New to a Team? Here are three things to do to build a culture of honor for a team you’re new to:

1. Listen

2. Ask questions

3. Affirm

Why?

Listening - honors what’s been built before you.

Asking questions - honors what’s been built before you.

Affirming - honors what’s been built before you.

The mistake I see most new hires, rookie athletes or newest team members make will surprise you.

The mistake? joining a team and trying to make a good impression right away.

Wait. Isn’t that what you want to do?

To prove your value?

Yes, in your first 6 months, but not in your first few months.

Why? If you come into your first month with the focus of making an impression, the focus is on you, not the team.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re there to serve the team and the team vision, not promote yourself.

Hopefully your new team has an onboarding process. If so, you should already be in a state of lots of listening. If not, that’s where your job of asking tons of questions comes into play.

The more the current team sees you listening, absorbing, and retaining, the more trust is built simply off the basis of feeling understood by you.

If you listen intently, ask questions or restate things they have told you, you’re creating a sense of honor through the form of making the team feel heard, seen and understood.

Be as verbal as you can about things you see done well.

Honor what’s been built before you.

That’s your goal as the newest person on your team.

Best part: if you do this well for your first, let’s say, three to six months, you can expect the honor to begin returning to you. That’s how honor works. You give it away. And at some point it spreads around enough that it returns to you two fold.