Last week, I sat in an auditorium teeming with positive energy. All eyes were on the stage. As each new person took the stage, you could feel collective admiration and support in the crowd. I sat there thinking this room would be the envy of many of the companies in town.

Where was I? The auditorium of my 6 year old’s end-of-camp talent show.

In my work diving deep with companies and organizations, I’ve learned that building a culture like that takes an underestimated amount of work. It requires so much forethought, care, and intentional action. It takes a clear articulation of the organization’s values, ambition, and modeling from the top. Then it can be embodied by everyone else. And it needs to happen every day. On the good days and especially on the rough ones.

We talk about culture as if it’s a monolith, but it is really the culmination of countless small actions and choices. Here’s what I saw. The choice to look at the stage vs a smartwatch or phone. The choice to get up in front of 400+ kids and perform a talent. The choice to cheer loudly even when we are on act 56 and listening to “Pink Pony Club” for the 50th time. The choice to be 100% committed.

These choices do not just happen. For 8+ weeks, these kids had a shared experience. They developed their own acronyms, their own secret handshakes, and the unwritten rules of camp. They were rewarded with bottle badges for their water bottles only when they earned them and they earned them through respect, listening, kindness, and embracing the day’s adventure. They watched their counselors react to fights, fears, scrapes, and tears. They saw that leadership smiled, listened with an open mind, and had a solution to whatever challenge arose that day. So, they did too.

How can we take these lessons to our own companies? How can we:

• Ensure that our values are clear, consistent, known and felt?
• Instill norms that positively rewards the actions we want our people to take?
• Make time for leaders to model these behaviors in both big and small moments?
• Create systems to make it all feel woven into the work vs an add-on?

This is what a positive, safe and supportive culture looks like. Where culture is not simply a score or something to discuss at the annual off-site, but lived and embodied every day.

I think we can learn a lot from our kids and camp.