If employee experiences don’t live up to what an organization says about its culture, problems quickly mount. It’s up to leaders to build intentional cultures.

More and more organizations are waking up to the power of culture. Leaders are recognizing that culture not only helps them get better results, but affects their employees every day. Sometimes, the effect is strongly positive: culture creates clarity, connection and inspiration. Yet at other times, its impacts are deeply negative, harming careers, physical health and wellbeing.

Yet despite this growing recognition, many organizations are still only thinking superficially about how they shape culture. They’re failing to ensure that culture is demonstrated and experienced consistently by all employees. They may have statements on the website or posters in the lobby, but few of these companies have done the important ongoing work of ensuring that their values are lived and experienced in the day-to-day.

When a company’s aspirational culture differs significantly from the reality that people experience, leaders and organizations quickly lose credibility. People are acutely aware when leaders aren’t walking the talk. A sense of cultural betrayal can take root. Employees understandably feel resentful when what they were ‘sold’ about an organization is not what they receive – and this can have a significant impact on emotional wellbeing, especially in mission-driven companies. The impact of perceived cultural betrayal can run deep, generating negative feelings about the company, withdrawal behaviors (such as not participating in company meetings and events), and increased employee attrition.

By contrast, when the aspirational culture is clearly articulated and consistent with what employees experience, intentional culture is alive and well. Unfortunately, many organizations tend to stop their culture work after they have posted their values on their website, not realizing that they are only at the beginning of the journey.

The relationship between climate and culture

When employees use words like “siloed,”“hectic,” or “friendly,” they are describing the climate – what it feels like to work in the organization. It’s only when you dig deeper into exactly why the organization feels siloed, hectic, or friendly that you uncover the organizational culture.

Climate is the set of more observable aspects of working in the organization – its systems, practices and behaviors – and can be felt right away. Culture is the set of unwritten rules – the values, norms and beliefs – that an employee comes to learn over time, often through a process of trial and error, and by observing which behaviors are expected and rewarded.

Evidently, climate and culture are inextricably connected: culture drives climate, and climate impacts culture. Any changes in one must consider the other. If you are trying to change some aspect of the climate, you must understand and incorporate culture. If you are trying to change culture, you must incorporate aspects of the climate. For example, it is near-impossible to create a requirement that employees collaborate more if the culture is clearly individualistic. However, if a new performance review system that rewards collaboration is put in place, this aspect of the climate will help, over time, to shift the culture. Think of climate as the action of culture.

Take, for example, a medium-sized company acting on the results of an employee engagement survey. Those results indicated that people wanted more flexible options for working from home. The HR team put together a compelling flexible work program, including offering training for managers, creating a set of criteria for taking part in the program, and rolling out a tool to help employees sign up. But six months later, only a few employees had taken advantage of the new options. Why was this the case?

The HR team soon found out that the chief executive had been walking the halls at 5pm, checking to see who was still at their desks. People had learned that what was really valued was being seen in the office. Taking advantage of the new flexible work policy was not in line with that unspoken expectation.

Culture conveys what really matters to those in positions of power. Of course, the HR team had assumed that they were aligned with the culture when they designed the flexible working program – but the cultural message being sent by the chief executive was stronger.

In this example, the HR team had used a measurement system (the engagement survey) to make a change to a practice (the work-from-home options). But because of the values and beliefs exhibited by the chief executive, the behavior and norms of working from home were rejected.

Culture and power

Power and culture are intertwined – so much so that some scholars even define culture in terms of power. As educational researcher Richard Bates puts it: “Culture is a complex mosaic of negotiation (and sometimes rebellion), constantly shaped by the exercise of various forms of power.”

Defining culture by how power is exercised demonstrates the tight connection. To complicate matters, how power is valued culturally indicates the extent to which power shapes culture. To put this in its simplest form: if the organization is hierarchical, then positional power is likely to have more of an influence on the culture than if the organization is not hierarchical.

Related to this is the idea of shared power. Within the organizational structure, how much power do leaders, managers and employees have? Does power tend to be decentralized so that many people within the organization are able to make decisions and use their discretion? Or does power tend to be centralized to very few people at the top or within certain functions (such as the CEO and the CFO)? If a particular function (like marketing or product development) has more power because it is valued more than other functions, there are implications for what gets reinforced in the culture. So, not only does power influence culture, but culture influences perceptions of power.

The role of leaders within an organization is crucial in shaping its culture. An organization’s leaders should be role models for its culture, setting an example for others to follow. They need to understand the impact they have because of their position and perceived power. They need to make conscious efforts to create a positive and supportive work environment, and be aware of, and intentional about, the messages they send to others about what’s important. The signals that leaders send greatly impact the organization’s values and priorities.

Leaders need to think of themselves as culture architects, taking accountability for the values and norms of the organization and being intentional about how their actions and communications align with the culture they aspire to have. Leaders also need to understand their power and how their values and beliefs may be different from what their employees value, and from what the organization needs to be successful.

Having worked with many different leaders, I have observed that leaders are often unaware of their power. This lack of awareness happens on two levels. First, leaders fail to understand what kind of power they have and how they might use it in shaping and reinforcing culture – a real missed opportunity. For example, imagine a leader at an all-hands meeting who doesn’t step in to help clarify when someone asks a question about culture and instead just leaves the question hanging. This could have been a great opportunity for the leader to embrace their power and help create clarity.

Second, leaders frequently also fail to understand how their actions might be misinterpreted. They often don’t understand that all their actions, no matter how small, send a loud message about what’s valued and what’s not valued in the organization.

Leaders are like culture megaphones. Employees are looking for cues from them about what matters – and the more power they have the louder the megaphone. These cues can be explicit words and actions about the culture, but they can also be cues that are more implicit, where meaning is inferred. What does it mean when a leader decides to leave early from a meeting where people are sharing their perspectives on an important issue? Or when the leader checks their phone during a highly anticipated meeting? What did they smile or frown about? Did they interrupt someone? What joke did they tell? Was that ambiguous sentence a message about the future of that team? People can make mistaken assumptions about the meaning behind even the most innocent actions, especially when there is a void of more explicit messaging about what’s important.

So to understand culture, you must also understand power. Leaders, founders, managers and boards need to understand the role that their power plays in influencing the behavior of employees – and should take proactive, considered steps to use their power to be more intentional about culture.

Intentional culture

To have an intentional culture and reduce the likelihood of cultural betrayal, organizations must invest and commit to the long-term work of aligning the aspirational culture and the experienced culture.

Yet, even when people in an organization are clear that the culture needs to change, it can be a daunting task – so much so that it never gets addressed. To help move culture work from something daunting to something that feels do-able, I created a simple approach for leaders to use to be more intentional about culture. There are eight areas to consider.

Culture vision Determining the culture the organization needs in order to achieve its strategy
Behaviors Articulating what the culture needs to look like in action, using behavioral terms
Education Defining how everyone (current and future) in the organization comes to learn about the desired culture
Accountability Creating clear accountability for being intentional about culture, which involves having clear metrics and responsible parties for culture evolution
Champions Ensuring that other people in the organization – not just leaders – are active drivers of the culture
Communications Developing a regular and consistent ‘drumbeat’ about the desired culture
Experiences Implementing intentional and curated ways in which people come together and experience the culture
Systems Determining how systems, policies and processes align with, and support, the culture you want to create.

Being intentional about culture allows organizations to create more clarity, connection and inspiration. This work is ongoing: you are never really done with culture (though the work does get easier over time as you build your intentional culture muscles). Embarking on this work will help to close the gap between what your values posters and website say, and what your employees actually experience.