Brian Elliott has spent 25 years building high-growth companies and leading teams, first as a startup CEO, then as a leader at Google, and later as an executive at Slack and Salesforce. He also co-founded Future Forum, a think tank focused on using data and dialogue to redesign work.

Brian is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, The Economist, and other major outlets.

Recently, Brian served as a moderator at the Charter Workplace Summit, where he shared insights on how hybrid and flexible work can drive performance, innovation, connection, and well-being.

It left me wondering how we build and improve our workplace or company culture, especially for hybrid teams. 

I brought these questions to Brian, who shared his tips and best practices for a better workplace culture based on the latest research.

Here are some key insights from our discussion:

1. Company culture is mainly formed by rewarded and encouraged behaviors within the company. Meanwhile, workplace culture is more “localized” and heavily influenced by the team dynamics as well as the physical environment
2. Leaders must create three essential things: Trust, clarity, and unlocking potential, which eventually shape the culture of their organizations.
3. Trust between employees and their leaders is the most crucial factor for innovation, productivity, and willingness to adopt new tools in the workplace, including AI tools.
4. The majority of workplace culture is shaped at the team level. This is why people might leave a good company due to a bad experience with their team, and vice versa, sometimes people might stay at a bad company because they have a good team.
5. Decision-making should be decentralized to teams. Why? If everyone makes independent decisions, it leads to chaos. However, it also can’t rest solely with the CEO or executive team.

Q: Brian, thanks for taking the time to share your expert insights. To start, could you explain the difference between workplace culture and company culture?

Brian Elliott: The issue is that we don’t have a clear definition of culture to begin with. Many executives and employees have different ideas about what culture is and how it's created. 

Executives often think of culture as the mission statements on the walls or broad statements about how we work together, but real culture is built through day-to-day interactions and what gets rewarded within the company. 

For example, the type of work that is rewarded, the people who get promoted, and what receives resources all shape how culture is perceived.

Another key point is that leadership’s words don't create culture – it’s formed through your local team. 

"Your relationship with your team and manager is the foundation of culture."  – Brian Elliott

Studies show that around 70-75% of what employees consider to be "culture" comes from their direct interactions with their teams. That’s why people say, "Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers." If someone has a bad manager, they may leave even if the company itself is great. 

Conversely, a company with a less-than-ideal culture can retain employees if they have a supportive team and a fair manager. A manager who values and appreciates their team members can significantly influence employee retention, demonstrating the power of their role in the organization.

Workplace culture typically refers to the culture felt when sharing a physical space, like an office. The challenge is that even in an office, much of the culture is the same as the digital one. You can be sitting in a cubicle doing the same tasks you’d be doing remotely, often interacting with people outside your physical space. 

However, the physical office setup plays a crucial role in shaping the overall workplace experience. Unique aspects of office culture, such as casual interactions in the kitchen or the ease of finding a meeting room, contribute to the overall culture. 

The physical office setup can either bolster or impede the culture you’re striving to cultivate, underscoring the need for a conducive work environment. 

(Read our guide on successful hybrid office design here.)

For instance, an open, airy office with natural light and plants (biophilic design) promotes health and well-being, signaling that the employer cares about the work environment. 

Studies show that offices with natural light improve mental well-being, while older, enclosed spaces with low ceilings and artificial lighting may do the opposite.

On the other hand, company culture is broader and reflects the behaviors and norms established by leadership. It’s seen in how people treat one another, how customers are treated, and what gets rewarded within the organization. This culture shows up more in everyday interactions than in any formal statements from leadership.

Q: So if we don’t need a physical office to have a good culture, how do we do it?

‍Brian Elliott: I believe we still need offices, but we need to rethink their purpose, which is vastly different from what it used to be. 

Pre-pandemic, we assumed the office was where both work and culture were created. While many employees may not have viewed it this way, most executives saw these elements as intertwined. 

The office was where work happened and culture was built, largely because executives like myself, before the rise of digital tools and broadband, would physically go into offices to foster culture – holding all-hands meetings, meeting with customers, and maintaining a physical presence. 

