Shaping Organisational and Team Culture Through an Integral+? Lens
Jay Hedley
Managing Partner @ The Coaching Room | Trainer of NLP, Meta-Coach. Helping C-Suite Executives and high performance teams grow from the inside-out.
The word “culture” is a nominalisation, a pseudo-noun, meaning it is a concept, rather than an object. It is the invisible process that shapes how people think, behave, and interact within an organisation or team. To turn it back into a process, we need to understand it as a verb; to “cultivate”, meaning to actively develop, nurture, or refine thinking, communicating, cultural norms, values, and/or behaviours.
Once “cultivated”, culture dictates what is valued, what is reinforced, and what is deleted, distorted or generalised within the individual and team perspectives While many see culture as something static—defined by behaviours, core values or company traditions—it is, in reality, a living, evolving dynamic that is constantly being created, maintained, and changed through individual, collective, and systemic interactions.
At The Coaching Room, we approach culture through an Integral+ lens, understanding that it is not just about behaviours and systems but also about the mindsets, emotions, and collective narratives that drive those behaviours. By recognising these multiple dimensions, organisations and teams can intentionally shape a high-performance culture rather than allowing it to form by default.
What Creates Culture?
Culture is formed at the intersection of four key dimensions, which can be mapped using the Integral+ Quadrants:
1. Individual Interior (Mindsets & Beliefs)
Culture starts with how individuals think and make meaning. The personal values, cognitive biases, and beliefs of team members shape their decisions and actions. Leaders, in particular, play a crucial role in setting the tone for cultural norms through their own internal orientation.
*Key Influence: Leadership Mindset – A leader who sees challenges as opportunities for growth fosters a learning culture, while one who operates from fear can inadvertently create a blame culture.
2. Individual Exterior (Behaviours & Skills)
Culture is reinforced by observable behaviours and actions. How people interact, communicate, and make decisions on a daily basis sets the precedent for what is acceptable and expected. Leaders who model coaching-based conversations, constructive feedback, and ownership contribute to a high-performance environment.
*Key Influence: Leadership Actions – Culture is shaped more by what leaders do than by what they say. If a CEO preaches transparency but withholds information, the team learns that secrecy is the real norm.
3. Collective Interior (Shared Values & Narratives)
This is the unspoken culture—the sense of identity within a group that is created via the stories, symbols, and shared narratives. If an organisation repeatedly tells stories about risk-taking and innovation, that becomes part of its DNA. If it celebrates compliance and avoiding mistakes, that, too, will become embedded.
*Key Influence: Cultural Conversations – What do people talk about when leaders or influencers aren’t in the room? What gets celebrated or criticised in (or after) meetings? The underlying collective mindset determines the emotional and psychological climate of the organisation.
4. Collective Exterior (Systems & Structures)
The rules, processes, and incentives within an organisation either reinforce or contradict the desired culture. If leadership promotes a collaborative environment but rewards individual performance over teamwork, the system itself is misaligned with the intended culture.
*Key Influence: Systems Alignment – Culture is maintained when organisational structures support the desired values, ensuring that performance metrics, HR policies, and workflows are congruent with the intended culture.
What Maintains Culture?
Once established, culture is maintained through habit loops, reinforcement mechanisms, and alignment across all quadrants.
? Reinforcement Through Daily Interactions – Culture is sustained when behaviours are consistently modelled, rewarded, and repeated. That’s regardless of whether those behaviours are optimal or sub-optimal. When leaders actively recognise, coach, and challenge team members in alignment with cultural values, those values become ingrained.
? Structural Consistency – Policies, incentives, and hiring practices must support the desired cultural direction. For example, a company that values innovation cannot punish failure—doing so will stifle risk-taking and ultimately create a conservative approach to change.
? Self-Perpetuating Stories – The collective narratives people tell themselves and each other reinforce the culture. If a team believes it is “the best in the industry,” members will unconsciously act in ways that uphold that identity. If employees believe “nothing ever changes here,” they will stop pushing for growth.
? Leadership Alignment – A leader's mindset, actions, language, and expectations must be aligned. Any and all incongruence will count towards breaking down cultural cohesion.
What Changes Culture?
Culture shifts when one or more of the Integral Quadrants evolve (the more quadrants or perspectives that evolve, the more accelerated the cultural evolution):
?? Changing Individual Mindsets (Internal Shift)
?? Changing Behaviours (External Shift)
?? Changing Shared Narratives (Cultural Shift)
?? Changing Systems (Structural Shift)
Conclusion: Leading Cultural Transformation Intentionally
Culture is not "set and forget"—it must be intentionally cultivated, reinforced, and adapted. Organisations that thrive are those that:
?? Understand the Integral nature of culture, addressing mindsets, behaviours, narratives, and systems together. ?? Align leadership development, communication strategies, and incentive structures with the cultural vision. ?? Actively engage in coaching, feedback, and reflection to ensure cultural evolution aligns with organisational goals.
By taking an Integral+ approach, organisations and teams can create a culture that fosters engagement, innovation, and high performance—while adapting to change with agility.
At The Coaching Room, we work with leaders, teams, and elite coaches and athletes to develop high-performance cultures through developmental coaching, mental skills training, and leadership transformation. If you’re ready to take your culture to the next level, let’s start the conversation, either here or at The Coaching Room.