Team Communication: Your Culture Litmus Test

Summary: Many leaders I work with tell me they have a great culture. And they might. But when I start paying attention to how their teams actually communicate with each other, a very different picture often emerges. The truth is, your team communication habits are one of the most reliable indicators of what your culture really looks like beneath the surface. In this article, I want to walk you through four specific communication patterns I look for when assessing the health of a team, and how you can start using them as a diagnostic tool in your own organization.

Team Communication Reveals Alot

I remember the first time I learned about a litmus test in chemistry class. As usual, my mind was easily distracted and I wasn't really listening to what the teacher had to say about the differences between an acidic and alkaline solution. What I do remember is how cool it was seeing the strip of paper change colors based on the different liquids it was put into.

Nowadays, unless you own a pool, many of us probably don't have much use for those tiny strips of paper. Nonetheless, we are conducting our own litmus tests every day. The dictionary also defines the term this way:

"A decisively indicative test."

In the modern workplace, anything that is decisively indicative is very valuable, especially when it comes to the nebulous topic of culture. My experience has been that many leaders brag about their workplace culture unaware of destructive habits and beliefs that are lingering beneath the surface. Culture is not something that can be measured by corporate values, team socials, or policy manuals.

In fact, when I talk with leaders and teams about their culture, it often boils down to a feeling or intuition that something is not quite right. In response, many leaders try to address the problem but don't really know where to start or what cues to look for. In these kinds of situations, I am always looking for the litmus test. What subtle signs can easily point towards a workplace environment that is "acidic or alkaline?"

Over the years I have found that one of the best ways to identify whether you have truly cultivated a strong and healthy workplace is the team communication habits of your people. That is your culture litmus test.

The Window of Team Communication

At this point it would be helpful for us to define workplace culture. We could think of it this way:

The shared collection of attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and values that define the regular, everyday atmosphere of an organization.

When it comes to culture, one of the problems is that many leaders confuse the aspirational with the practical. Just because you have your corporate vision mounted on the wall and values in your employee handbooks doesn't mean they actually embody the shared attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of your team.

Here's a question for you to think about. Have you ever had certain "values" you say are important to you, but you don't live them out in your everyday behaviors? I think it's safe to say many of us have been there (myself included).

This is partly because your conscious and subconscious brain do not always align. Your conscious brain is responsible for rational thought and processing language. Thus, many of your aspirations will come from this area. It's the stuff you know you should do because there is a logical case for it, or because of the social pressure to be liked or fit in. However, many of the things that drive our behavior reside in the subconscious part of our brain and are tied to baseline emotions like anger, fear, etc.

This disconnect means many people can mistake having or aspiring towards values as actually living them out. But the real power to drive behavior lies in things like reward systems and practiced behavior. Thus, every day the subconscious regions of your team's brains are surveying their environment to determine what is safe and what will get them closer to their goals. Consequently, they will quickly learn whether following your corporate vision and values actually does that.

Now as I alluded to earlier, this still leaves us with a problem. How can leaders looking to address inconsistencies in their culture and build a healthy environment truly identify whether it's working? What is their culture litmus test? This is where team communication habits are so valuable. Below I have included some of the most tell-tale signs of whether your culture is working for or against you.

4 Communication Habits That Reveal Your Culture

1. Curiosity

Do people make an effort to ask open-ended questions that show interest and seek to understand the perspectives of others? Or does your team frequently ask leading questions or make statements disguised as questions?

Why is curiosity such a great indicator of culture? The number and quality of questions your team asks each other can reveal a number of things, including how open-minded and unbiased they are, whether they can think outside the box, if they are humble and value the feedback and opinions of others, and whether they value collaboration and keeping everyone engaged.

Curiosity is one of the least developed muscles for adults, which is why if your team is curious, it is a very good sign. Research from Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino found that only 24% of employees regularly felt curious about their jobs, and nearly 70% said they face barriers to asking more questions at work. In a culture where curiosity is not encouraged, decision-making errors increase, innovation declines, and collaboration weakens.