‍Today's big difference is that while bringing people together remains critical for building culture, it no longer needs to happen exclusively in the office.

(For more, read our 2024 Hybrid Office Guide, including desk booking software and room scheduling software.)

This was true even before the pandemic. Companies like Automattic or GitLab, which have operated remotely for years, still understood the need for occasional in-person gatherings. 

However, post-pandemic, many large companies – especially in big tech – overcorrected, making promises they couldn’t keep. 

For example, they hired distributed teams across regions, promising leaders that funds would be available to bring their teams together quarterly. This worked initially in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022, fears of a recession led to budget cuts, and those promises were broken.

As a result, companies found themselves with teams spread across geographies but no resources to bring them together physically. Worse, many managers weren’t trained on how to build culture or connection digitally. 

Building a strong culture entirely online is more difficult than doing it through occasional in-person interactions. 

"There’s no such thing as a fully remote company that operates effectively without bringing their team together on a regular, episodic basis." - Brian Elliott

By 2023, many employees were feeling burned out and disconnected from their managers and colleagues, which shouldn't be surprising since companies failed to invest in making this model work.

Q: In other words: they got disengaged.

Brian Elliott: Right. They got disengaged. It's very easy to feel disengaged if all of your interactions are transactional. 

Misunderstandings can arise, especially in heated written exchanges. When tensions escalate, it's often best to stop and pick up the phone, or ping someone for a quick call on platforms like Slack or WhatsApp, to resolve issues more directly. 

Unfortunately, many organizations haven’t taught employees how to manage these situations. 

Instead, they have reduced team gatherings due to budget cuts, failed to train managers on building digital culture, and allowed tensions to simmer in unhealthy ways that damage overall organizational well-being.

(Read more about how to address disengaged employees and how to deal with coffee badging in your workplace.)

Q: And the role of the leaders in all of these?

Brian Elliott:  They are to make all of these happen. It’s always been that way. “How do I create?” has always been the role of the leaders. 

I'll give you three things that every manager should focus on. At Slack, we integrated these into our training programs, and I’ve applied them in smaller organizations as well as at Google. 

First, managers must create clarity. It’s crucial that your team understands the goals, how they align with the broader organization, and what the tactical objectives are, like quarterly deliverables. Clarity helps people know what’s important, what to focus on, and it helps to prevent conflicts.

Second, leaders must build trust. Trust comes from knowing that everyone is doing their share and moving the work forward. It also comes from getting to know each other better and understanding each other’s working styles. 

Lastly, the third essential task is unlocking potential. This involves helping people grow professionally, focusing on career development, and addressing performance issues as they arise – without waiting for an annual review.

Q: Could you please elaborate on the “trust” factor in all of these by giving real life examples of how a leader can create trust proactively?

Brian Elliott: Building trust is often the hardest part because many managers aren’t trained on how to do it. But there are simple ways to make it easier, such as showing a little vulnerability as a manager. 

(Trust in building a company work culture was also a keypoint emphasized by Laura Watt, EVP of HR at Diageo North America at the Charter Workplace Summit 2024, where Brian was a moderator.)

One of my favorite tools is the "about me" or "personal user manual," a one-page document or slide that shares how you prefer to communicate and work. 

For example, I’m a morning person, not a night person. I absorb information better in writing than by watching videos, and I’m very analytical – so I like having data to support decisions. I also know my downsides: I tend to overproduce and over communicate, so I appreciate when people tell me if it’s too much. Knowing these kinds of details about one another helps avoid misunderstandings.

As a leader, if you go first and reveal some of these personal details, it creates a safer space for your team to open up as well. 

This fosters trust and helps you understand the team dynamics better. It’s just one example of how you can build trust within your team.

Q: Does this leadership principle apply to all levels of leadership?

Yes. For example: the person leading a team of salespeople, the person leading a team of engineers, and their respective bosses – all the way up to the executives – must focus on building relationships. 

There’s a concept called the "first team," which refers to your peers at the senior leadership level. When I’m building a company, my first team is my peers at that level, and then there's the team that works for me. I have to operate effectively on both levels. 

