You Create Your Culture One Reaction at a Time.
While chatting with a friend this week, I had an important realization: leaders at all levels sometimes overlook the delayed impact of their actions. This blind spot can lead to frustration months or even years down the road, as they find themselves dissatisfied with what the company’s culture has become.
In many cases, these leaders seem disconnected from the chain of events that shaped the current reality. Instead of reflecting on how their own actions and behaviors influenced the status quo, they may default to placing blame on individuals within the organization.
This pattern highlights a critical gap in leadership — one where the long-term consequences of decisions, attitudes, and practices are not fully understood or acknowledged. Leaders must take a step back to examine how their choices and behaviors contribute to the culture over time, rather than viewing it as something that exists independently of their influence.
To highlight the flow of what happens, I’ve shared the 5 step sequence of how this develops over time:
1 — Leaders are under more scrutiny — it doesnt’ matter what the situation is or whether it merits over-analysis by someone else, it’s just a fact of the circumstances that what you say and do, will be under more scrutiny than you think.
2 — People react to leader’s emotions — not only do they react into a leader’s emotions, but they all mis-read and read-into your emotions, tone of voice, facial expressions much more than you think they do.
3 — Those reactions can become perceptions about the leader — Over time, these perceptions get cemented. For example, if you often snap at people, they will always have that perception of you in the back of their mind when they approach you to talk about something.
4 — The leader can then become a victim of those perceptions — This is where things get sticky… you might not think it, but you can be victimized or held-captive by these perceptions. People may not want to bring things up to you because they fear you, or they may not take things seriously if you are constantly not following through with promises/commitments you’ve made.
5 — Others start modelling the leader in their areas and it becomes culture — this is where it becomes cancerous. It’s when others think that it’s ok to do what you do, because you do it. Once more people in the org starts doing this, you have the start of culture decay. This is why it’s not only important to catch it early, but also to monitor it in yourself and others you elevate to leadership roles.
In the words of my friend Lynn Baxter: “ Leaders reactions set the tone of culture in an organisation. They explicitly or implicitly define what is acceptable or not, how people show up whether the leader is there or not, and act as a guide the core values which have significant impact not only on culture but on employee engagement and ultimately performance.”
Luckily, if we are talking about a middle manager or a leader with someone that balances you or another leader out in seniority, the damage to culture can be muted. As my friend Charu Kar says: “it (the negative impact of one leader) depends on other ‘leaders’ in the organization and its existing ethos! If the organization culture is inherently strong, the leader would be shunned perhaps, rather than being emulated!” This isn’t a recommendation to find people to cancel out your worst attributes, but rather to not let fear/paralysis prevent you from both being you, but also choosing to improve who you are as a leader.
In conclusion, think about all the actions you take and the reactions you have because you may very well find yourself having to fix things down the road in very unexpected but strangely sadly familiar ways.
