Leaders impact organisational culture through words and behaviour

“Can you help change the culture here? We’ve got a real problem with attrition and complaints about senior staff.”

This is not an uncommon request for a behaviour change consultant. The solution for such a problem, a client suggested to me recently, would be a series of activities including setting clear standards of acceptable behaviour and a number of training sessions with slides to help communicate the company rules including a new work from home policy. Nobody in the executive and/or senior leadership team included themselves in the solutions they were seeking.

It’s imperative to find out why company or organisational culture has declined. It is common to cite post COVID changes, the cost of living, lack of engagement, financial pressure affecting targets and so on. These are all relevant but sometimes leaders don’t see or don’t want to see their impact on culture. They don’t see how their behaviour is one of the major factors that affect the levels of happiness or wellbeing in a workforce and in turn levels of productivity, staff retention and attrition.

Leaders say with some frustration, however, that when times are tough, they don’t have time to consider whether or not employees are happy. And in a drive to make things happen leaders often remove the agency of the senior team.

There are numerous studies by psychologists and behavioural scientists with evidence that the relationship between leadership style and workforce performance is facilitated by organisational culture. Achieving organisational goals and objectives depends on leaders and their leadership styles.

Words matter in culture change strategies, both in text and aural communication and so does behaviour. Influential leaders communicate through a combination on non-verbal modes (including body language, dress, possessions, and use of symbols) and verbal strategies for communicating vision, values, and legitimacy. Developing confidence in the delivery of considered messages is a good place to start once the reasons behind decline in organisational culture has been openly discussed.