The 10 Behaviours Workshop

A working day where a team defines – or adopts – the behaviours that make the place work. Not aspirational values on a poster. Observable, specific, useful behaviours the team will actually recognise, coach and build on.

What good actually looks like — named, so the team can use it

Every team has an implicit sense of what "good behaviour here" means. The people who make the place better. The ones who close the gaps between roles. The ones who stay calm when it matters, and speak up when nobody else will. Most teams know who those people are – they can point at them.

What they usually can't do is name what those people are doing. Which means they can't teach it, coach for it, hire for it, or reward it. It stays a private observation – a thing you notice about someone rather than a culture the team has decided to build together.

This workshop makes the implicit explicit. Over a working day, the team names the behaviours that actually make up the culture that helps ideas turn into value, and foster a positive workplace. Not the ones a values statement said should matter. The ones this specific group can point at, agree on, and commit to recognising in each other from Monday onward.

That move – from private noticing to shared language – changes how a team hires, coaches, promotes, and gives feedback. Behaviour that was invisible becomes visible. Behaviour that was accidental becomes deliberate. And behaviour that was celebrated in one person becomes something the whole team is building together.

And that is how you change a culture.

Three paths through the day

The workshop is designed to be flexible. Different teams arrive with different needs, and the day flexes to serve them.

Path one: adopt the ten.
For teams who want a proven starting point. The ten behaviours field guide is the source material – ten observable, tested behaviours built from twenty years of studying what makes people genuinely effective.

Together the teams walk through the most important ones for them, examine how each shows up in their specific context, and decide what "living the behaviours" actually means for their work.

The output: the behaviours, made theirs.

Path two: create their own.
For teams who want to define behaviour ground-up or from existing ones – perhaps because they're founding something new, entering a new phase, or want to name something that's genuinely theirs.

Using the same facilitation method that produced the original ten, the team surfaces and names the behaviours it wants more of.

The output: a set of behaviours that carries the team's own thumbprint.

Path three (most common in practice): a mix.
Many teams find their real answer is neither pure adoption nor pure invention. They keep some of the ten. They add some of their own. They rewrite others in language that fits their world. The day supports whichever direction the team is really pulling toward.

The pre-workshop conversation establishes which path fits, and the day is scoped from there.

Why we call them behaviours (and not values)

The word matters.

Values are what an organisation says it stands for. Behaviours are what people actually do. Values live on posters. Behaviours live in the meeting yesterday afternoon. And the culture of the organisation is always created by what people do, not what they say they will.

Most organisations have far more values than they can practice, and most values statements suffer from the same problem: they're written in the language of aspiration rather than observation.

"We value integrity" sounds fine – but nobody knows what to do differently on Monday. "They do what they said they'd do – and own it when they can't" is a behaviour. It's observable, it's specific, and someone on the team can tell you within a day whether it's happening.

Behaviours can be coached. Values can only be quoted.

That's the whole reason this workshop exists – to give a team the actionable version of what it's been saying to itself with a values statement that maybe didn't land.

What this workshop is not

It's not a values-alignment exercise. No sticky notes about "how we want to feel." No wall of aspirations that never becomes anything. The day starts and ends with observable behaviour – what a person does, what they say, how they say it, their body-language and the quality output of work. Behaviours. These can be seen, nudged, improved, communicated and rewarded.

It's not a personality-typing session. This isn't about who someone is. It's about what they do. Personalities don't change through a workshop. Behaviours can be practised, coached, and built.

It's not a culture-deck session. Culture decks are output artefacts – statements about the organisation for the world to see. This workshop produces something more inward-facing: a shared reference guide the team uses on itself.

And it's not a team-building day. There are no rope courses, no trust falls, no shared meals disguised as sessions and no goat yoga. It's a working day of definition – sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes surprising, always specific to the team in the room. And always a lot of fun.

The shape of the day

The workshop moves through three phases, each building on the one before.

Phase one — noticing.

The room starts by looking honestly at what already works. Who on the team consistently makes things better? What are they doing that others aren't? What behaviour, when it shows up, changes how a meeting goes, how a decision lands, how someone new to the team feels on their first week or how idea become valuable?

This isn't gossip. It's careful, specific observation – the same act of noticing that the ten original behaviours were built from.

Phase two — naming.

The team turns those observations into behaviours. The distinction matters.

"Sarah is really good at working with clients" is a compliment about Sarah. "She listens more than she talks, understands the clients needs, and is clear in how to move forward" are behaviour anyone on the team can practice.

The facilitation moves the room from noticing to naming, using the language patterns that make behaviours coach-able rather than characteristic. And always in the tone of voice and language of your organisation.

Phase three — committing.

Once the behaviours are named – whether adopted from the ten, created new, or a mix – the team decides which ones matter most to them right now, what "living" each one looks like in their context of work, and how they'll recognise it when they see it.

What emerges is a shared reference the team can use immediately: in hiring, in feedback, in coaching, in performance conversations, and in the small moment when someone notices someone else doing the thing.

Making the day into something the team keeps

This workshop is particularly well-suited to a making element, because the output is language and reference – exactly the kind of thing that benefits from being made physical.

