The Hidden Message: How Leaders Subtly Shape Cultural Norms

I was recently on a call with a group of leaders and we were talking about why people don’t use the facilities the company has provided for their relaxation and recreation. They have a break room with a ping-pong table, puzzles, and several other fun activities available, but hardly anyone ever uses them. On our call, the leaders were wondering why the same group of people who consistently reported feeling overworked and overwhelmed wouldn’t take the time to stop and relax for a few minutes, and on the company’s dime at that!

This reminded me of a story from the early days of my professional career. Just a few months after I graduated from Georgia Tech and started working at the Procter and Gamble Plant in Albany, Georgia, I got some career advice that I didn’t quite understand at the time. One day, someone who had been there for a few years pulled me to the side and told me he wanted to share some advice because he liked me and thought I had great potential. The sage advice of this plant veteran was as follows: “If you want to be successful, you need to walk fast and look nervous!”

At first, I thought this was a joke. I waited for the punchline but it never came. I soon realized that he was dead serious. He went on to explain that a lot of people didn’t realize that while doing a good job and all of that certainly helps, what nobody was talking about was the real success factor which he had just shared with me.

I was perplexed, but fortunately, even back then, I had enough sense to not blindly follow his lead. For a long time afterward, however, I wondered what could have motivated him to share such strange advice with young leaders.

It was many years later when I finally understood what was going on. The plant where I worked had two plant managers. The one I reported to was a calm and mild-mannered leader and a joy to work for. The other plant manager had risen through the ranks fairly quickly and was known as being smart and successful. He also always looked nervous and was always almost running whenever he made his way through the plant.

Looking back, and having had the misfortune of working with the same individual years later in another region, I came to know him as someone who was unable to read the room and adjust his behavior to the audience. Despite his overall low EQ, he still had the mental sharpness to weaponize his technical intelligence to prove he was smarter than everyone else in the room.

Overall, he was the epitome of the “Brilliant Jerk” archetype and behaved pretty much opposite to everything we were taught in leadership classes and the values and principles that were posted on the walls at the plant. Yet, some people had figured that to be successful, they should emulate this guy. They assumed that walking fast and looking nervous and adopting who knows what other toxic behaviors would give them the best chance of gaining his favor.

The written values and principles were nice, but the real message people were receiving from the leader’s example was that if you were smart enough to pull it off, being a jerk was no problem. That was the unwritten norm that overshadowed everything that was being formally taught. Although many leaders may operate under the motto of “do what I say, not what I do,” the fact is that the behavior of leaders always sets the standard for everyone else regardless of what they say.

So, going back to the discussion from earlier, why is it that people are not taking breaks and playing ping-pong? Could it be that the unwritten norm of this workplace is that if you do use these recreational facilities, you are considered a slacker with nothing better to do?! If that’s the case, the breakroom must surely look like more of a trap than a privilege! If so, how was this norm established? It’s not written anywhere and I’m sure there haven’t been any official announcements to that effect, and yet the “tribal knowledge” indicates this to indeed be the case.

This tribal knowledge could have been formed by a joke or seemingly harmless innuendo from someone in a position of authority unaware of the power of their words. Perhaps, it was the result of a comment or gesture interpreted differently than it was meant to be. Whatever the case, norms such as these can only be established through the tolerance or active contribution of leadership.

I had one of these experiences much later in my career with almost 30 years of experience under my belt. I vividly remember sitting in my office one day and thinking about a complex strategy I was designing for a leadership development and culture transformation initiative. I wasn’t on my computer and I wasn’t pretending to be busy. I was simply thinking about the complexities of the initiative and formulating an approach before I wrote it down.

While I was deep in thought, my boss walked by my office, looked my way, and nodded to acknowledge that he saw me. A split second later, he then did a doubletake with a puzzled look on his face, as if to say, “Why are we paying this guy to just sit in his office and just look bored!”

Luckily, the experience didn’t faze me, because his behavior was in line with other signals I had been receiving that indicated that I would have to get my work done despite a complete lack of support from him anyway. However, I did think about the kind of impact this kind of behavior would have on someone with less experience and less confidence in themselves. Would it have made them think that, in order to be successful they had to look busy, and that pausing to think before acting was detrimental to their career prospects? It’s quite possible.

As you set out to transform the culture and results of your workplace, please understand that saying all the right things, putting them on fancy posters, and posting quotes about valuing people on LinkedIn don’t carry the day in the end. Everybody knows how to talk the talk, but we all know that talk is cheap. No sane leader proclaims that they don’t care about employees and their wellbeing and so on, so proclaiming such means nothing on its own. That is not where people look to see what the real values are; it never has been and it never will be.

People will instead always look to the subtle gestures and comments made by leaders to figure out what they really stand for, and they will act accordingly. Actions will always speak louder than words, but when it comes to leaders, that’s even more so the case. When it comes to leadership, there really is no such thing as, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Whether you like it or not, as a leader, what you do is what you say!

So, if you’re a leader puzzled by some of the behaviors going on in your organization, and if you genuinely want to figure out where they’re coming from and how to resolve them, I suggest your first step should be taking an honest look in the mirror.

If there are topics you find to be of special value to you, or if you’d just like to get in touch and chat about what’s going on with you, simply reply to this newsletter or send me an email at [email protected].?If you’re experiencing challenges that you would like my perspective on, or you’d like to explore how we can partner with you to support you in your transformative journey, please click here to schedule a call with me.?I’d love to hear from you.

Further Reading

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