Merging Teams: How to Build a New Culture Together

When different teams are merged, each brings its own distinct culture, values, and ways of working. Culture, as I’ve written about in another blog post, can range from healthy to toxic and when building something new, it’s crucial to be intentional.

Merging teams and creating a new, shared culture is not easy. It’s one of the most challenging processes organizations face.

What typically happens is that people carry their old standards and norms with them. They genuinely want to move forward, but they don’t want to be changed. And that’s often exactly what it feels like when two or more teams are forced together without care for the emotional and cultural transition.

If you’re involved in a team merge, it’s important to understand your own position. Are you coming from one of the original teams? If so, others might perceive you as representing “the old way", and fear being assimilated. Or are you entirely new, bringing a fresh perspective but also the risk of making others feel displaced?

No matter your role, the principle remains the same: slow down to speed up.

Take time to connect with your new team. Organize activities that build relationships. Repeatedly emphasize in your language that this is a new team, not the continuation of one or another of the old ones. One powerful symbolic action is creating a new team name. Retire the old team names and invite everyone to help define the new identity together.

Involving the team members in shaping the future is essential. Ask them to help identify the differences that still exist between the former teams. Work together to decide how you’ll merge processes, standards, and habits. Make them co-owners of the change, not just participants.

Symbols matter too.

Besides a new team name, you can create a new team logo, a fresh shared agenda, new group chats, and communication channels. Remove outdated ones, but again, do so together, not unilaterally. Create these symbols collaboratively so they carry meaning for everyone.

Another important tip: look out for informal leaders within the team, those who naturally influence others and involve them early on. Their support can make or break the integration.

Also, be mindful of the pressure to deliver immediate results. Stakeholders may expect quick wins, but rushing through this cultural merging process is a mistake. Explain your approach clearly to them. Show that investing in trust, connection, and commitment now will yield faster and stronger performance later.

If you skip this cultural phase and jump straight into tasks and performance targets, you will have to deal with the underlying tensions later anyway, usually at a greater cost.

It’s much wiser to build your foundation properly from the start.

This is perfectly illustrated by Tuckman’s well-known theory of team development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. Every team must go through these stages to reach high performance. If you move too fast, you postpone the inevitable storming phase, and unresolved issues will surface just when you need the team to deliver.

Finally, if you want to assess whether you have a strong team, think about the key elements from the Lencioni model:

Trust is the first and most crucial layer.

Without trust, no real collaboration or healthy conflict can happen. But when trust is solid, the team will move through the inevitable challenges much more smoothly.

In short:

Take the time to connect, involve people in shaping the future, use symbols to mark the new beginning, and align your stakeholders around the long-term plan.

I promise you: the results will not only come,

they will be better and more sustainable than if you tried to rush the process.