Leaders are the number one factor influencing a company’s culture. In fact, the Hay Group suggests that differences in leadership style account for 50-70% of a company’s culture, which in turn can make a difference of upwards of 30% on financial performance. 

Our research over the past 30+ years reinforces this finding and is why our practice has shifted increasingly to focus on leaders and specifically helping them acquire the knowledge and build the capability to create great places to work that are aligned with their strategy. 

Most people think the answer is by role modeling behaviors which send the implicit message of what is the right and expected way of doing things here. This is only one of the ways leaders often unknowingly shape the culture of their company. The reality is that leaders, and especially those in senior positions, influence culture by the day-to-day practices they use such as the way they make decisions and share information, as well as by what they reward and recognize. The way they design and structure roles and responsibilities, the layout of physical space, the stories they tell about company heroes, the clothes they wear, the policies and procedures they embrace, and so on, all influence culture.

It depends on the situation and the leader. There are cases where a leader’s style and behaviors need to change so their words and actions are consistent with the culture the company requires to execute its strategy. For example, if a company decides to shift to integrated solutions from independent products, leaders may need to adjust their behavior to be more collaborative and even altruistic. If the leader is unable to make the necessary adjustments, he or she may no longer be a good fit for the company and its culture resulting in the need for a change.

However, in most cases, we find that leaders can make the changes necessary to align with the desired culture. In fact, once they are aware of the need for change, they understand the impact they have on culture and are usually energized to act. The key is increased self awareness combined with a deeper understanding of how to operate effectively at the intersection of leadership, culture, and strategy. 

Changing behavior starts with self-awareness and the desire to change. If either are lacking, change simply won’t happen. Assessments are a good place to start in terms of building self-awareness as they encourage reflection which, when combined with coaching, can help the leader understand how their behavior is affecting others and their effectiveness and performance. 

A great tool for helping leaders, and people in general, to work through behavioral (and other) change is the approach provided in Immunity to Change (2009) by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey of Harvard University’s School of Education. ‘Immunity mapping’ encourages leaders to recognize how their beliefs are affecting their actions. In so doing, they can question their assumptions, acknowledge their fears, and start the journey towards positive change.

Supportive practices that encourage continued reflection and personal accountability are also important. This includes 90-day action plans, coaching conversations, regular feedback, and positive reinforcement.    

We recommend an interview-based leadership 360 assessment when working with executives and other senior leaders. The main benefit is to provide a deeper and richer assessment and feedback experience than is possible using a survey. Interviews allow for iterative analysis of the data leading to deeper probing of themes that emerge. This is very important when working with leaders who demand context and examples to accept the validity of the assessment findings.

In addition, as skilled interviewers, we can detect anomalies in the answers and probe more deeply to uncover important data that may not be readily apparent. While surveys focus the leader on trends, it is often the exceptions or what people don’t say that is actually more revealing.

An alternative to a full interview 360 process is to use a leadership survey augmented by interviews. The survey focuses the questions on areas where more information and context would be helpful. It also provides the opportunity to probe areas not included in the survey that may be of specific interest or concern.

No. We do not conduct candidate assessments for selection purposes. We do however contribute to the selection process by providing a company fit assessment. 

A company fit assessment considers the company’s culture, people, and leadership team dynamics. Its main benefit is in identifying the implications for the candidate’s onboarding and transition into the organization. 

We also provide assessments of leadership potential using the Decision Dynamics Executive Suite (see below). Both assessments are intended for development versus selection purposes.

Dr. Evans is certified in four assessment instruments which are used alone or in combination depending on the needs of the individual and the organization. This is in addition to interviews used in 360 leadership and company fit assessments. She also has extensive experience using the online team effectiveness assessment based on Patrick Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team.

The Leadership Circle Profile – a leadership 360 assessment that measures creative competencies (how you achieve results, bring out the best in others, lead with vision, enhance your development, act with integrity and courage, and improve organizational systems); reactive tendencies (self-limiting leadership styles focused on gaining the approval of others, protecting yourself, or getting results at the expense of others); and, internal operating system (assumptions and beliefs that influence creative competencies and reactive tendencies). It is the best-in-class online 360 leadership assessment due to its integrated view of leadership that fuel self-reflection and behavior change. 

Decision Dynamics Executive Suite – a robust psychometric assessment grounded in decades of research. It provides powerful insights into a leader’s motives and preferences, decision and leadership style, and emotional behaviors. It is an excellent tool for leadership development and assessing leadership potential. 

Decision Dynamics Culture Fit Assessment - evaluates the fit between individual motives and the organization's culture to identify ways to increase an employee's engagement. This is a valuable tool for managers and HR practitioners helping them understand how to better engage and motivate employees.