Another important aspect is that much of today's knowledge work happens in teams. Project teams, which are typically cross-functional, work together toward a common goal.

I would actually say it’s even more important for the leader of a project to apply the same tools. 

One helpful tool is the "about me" or "personal user manual," which helps the 8-12 people on a project team quickly understand each other. Another tool I frequently use is establishing team norms. These norms define how we operate as a team, including our goals, roles, meeting times, and expectations for availability.

Team norms are crucial for a functional team, and they serve as a significant accelerator for project teams in getting aligned. When you start this process, you often realize quickly that not everyone is on the same page. People from marketing, engineering, and customer support may have different perspectives on the goals of the project. 

Figuring this out early accelerates long-term progress. While it takes time and effort upfront, it prevents repeated issues with misunderstandings and misalignment later on.

Think of it as the difference between spending twice as long in the first few weeks clarifying goals and aligning the team, versus spending four times as long later dealing with confusion and misalignment.

Q: So this is the kind of thing that leaders had to figure out right at the beginning? Not along the way?

Yes, they need to figure it out ahead of time as well as the reason for that. At the end of the day, this all comes back to culture. 

The more open conversations and dialogue you have about the project’s goals and aspirations, as well as individual roles, the more people feel engaged in the process. 

This engagement leads to greater commitment and a stronger sense of belonging to the project or team. That’s really the foundation of culture. 

If I feel like I’m working on something valuable, where I understand my role and feel respected – even in small ways – my work becomes more fulfilling. I’m likely to be happier than if I’m sitting there thinking, "I don’t know why I’m here, and I don’t agree with the project’s goals."

"When no one asks for your opinion, that’s when disengagement starts to creep in." - Brian Elliott

Q: So the more questions that get answered, the better the culture gets.

Brian Elliott: Yes, exactly. I truly believe culture is built through these building blocks. Around 70-75% of culture is shaped at the team level – whether it’s your functional team or your project team. That’s really the core of how people view their work on a week-to-week basis. 

For example, you could have a senior leadership team that believes in the power and impact of project teams and decides to recognize and reward them when they accomplish great things. 

This reinforces positive outcomes, especially when teams are rewarded for both how they achieve success and what they accomplish. 

When people see these teams being celebrated in all-hands meetings, it reinforces positive behaviors and strengthens a healthy culture. 

However, the opposite can also happen.

We’ve all seen situations where the wrong people get rewarded. If the people being recognized are, frankly, the known jerks in the organization – those who don’t collaborate well but crush it in sales, or worse, those who suck up to the boss – then employees will think “This isn’t a company or culture I want to be a part of but at least my team is where I feel like I’m doing good and I’m actually contributing.”

I think that’s really important. People genuinely want to do good work, right? This ties into the concept of Theory X versus Theory Y, which was developed in the 20th century. 

Theory X operates under the belief that managers don’t trust their employees, so they use a system of rewards and punishments – carrots and sticks – to motivate them. The idea is that employees need incentives to work harder and punishments if they don’t.

In contrast, Theory Y assumes that people are motivated by autonomy, mastery, purpose, and a sense of accomplishment. Most people, by and large, want to do good work.

There's research to support this as well. Two of my favorite studies on the topic came out last year. One was from my former colleagues at Slack, focusing on generative AI, workplace flexibility, and what drives productivity. 

One key finding was that employees who felt trusted by their leadership were much more likely to adopt and effectively use generative AI tools to increase efficiency. 

When employees trust management, they believe these tools will be used to their benefit, not against them.

Another study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) from last summer examined corporate performance across industries, focusing on top performers in revenue growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction. 

The biggest factor differentiating top performers from lower performers was an 11x gap in whether employees felt trusted by leadership, and a nearly identical 11x gap in whether leaders trusted their employees. 

Building a foundation of trust, along with accountability for performance, is essential for creating the kind of agile, semi-autonomous organizations that every CEO claims to want, but not all are building the culture to support.

Q: How can leaders make this a reality – building trust and creating a strong work culture – in the context of hybrid work?

Brian Elliott: There are two key answers for this question.

First, decision-making shouldn’t rest with individuals alone. If everyone is making independent decisions, it leads to chaos. 

