Team culture by design.
One conversation at a time.
Only 3% of people leaders feel completely confident building team culture. I’m here to change that.
Which one are you?
Only 3% of people leaders feel completely confident building team culture. I’m here to change that.
Which one are you?
99% of people leaders
97% told me they need help
Independent research by McCrindle, commissioned by Shane Michael Hatton. A national study of 1,002 people leaders.
The problem
flip the switch
| What happens | What was missing |
|---|---|
| Someone joins the team. | |
| Nobody tells them how things really work here. | Lack of communicationUnclear expectations |
| So they guess. And they guess wrong. | Undefined behaviours |
| Someone notices. Nobody says anything. | No psychological safetyAvoided feedback |
| Nobody asks what they’d need to do it well. | Capability gap |
| Nobody notices when they do it well. So they stop doing it. | No recognition |
| They’re still in the room. They checked out months ago. | Disengagement |
| Nine months later they resign, and the form says culture. |
Nobody sets out to lose great people. Every one of those moments was an opportunity for a conversation that never happened.
Three questions
Not ‘rate your culture out of ten’. Three things that either happened on your team recently or didn’t. Answer honestly and I’ll mark it up as we go.
1 of 3psychological safety
When someone on your team disagrees with a decision you’ve made, they most often…
In short
I help leaders build the team culture they want, build the leadership skills that culture asks for, and I talk about it on stages all over the world.
My approach to building culture by design
Culture is built by design or by default. My approach to culture isn’t about the type of culture you have, but how deliberately you’re building one. I’ve spent years running sessions, sitting with leaders, and asking a thousand of them what they’d need to build the culture they actually wanted. This model is what came out of it.
Every layer and every conversation, and how they fit together.
See the whole modelHow to work with me
If you’re looking for speed and results then hand it to me. I’ll manage the process from start to finish. If you want to build the capability in house, let’s run it together. And if you have time and want to move at your own pace, there’s an option for that too.
Your culture, by design, together with me.
A culture your leaders can define, build and measure, with me in the room from the review to the results.
Start to finish.
Determine how strong the culture you’re building really is.
Understand what the data says, where you’re strong, where your leaders and their teams disagree, and where to start.
Six conversations, facilitated in the room. Your team walk away with a clear cultural action plan and capability plan in their own words.
Access to the Culture Measure tool for 12 months to track progress and keep people aligned.
Regular leadership development sessions built on your capability plan to close the gap between words and action.
Track record
10 years, over 30 cities in 13 countries
For nearly a decade I’ve worked with organisations to develop remarkable culture and leadership.
I had the pleasure of working with Shane during the development of our Leadership Development program at Penrith City Council. Shane is an outstanding facilitator who worked closely with our senior leaders, bringing deep expertise in communication and culture. His engaging style, insightful approach, and ability to create meaningful learning experiences made a lasting impact. I highly recommend Shane to any organisation looking to elevate leadership capability and culture.
Leadership capability development
Some of these are about you, some are about your team. Pick the one that sounds most familiar and I’ll show you the skill underneath it and the session I run to build it.
Sound familiar?
Book a session on its own, a few as a series, or fold them into the culture work. You don’t need to have started anything to book one. See the sessions
The book
My first manager told me I was responsible for the culture. Responsible?I wasn’t even sure I knew what it was. Let’s Talk Culture is the book I needed that day, built on conversations, programs and a study of over a thousand people leaders who bring culture to life every day.
My first book, Lead the Room, is on the books page.
Organizational culture’s built through words and actions. This book shows you the conversations you need to spark the behaviour you want to create the culture you desire.
In Let’s Talk Culture, Shane manages to do what many culture experts cannot. That is to simplify the complexity that is culture. Full of stories and insights, Shane unpacks the 5 conversations about culture that every leader should have with their team. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to create a culture worth belonging to.
Although leaders intuitively know that culture is key to the success of their organizations and the well-being of their employees, it is a notoriously slippery construct. Shane helps leaders gain traction by distilling a broad set of research findings and ideas into compelling frameworks, providing concrete examples of practices others have followed, and offering practical advice for putting the ideas into action. I would highly recommend this book to any leader embarking on a large-scale program of culture change.
Culture is a tricky beast, but one that’s so critical to get right in any organisation who wants to do best for both their teams and their customers. Shane has done a great job in demystifying and making the case for the role of a people leader in defining, building, changing, and strengthening culture. It’s full of practical questions and actions all leaders should be asking themselves and their teams.
Great stuff from Shane, who not only decodes culture, but also provides the data that senior managers require to fund its investment of time and money and the practical insights necessary to do it well, every time.
It’s true that the best storytelling wins but the leader who knows how to talk about culture helps the entire team win. In this engaging and entertaining book, Shane has crafted the roadmap for exactly how to have those critical conversations that will help you craft the kinds of culture everyone is talking about. I wish I’d had this book when I started my managerial journey 20 years ago. If you’re charged with managing others, this book is the companion you’ve been looking for.
What I love about Shane’s book is he really gets to the heart of what drives culture and, through learning from some of the best places to work in Australia, shares with us some of the key actions leaders can take to influence and shape the culture they aspire to. Most of what I have learnt as a leader has been through trial and error and many years of experience. I wish I had read books like this earlier in my career.
Shane paints a wonderfully vivid narrative of culture as a language we can all learn to speak, even if our dialects are slightly different. As the leader of an integrated health system, this book will aid me in building a more inclusive team to better care for the increasingly diverse communities we serve.
As a leader, any leader, how do you comprehend something you can see, feel and experience everyday, yet struggle to explain to anyone outside of it? You have a conversation. Many conversations. Let’s Talk Culture is the ‘many conversations’ every leader who wants to be intentional about culture must first have with themselves. Shane skilfully weaves hundreds of impressions together and casually, yet pragmatically offers the blueprint to growing a culture that lives, is inclusive, and wins.
Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll let you know how I can help. I read every one of these myself.
Not ready to write to me yet? Ten minutes and you’ll know where your team actually sits.
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