The EQ-i 2.0 – an online self or 360 assessment that measures the emotional Intelligence skills critical for leadership, team effectiveness, work performance, influence, work/life balance and wellbeing. The fifteen competencies in the scientifically validated EQ-i 2.0 model are highly correlated with inspirational leadership, innovative work cultures, highly effective teams, and engaged and committed talent. And the best news – these are learned skills that we can develop and improve!

The DiSC Workplace Everything Profile – used with individuals and teams, the DiSC profile provides standardized, objective data about each person's personality and behavior, which in turn, helps you understand one another and “get” where each person is coming from. Intact work teams, cross-functional teams, and project teams at all levels benefit from the insights it provides leading to better relationships, improved communications, and stronger collaboration. Also used as part of leadership assessment and coaching, its easy-to-understand model and language provides leaders with insights about their style and preferences and how these influence the way they lead and interact with others.

The Decision Dynamics Executive Suite is a psychometric assessment that provides powerful insights into a leader’s motives, decision-style, and emotional behaviors. It focuses on four important aspects of leadership:

• Career Profile - The Career Concepts and Motives show expectations and motivation in a leader's career and working life. The concepts show what the person is considering being a successful developmental path. The motives tell us, maybe one of the most important things regarding leadership if leadership is an important and critical engagement driver for the person or not. They also tell us in what direction the leader is most likely to drive both own and business development including how stability- versus change oriented he or she is likely to be. This directly influences the engagement of others.
• Decision Styles - Decision Styles show how a leader tends to make decisions, communicate and share information with others - in public and private mode. The Role style, often called leadership style, gives an understanding of how the person interacts with others. The Operating style, also referred to as the thinking style, gives insight into how people really think and make decisions, such as longer term and strategically, or shorter term and action oriented. The styles influence directly how effective we are as leaders in different situations and how well we relate to other people.
• Emotional Behaviors - Emotional Behaviors are composed of feelings and impulses that give energy and direction to a leader's actions. We all have different abilities recognizing and managing our emotions, motivating ourselves and handling interpersonal relationships. These influences, among other things, a leader's people skills.
• Complexity Motives - Complexity Motives deal with the degree to which a leader enjoys doing things in complex versus simple ways. Many people are quite selective about not only how much complexity they want to deal with, but also about what kind of complexity they want to handle. This influences, for example, how much energy will be spent on people versus data issues, affecting other people around him or her.

Leadership competencies are the skills, knowledge, and behaviors expected of leaders at all levels in the organization. They apply to individual contributors as well as people managers as individual contributors influence those around them and can lead by example. There is typically a difference in expectations based on the scope of a person’s role and responsibilities. For example, people who manage managers are expected to demonstrate a higher level of leadership competence than people who manage individual contributors.

Leadership competencies are different from core competencies although there is often overlap. Leadership competencies emphasize the skills, knowledge, and behaviors expected of leaders which sometimes includes individual contributors (see above). These often fall into meta-level categories such as thought, results, people, and self leadership. As noted above, there is a different level of competence expected based on a person’s role and scope of responsibility. Examples of leadership competencies are inspire and influence, develop self and others, enterprise mindset and so on.

Core competencies tend to be broader and more general. They identify the skills, knowledge, and behaviors expected of all employees and are sometimes broken out by proficiency level (novice, intermediate, and advanced). Leadership skills, interpersonal communications, teamwork, and strategic thinking are a few examples of core competencies.

Technical competencies are the skills, knowledge, and attributes required to succeed in a professional or functional role. Like core competencies, they typically have three to five proficiency levels however these are mapped to specific functional/technical roles and job requirements. For example, a level one software engineer is expected to demonstrate a lower level of competence than a level three engineer in skill areas such as technical knowledge, project management, engineering design and analysis etc.

Organizational culture is the underlying beliefs and assumptions that guide action and that are learned and shared by members of groups as they strive to fulfill their purpose. For more information, download our white paper here.

• We are passionate about helping our clients do meaningful culture work. We partner with you and do whatever it takes to make you successful.
• We are a boutique consulting firm with deep expertise in culture. It's all we do. We are flexible and responsive doing whatever it takes to deliver what you need. When you work with us, you are guaranteed to only work with an expert in the field of culture
• We are storytellers...we connect the dots interpreting survey and other data in context.  We help you understand the beliefs, values and assumptions that shape your culture. We identify what's important...the strengths to  protect and build upon and the opportunities for change.
• We know how to change culture...culture change can be scary but it doesn't have to be. Our proven culture change methodology works...watch for our book which is soon to be released!
• We are committed to transferring our knowledge. We use an action learning approach to build your internal capability in culture change.

Engagement is one, very important aspect of culture but it is not the only dimension impacting performance and strategy execution

• Employee engagement is “a measure of an employee’s emotional and intellectual commitment to an organization” (Aon Hewitt)

Culture includes other aspects of the “way things get done around here” (Deal & Kennedy)

• Culture is “the values, underlying beliefs and assumptions that guide action and are learned and shared by members of groups as they strive to fulfill their purpose”

The lesson learned?

