Show notes

In this episode, Stephen Gates dives into the often misunderstood world of team culture. He breaks down what culture really means beyond birthday parties and Slack channels and explains why it matters to every creative, leader, and job seeker. This episode lays out a practical framework that connects individual emotional experience to team-wide dynamics, and how both cognitive and emotional cultures shape the success and failure of teams.

Key Takeaways:

1. Why Culture Matters:

• Culture isn’t fluff; it’s foundational to how people feel, perform, and stay.

• Great culture leads to retention, innovation, and better business outcomes.

• Misaligned or toxic culture drives people out, often without them fully realizing why.

2. Emotions Are the Foundation:

• Every emotion has three parts: subjective experience (the trigger), physiological response (fight/flight), and behavioral expression (visible reaction).

• Understanding emotions helps leaders build better culture and teams read each other better.

3. Two Core Types of Team Culture:

• Cognitive Culture: How teams think. It shows up in structure, values, and communication norms.

  • Market Culture: Results-driven, goal-oriented, competitive.

  • Hierarchy Culture: Structured, process-focused, efficiency-driven.

  • Create Culture: Fast-paced, innovative, entrepreneurial.

  • Collaborative Culture: People-first, relational, consensus-driven.

   

• Emotional Culture: How teams feel. The emotional atmosphere people live in at work.

  • Culture of Happiness: Joyful, trusting, authentic (or dangerously fake).

  • Culture of Fear: Suppressive, compliance-driven, driven by insecure leadership.

  • Culture of Authenticity: Honest, vulnerable, psychologically safe.

   

4. How to Spot and Influence Culture:

• Watch verbal and non-verbal cues.

• Evaluate leadership’s emotional intelligence.

• In interviews, dig past perks to uncover how the team really operates.

• If you’re a leader: own your role in shaping emotional dynamics, not just process.

5. Why Emotional Culture is Often Ignored:

• Most orgs favor what’s measurable (cognitive) over what’s human (emotional).

• But studies show emotional culture directly impacts retention, performance, and growth.

Stephen’s Challenge to You:

• Don’t wait for leadership to define culture. Observe, question, and help shape it.

• Choose environments that align with how you want to work and feel.

• Stop glorifying hustle cultures and start prioritizing emotional clarity and trust.

Referenced Episode:

• Episode 88: Practical and Emotional Trust

Culture isn’t what your company says it is. It’s how people feel—every day, in every meeting, on every team. If you don’t shape it, it shapes you.

Tagged as:
cognitive culture company culture culture and creativity emotional culture employee engagement innovation through culture leadership and c organizational culture Stephen Gates team dynamics The Crazy One podcast workplace culture transformation