Love it! Excellent question.

I'll share my general thoughts on team culture, which are applicable to any function. And then some cultural traits specific to product marketing.

I only hire and retain the best, so the usual team traits of passion, drive, skills, talent are a given. Beyond those, here is the culture that I strive to create for my team:

Happy
Trusting
Collaborative
Caring
Humble

How do you do the above? Remember the saying "be the change you want to see"? 😃 Well do that and everyone else will follow.

We all know this works at massive scale too. We often find that some of the largest companies exhibit the culture and values demonstrated by a single person - their CEOs. Twilio for example, is recognized for its culture that is exemplified first and foremost by our CEO.

Hire team members who either demonstrate or can easily learn the culture you want to cultivate. And always strive to follow the culture yourself.

Here are some ways in which you, as a leader, can demonstrate the above.

Happiness is perhaps the most important aspect of your culture. If you could only focus on one, this would be it. Happiness leads to success, for you, for your team, for everyone. It motivates people to perform at their best, brings out the creative juices, and provides the resilience to overcome setbacks. Start with yourself and make being happy your life-long goal and try your best to be as happy as you can be, every day. The good news is that happiness is highly infectious, so you don't have to explicitly teach it. But I would highly reccomend a book "Happiness from the Inside Out" by happiness coach Robert Mack, that has given me very practical and actionable ways to stay happy.

Trust comes from being completely transparent on how you think and do everything. Yes, you read it right. Share your financials, performance evaluation approach, salary structures/increases, promotion process - everything! Trust also develops when people know you will have their back even when they are not in the room.

Collaboration is easy to cultivate. Genuinely value diverse and opposing opinions. Ask for feedback and solicit ideas on every key decision. When people feel included, they reciprocate by doing the same. And when you are asked for feedback, take the time to think and provide useful suggestions, so your feedback is valued and solicited again.

Caring for each other should come naturally. Try to celebrate and acknowledge the good moments, not just the birthdays, but the small wins too. When someone needs an extra hand, don't judge, step in, lean in, and do what it takes to share the load. Caring for me also means thinking about the team member and his/her career/life beyond the current role or company.

Humility is often underappreciated in certain cultures, but this is very important to me. If you (as a seasoned leader) understand that you are not the best and don't know everything, others will also realize the same truth. This does not mean you do not feel confident or don't tout your team's accomplishments. Just know the real difference between confidence and arrogance.

For PMMs, these below two cultural traits are also critically important in my opinion:

Customer-obsession
Strategic thinking

These above are functional-specific characteristics and hence can be very easily accomplished via programs and initiatives.

Customer-obsession is the very foundation of product marketing. And in my opinion, the difference between a good and a great product marketer. Make gathering customer insights part of everyone's role (even if in a small way). Encourage customer conversations and interviews. Because the more you speak/listen to customers, the more obsessed you will become about solving their needs, building the right products for them, representing their needs and doing right by them. And it will all happen seamlessly, naturally, and automatically. So ensure every PMM speaks to customers (or at least listens to their interactions) as often as possible.

Strategic thinking is not something you are born with, it can be very much learnt. There are two small, but effective tricks to encouraging strategic thinking.

1st tip: Allow each PMM to completely own at least one piece of the pie. Then encourage them to build the strategy for their piece, which will cultivate the strategic thinking mindset. And executing that strategy will help them discover where they were right and (most importantly) where they were wrong. This iterative learning process will continue to make them more and more strategic with time.
2nd tip: Give people the free time to think. When product marketers get the time to think, great things happen. They discover new market opportunities, define messaging that sticks, build products that delight, and much much more. The way to do so is to a) scale back on what you commit to delivering for the year and b) staff up with adequate PMM resources.

Lastly, what do you do if you team members do not exhibit the above characteristics? Well human behavior is very hard to change, but if it is impacting your team cohesiveness and success, then give them clear and direct feedback and gently keep reminding them, to steer them in the right direction. Try to do so with deep love and care - none of us are perfect and everyone is on a journey.

Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but hopefully some of it was helpful.

Product Marketing KPI's

How do you retain good talent, especially when PMM role are in such high demand across the industry

How do you create and reenforce a culture for you product marketing team as you scale it? And what does yours look like?

How do you perform extensive competitive product research? I've been tasked with it but I'm missing the mark. This research is for the CEO and Product/Engineering teams who want to know how our tech stacks up in the market. Do you have any tips?

How do I measure sales enablement success?

What are some cornerstone KPIs that product marketers should use for every GTM strategy?

What would you rec highlighting in prod mar portfolio? Writing samples? Case studies? What would make a candidate stand out to you? Thx!

What's the most reliable way to measure performance of intangible sales enablement (such as training, objection handling, trap setting)?

As a hiring manager, what do the best product marketing candidates have in common?

How do you communicate product marketing updates and activities to the rest of the company?

What metric, goal or KPI can you put on providing competitive intelligence to the company or product teams?