• Leaders must create the conditions, aka culture, to achieve and sustain high levels of employee engagement.
• Engaged employees striving to do their best is not enough to overcome systemic barriers. For example, agility requires structures, policies and processes that enable responsiveness and flexibility. A low delegation of authority limit, multi-layers of approvals and a hierarchical structure will stimy engaged employees every time!

No. Our research indicates the important question is not how does your culture compare to others but how does it align with your specific strategy, mission and purpose. In fact, benchmarking is dangerous as it can cause people to focus on closing gaps when this may actually be counter-productive. Specifically, culture is a source of competitive advantage when it helps an organization differentiate itself from others in its industry. Why on earth would you want to be similar? In fact, you want to stand out in a positive way to your customers, employees and potential investors. This being said, benchmarking is helpful when assessing the level of employee engagement. These benchmarks are available in the public domain.

Culture is insidious. It is deeply embedded in belief systems, values, and assumptions about the right and best way of doing things. This affects every aspect of organizational life including strategy, structures, processes, systems, behaviors, practices, and so on and so forth. 

If the change in strategy requires new ways of doing things that are different from what are held to be right and best for the organization, the culture has a ‘drag effect’ on strategy. If left unaddressed, it will eventually eat the strategy for lunch …and breakfast …and dinner. To overcome this, requires thoughtful and intentional actions directed at reinforcing new ways of working which, when proven successful, will shift the belief system that underpins the culture.

While the 1980’s provided anecdotal and case-based evidence of what researchers and management consultants said proved that an organization’s culture affected its performance, the 1990’s saw a surge in the publication of empirical research striving to find a causal link. From this work, two studies emerged that continue to be cited as the primary evidence that culture does indeed have a significant impact on financial performance. One of the studies conducted by John Kotter and James Heskett (1992) reported that “the perceived strength of a company’s culture is positively correlated with its long-term economic performance as measured by net income growth, return on investment, and increase in stock price over a ten-year period”. Similarly, Daniel Denison (1990) found that “corporate culture has a measurable impact on bottom-line performance”. 

More recently, an Aon-Hewitt research study (2010) found that organizations with high levels of employee engagement outperformed the total stock market index and posted total shareholder returns 22% higher than average. Companies with low engagement had a total shareholder return that was 28% lower than average. 

Although I hate to say it, the answer is ‘yes’. Everyone has heard stories of toxic workplaces where intimidation, bullying, and even harassment is allowed. Fortunately, in our experience, these are few and far between and tend to be attributed to specific leaders.

In most cases, company culture needs to change not because it is ‘bad’ but because environmental factors demand things are done differently for the company to remain viable, competitive, and grow.

What has worked in the past, no longer works well in the present, and will lead to failure in the future. For example, a small start-up company can be highly effective with a very loose, relationship-oriented culture. However, as it grows, the lack of infrastructure that was once key to its success becomes a problem creating inefficiencies that affect quality and the bottom-line. If left unaddressed, this could result in lost customers, damage to the brand, lower margins, loss of investors, and so and so forth. 

Absolutely but, it rarely happens unless there is a triggering event such as an acquisition, spin-off, turnaround, or significant change in leadership. In these cases, we have seen culture change happen in a matter of months. In fact, when studying Sprint’s buy-out of the PCS business from its cable partners, Dr. Evans reported significant and observable change within four months.

This said, there are lessons to be learned from these triggering events that can be applied to accelerate the rate of culture change under other conditions. This requires a thoughtful and intentional approach that is driven by the CEO with the active support of the executive team. This is what we call the ‘amplifying effect’ of leadership on culture. When leaders are aligned and actively work together to make the required changes, culture change can happen quickly. While Human Resources plays an important role in supporting leaders through the change process, they can not be seen to be the owners or it will fail.  

When interviewing candidates for company fit, I spend a lot of time and energy in understanding the company, its strategy, culture, and leadership team dynamics. This is critically important as it provides the lens for assessing a candidate’s fit and preparing the individual, and others, for the transition into the organization. With the context clear, I ask two questions that I use to probe deeply into his or her style, behaviors, preferences, and tendencies. These are:

• Think of a situation that happened in the past 18 months that you are most proud of as a leader. Briefly describe the situation. What was it about your leadership are you most proud of?
• Now think of a situation that happened in the past 18 months that you are least proud of as a leader. Briefly describe the situation. What was it about your leadership are you least proud of?

I often get asked why I don’t ask targeted questions about how the leader’s past behavior relates to values and cultural attributes. The answer is I do include some of these but mostly because the candidate expects them, and it helps to lower their guard when I ask the important questions. The problem with these types of questions are we are typically interviewing very smart people who know what we are looking for. For example, if I ask a senior leader to provide an example of how they dealt with interpersonal conflicts on their team, I assure you every single person will provide a great answer.