But it also can’t rest solely with the CEO or the executive team because, in any organization beyond a certain scale, there’s too much differentiation across business units and functions for one answer to solve all problems. 

Instead, decision-making should happen where culture resides: at the team level. 

Teams should collaborate not only on when to come together but also on how to commit to each other in terms of availability and the tools they use.

Building norms around these habits and practices aligns teams, increases productivity, and generates more satisfaction and compliance compared to purely top-down or bottom-up approaches. 

The second key factor is rewarding people based on outcomes, not attendance. When you reward performance, team achievements, and the impact of their work, you align individual and corporate interests in a way that unlocks greater performance. 

Simply measuring whether someone shows up misses the point – there’s a big difference between showing up and doing great work.

"If we (leaders) care about great work, we shouldn’t impose attendance as a constraint to prove it." - Brian Elliott

Q: You’ve spoken about the importance of periodic remote company retreats to build connection and culture. Can you elaborate on this?

Brian Elliott: Sure! Quarterly team gatherings can have a huge impact. Nowadays, teams are often spread across different cities, or even countries. Bringing them together 3-4 times a year, with a balanced approach (typically a 50/50 split between deep work on business goals and time for social connection) can accelerate alignment and strengthen relationships.

Atlassian's internal data shows that employees who meet with their teams in person experience a 27% boost in connection, which lasts for four to five months. This increase is even greater for new hires and recent graduates, and it provides more value than random in-office encounters. You can read their report here.

(Read our exclusive talk with Atlassian's Annie Dean: Where we work doesn't matter. Focus on the how)

HBS professor Raj Choudhury studied team gatherings at Zapier, a remote-first company, and found similar results. 

Connections built during these sessions persisted for over four months, and engagement scores improved. However, it's crucial that leaders design these meetings to foster diverse connections.

Without thoughtful planning, people tend to cluster in their usual groups (by race, gender, etc.), which diminishes the benefits of in-person meetings. 

A simple solution? Mix up the carpool for dinner.

One great example of a company doing this well is Zillow. Their zRetreats program brings together teams, cross-functional partners, and more for episodic gatherings, intentionally designed to blend time with immediate teams and overlapping time with adjacent teams. 

For instance, earlier this year, they gathered the entire Finance and HR organizations for three days of overlapping programming – building both "weak ties" and strong ones.

I’ve written extensively about gatherings and other "moments that matter" for MIT Sloan Management Review, and I also wrote a case study on how Zillow and Allstate build connections within distributed teams for Charter.

Q: How important do you believe office design is in motivating employees to voluntarily come into the office in a hybrid work setting?

Office design plays a role, but a more limited one, in motivating employees to come into the office; however, poor design can be a major impediment.

In research we conducted at Future Forum, we found that about 19% of global office workers wanted or needed to be in the office 5 days a week. Home doesn't work for them, either due to logistical reasons (space, privacy, technology) or because they prefer the separation. 

However, the primary drivers for the remaining 66% – those who want to come together with their teams regularly – were socialization, relationship development, deeper collaboration, and mentorship. 

While office design can help, it's not enough on its own to bring people back regularly. What is? Ensuring that the time spent together with your team is meaningful – making it "worth the commute.”

Hybrid office design can support these goals by providing spaces for teams to collaborate, open areas for socialization, environments that boost well-being (natural light, good air quality, greenery), and importantly, spaces for focused work or customer calls.

What doesn’t work is having teams come in only to find there’s no space to collaborate. 

For individual or heads-down work, offices that still resemble 2019’s open-office floor plan can be problematic – spending the day trying to take calls or video conferences while everyone else is doing the same. 

Many people now have better setups at home than at work, with dual monitors, specialized keyboards, standing desks, etc., especially for engineers and designers.

If employees are mandated to be in the office 3-5 days a week to do individual work, while adding commute time (half of which goes to the employer when working from home), and the office setup is worse for calls and focused work, it’s no surprise when employees resist – and productivity declines.

Q: Thank you so much for the wonderful insights and being here today.

Brian: Thank you. Bye.

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