In contrast, some warning signs to look out for are things like leading questions where the question simply prompts for a desired answer, such as: "Don't you think we should just go with the original plan?" Or statements disguised as questions: "Do you really think that's a good idea?" Translation: "I don't think that's a good idea."

If you want to learn more about how your communication habits shape team dynamics, that is a great place to start.

2. Transparency

Does your team openly share their ideas and opinions? Or do they tend to use guarded and filtered language?

This is important because it gives insight into the level of trust and psychological safety team members feel with each other... or not. Organizations face external threats on a daily basis, but does your team feel that they face internal threats when they enter the workplace?

Research published in PLOS ONE (2024) found that when teams feel psychologically safe, they are significantly more likely to share information openly, collaborate effectively, and perform at higher levels. Conversely, teams that lack that safety tend to withhold ideas and filter their communication, stifling innovation and trust.

At this point it's helpful for us to understand what guarded and filtered language really looks like. This could include things like people being unwilling to volunteer bold ideas and put their credibility on the line, team members regularly saying "I had no idea that was happening" or "nobody told me about that," people never talking about their personal lives, nodding their head and saying "yes" while their body language is saying "no," sharing only polished wins and never setbacks or challenges, withholding information as a power move or to protect themselves, and constant surprises that could have been avoided with earlier communication.

Transparency is a clear window into how much trust team members have with each other. If instead you are experiencing some of the problems I listed above, I would recommend focusing on helping the team build trust with each other, and getting feedback on whether your leadership tendencies have been promoting open dialogue or hindering it.

3. Accountability

Are people quick to have difficult conversations and take personal ownership for their mistakes? Or do they prefer to "let sleeping dogs lie" and get defensive when confronted about their performance?

Similar to the last point, accountability is an easy sign of how much your team trusts each other. However, it goes deeper than that. Low accountability can also stem from unclear roles and responsibilities and whether your team feels ownership for their work.

Many people believe that their workplace would be more efficient if people held each other accountable. However, many employees do not confront their teammates in a healthy way (or at all) because they do not feel equipped to do so, or have grown frustrated with issues they brought up in the past that were never dealt with. Thus, the more leaders demonstrate that they will hold people accountable, the less they will have to do so.

According to Niagara Institute research, only 26% of leaders actively foster psychological safety in their teams. When employees don't feel safe enough to have honest conversations, accountability suffers and problems compound beneath the surface.

4. Proactivity

Does your team offer solutions and speak up early about problems without being prompted? Or are they quiet during meetings and use vague and non-committal language when addressing issues?

Every leader wants their team to be proactive and take more initiative, but many leaders also miss the most important warning signs. These include people using vague or non-committal language in meetings, waiting to be asked rather than volunteering information or updates, frequent "I was waiting for someone to tell me what to do" language, communication that is purely transactional (only when absolutely necessary), silence in meetings when input is requested followed by complaints afterward, updates only coming when someone asks "what's the status on that?", and a pattern of "I didn't think it was my place to say something."

Some of these are obvious, but others not so much. Proactivity stems from team members feeling a sense of pride in their work and that they are making meaningful contributions to the organization. It is also important that leaders truly empower people to make decisions and own the consequences of those decisions. Even if a leader believes they could do it better or faster, initiative only comes when a team experiences what it is truly like to own all aspects of a project from beginning to end.

If you would like to explore how leadership development can help empower your team to take greater ownership, I would love to have that conversation with you.

What Does the Litmus Test Read for Your Team?

So what does the litmus test read for your team? I would encourage you to pay close attention to the team communication habits of your people in the next couple of weeks and see if you can identify some of the symptoms we talked about.

As is the case with many things, awareness is half the battle. From there it's important to develop a leadership language that can speak to these problems in clear ways so your team can understand the impact. This is where coaching and training with your leadership team can be invaluable. I offer a number of different programs and services to help leaders become adept at creating cultures that foster healthy relationships and drive performance.

Go ahead and book a free 30-Minute Discovery Call with me to get started crafting the culture you envision as a leader!