How to run a culture workshop: 6 steps and a free template

Most teams have written their values down somewhere. In daily work, meetings and decisions often run as before. A culture workshop starts where culture actually shows: in how a team decides, gives feedback, runs meetings and celebrates.

For our clients we use the Culture Design Canvas by Gustavo Razzetti. It puts purpose and values in the centre and, around them, the places where culture becomes visible: priorities, behaviours, psychological safety, rituals, norms and rules, decision-making, feedback and meetings. The canvas is free, so you can run a workshop with it yourself. This is how we do it.

What a culture workshop is, and what it is not

A culture workshop is a facilitated session in which a team describes how it wants to work together and agrees on a few concrete next steps. It is not a values poster and not a wall of sticky notes that nobody looks at again. The test of a good workshop comes weeks later: something in a meeting, a decision or a ritual works differently.

What you need

• The canvas: free as a PDF or Mural template from Fearless Culture.
• One board per small group, on an online whiteboard or a wall.
• Time: three sessions of about three hours, or one long day.
• A facilitator and a timekeeper.
• A direction: top-down with the leadership team first, or bottom-up with the whole team.

The six steps

1. Set the context

Why culture, and why now? Name the occasion: strong growth, a merger or restructuring, a new hybrid setup, or leadership guidelines the team wants to work out together. Then introduce the canvas and the arc every block follows: first the picture you want, then an honest look at today, then a few principles in your own words.

2. Warm up

Start with a short check-in question that everyone answers. In remote sessions: cameras on, one sentence each, strict timebox. Everyone has spoken once before the harder questions come.

3. Work in small groups

Each group takes one block of the canvas on its own board. Where do we want to be? Where are we today? What would we need to agree on? With larger groups, use a world café: groups change tables and build on what the previous group wrote.

Next to the canvas we add one exercise of our own: good and bad failures. Which mistakes do we want more of, because they come from trying something new? Which mistakes do we need to avoid? It makes psychological safety concrete.

4. Share, discuss and choose

Groups present, and the others add and challenge. Then choose, because less is more. Vote on the few points that would change daily work most, for example your top three values and the priorities that follow from them.

5. Turn it into next steps

Every chosen point becomes one step with an owner and a date. Put these steps into existing meetings, processes and tools rather than into a separate culture project, and only commit to what leadership, teams and HR actually have the capacity for.

6. Revisit regularly

Put the canvas back on the agenda every few months: what has changed, what needs adjusting? Leaders play the biggest part here, because they model the behaviours the team agreed on.

One day or three sessions?

Three sessions split the canvas the way we use it:

• Strategy: purpose, values and your top three, priorities, and the behaviours you support and counter.
• Communication: psychological safety, rituals, and norms and rules.
• Rules: decision-making, feedback and meetings.

Between sessions, the team can try the first agreements in daily work and bring back what happened. A single long day works well for an offsite. Keep the same order and protect the last part of the day for next steps.

Running it hybrid or remote

Our workshops have run remote since 2020. What matters most:

• Prepared boards on an online whiteboard, one per group, with the blocks of the session already in place.
• Breakout rooms for the small groups. Test the boards and the rooms once before the session.
• Strict timeboxing for check-in, presentations and check-out. It keeps the energy up and teaches everyone to get to the point.

Three mistakes we see often

• Values copied from another company. The result should be in your words, describing how you want to work, not how a famous company works.
• Too much output. Twenty agreements change nothing. Three that show up in next week's meetings change a lot.
• Next steps without owners. A step without a name and a date stays on the board.

When an external facilitator helps

Running it yourself works. An external facilitator helps when the leaders should take part instead of running the session, after a merger, or for an offsite with several teams. We run culture design workshops for one team or offsites of about 50 people, remote or on site, in English and German.