Common shapes the making element takes for this workshop:

• A set of posters – one per behaviour, printed in the team's visual language, hung in the meeting rooms where the work actually happens. The behaviour becomes visible in the environment, not just in a document.
• A printed team playbook – a small book the team keeps, with each behaviour explained in their own words, illustrated with examples from their actual work.
• A short film – the team explaining the behaviours in their own voice, edited into a piece that becomes part of onboarding for every new joiner. This is a chance for creativity to really shine.
• A photo essay – capturing the behaviours as they show up in the team's specific working life. Distinctive, personal, and durable.
• Cards for the wall or the desk – a small deck of ten cards, one per behaviour, that a team member can point at when giving feedback or coaching a colleague.

The making element is optional but highly encouraged. It grew out of the wider Cultivated practice – the films, the photography, the publishing – and it's where the teaching arm meets the making arm. Making something physical is also a remarkable way of helping the topic stick. It's also a fun way to bring these behaviours to life.

For this workshop especially, the artefact matters. Behaviours that live only in memory get forgotten by Friday. Behaviours that live on the wall, in the onboarding video, and in the deck of cards on a manager's desk get remembered, practised, and built.

Where this sits in the wider practice

Culture, in Cultivated's language, is group habit – it's the sum of everybody's behaviours. This workshop is where those habits and behaviours get named, made visible, and turned into something the team can work with.

For readers who want to explore the thinking underneath first, the free field guide is the original ten behaviours, described in short chapters. For teams who want a self-directed way to build them one at a time, the Coaching & Development Guide is the workbook version – designed for individuals or manager-led coaching.

The workshop stands entirely on its own. But for organisations that want the seeing to keep growing after the day, they're the natural next steps.

What participants leave with

A shared language for what "good" looks like on this specific team – either the ten behaviours made their own, a new set they've created, or a mix. That language becomes usable immediately: in hiring conversations, in feedback, in coaching, in the moment when someone recognises someone else doing the thing.

A physical or visual record of the behaviours – the posters, the guide, the deck of cards, or the film – depending on what the team decided to make.

And a way of talking about behaviour that changes how the team gives feedback long after the day ends. Behaviour, coached instead of characterised. Skills, developed rather than assumed. Feedback, given specifically instead of vaguely. That's the shift the workshop is really for.

What changes for the organisation

Hiring gets sharper. Interviewers start asking about specific behaviours instead of "cultural fit" – and the answers become more useful. Feedback becomes more specific. Coaching becomes more possible. Performance conversations get less awkward, because there's a shared reference for what everyone was working toward. Promotions become about behaviours rather than vague job descriptions.

Onboarding gets clearer. New hires arrive to a team that can tell them, in specific and observable terms, what people around them actually do – not just what they say they value.

And the small moments compound towards the culture you're trying to create. When a team member recognises someone else doing one of the behaviours, they say so – because there's now a name for it. Behaviour that used to go unnoticed becomes reinforced. That's how habits build. That's how culture happens.

Who this is for

Leadership teams defining or renewing what "good" looks like on their team, and wanting to move beyond a values statement that never quite worked.

Founders and small studios who want to name the behaviours that make their work land – before the team grows past the point where implicit understanding stops being enough.

HR and people leaders wanting to introduce a shared behavioural language across teams – for hiring, onboarding, promotion, coaching, and feedback – that people will actually use.

Cross-functional groups where different teams have different implicit standards, and the friction between them isn't skills but expectations and behaviours. This workshop makes those expectations explicit.

Managers who want to lift the baseline of behaviour on their team, and would rather do it with a shared reference than one conversation at a time.

The workshop has run for teams of eight and organisations of eighty. Fit matters more than size.

How the session works

Full day, in person, for groups of roughly eight to thirty. The pre-workshop conversation establishes which path fits – adopt the ten, create your own, or a mix – and the day is tailored from there.

Participants bring their real work. The behaviours are named in the language and context of the team's actual world. No case studies, no fictional companies.

Post-workshop, the team keeps the definitions, the language, and – if the making element is included – the physical or visual artefacts. Optional post-session review is available for teams who want a check-in after a few months of practice.

About Rob Lambert

I'm Rob. I've spent twenty years inside organisations – as VP of Engineering, VP of HR, Head of Business Agility, and independently – studying how ideas become value, and where they don't. Long enough on both sides of the wall to know that the results a business needs and the growth its people deserve aren't separate subjects.

Nothing borrowed, nothing installed. Just what I've seen hold true across teams of one, six, and sixteen thousand.

More about the wider practice →

A simple starting point

If the team knows there's a version of "good" it's been trying to define – and hasn't quite managed to – this is the workshop for it.

Related from the shelf

If you want to explore the thinking underneath before booking — or want a way to build the behaviours a day at a time on your own — these two are the natural companions.

The 10 Behaviours field guide — Free. The short, warm read that started it all. Ten observable behaviours, one per chapter, written to be read in an afternoon. Get the free field guide →

Coaching & Development Guide — £7.99. A structured workbook across all ten behaviours, with coaching prompts and reflection exercises for personal use or manager-led coaching. Get the coaching guide →