Own the Culture: The Leadership Work No One Can Delegate
- Kimberley Mackenzie
- Jan 14
- 4 min read
Culture isn’t built in retreats or revealed in strategy documents. It shows up on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in how a leader responds to tension, uncertainty, or a mistake. It lives in the small, repeated moments that quietly teach people what is safe, what is valued, and what is expected.
This is the heart of OWN the Culture in the FLOW Framework. Culture is not something leaders influence from a distance. It is something they actively create, every day, whether they mean to or not.
Culture Is Behaviour, Not Branding
Peter Drucker is often quoted for saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast. What tends to get missed is the deeper meaning behind that line. Culture is not aspirational. It is behavioural.
It is shaped less by what leaders say and far more by what they tolerate, reward, and repeat.
When people talk about culture, they often point to values statements or carefully crafted language on a website. In practice, culture is revealed in moments like these:
What happens when someone makes a mistake
Whether dissent is welcomed or quietly punished
How power shows up in meetings
Who is interrupted and who is listened to
Over time, these moments accumulate. They become the system. And that system either supports people to do their best work or slowly drains energy, trust, and creativity.
What You Tolerate Becomes the Culture
One of the hardest truths about leadership is this: behaviour that continues is behaviour that has been permitted.
Leaders often tell me they value respect, collaboration, and inclusion, yet they avoid addressing a colleague who consistently undermines others or dominates the room. The hesitation is understandable. Conflict is uncomfortable. But silence is not neutral.
When harmful behaviour goes unaddressed, people learn very quickly what actually matters. They learn whose comfort is prioritized, whose voice carries weight, and where the real boundaries are.
Owning the culture sometimes means choosing short-term discomfort in service of long-term trust. It means being willing to have the conversation that signals care for the whole system, not just the loudest or most powerful voice within it.
Psychological Safety Is Not a “Soft” Issue
Research from Adam Grant consistently shows that teams do better work when people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, and challenge ideas.
One of the most helpful distinctions he makes is between performance cultures and learning cultures.
In performance cultures, people are rewarded for looking competent. In learning cultures, people are rewarded for being curious.
That difference shows up in everyday leadership behaviours:
Do leaders ask real questions, or only the kind that signal they already know the answer?
Is feedback treated as useful information or as a personal threat?
Are mistakes seen as data or as failures?
Psychological safety does not lower standards. It creates the conditions where people can actually meet them.
Why Owning the Culture Is Often Harder for Women
This work can be particularly complex for women in leadership.
In Character Driven Leadership, Kathy Archer writes about the extra scrutiny women face when they lead. Women are often navigating a narrower path, where the same behaviour can be interpreted very differently depending on who is displaying it. Confidence can be labelled as arrogance. Compassion can be mistaken for weakness. Setting boundaries can be seen as a lack of commitment.
As Kathy notes, women are frequently expected to both perform and prove, while also carrying relational and emotional labour that often goes unnamed. The result is that women leaders are doing the work of culture more visibly, and often more carefully, because the consequences of missteps are higher.
Owning the culture, then, is not just about modelling values. It is about navigating systems that were not always designed with women in mind, while still choosing to lead with integrity, clarity, and care.
That reality does not make the work optional. It makes it courageous.
Leaders Set the Emotional Weather
Whether they realize it or not, leaders act as emotional barometers. Their tone, pace, and presence ripple outward.
When leaders are rushed, reactive, or constantly operating from urgency, teams absorb that energy. Stress becomes normalized. Exhaustion starts to feel like the cost of belonging.
When leaders pause, listen, and respond with intention, something else happens. Conversations slow down. Trust grows. Better thinking emerges.
This is where OWN the Culture overlaps with WORK for Wellbeing. How leaders show up emotionally is not a personal style choice. It is a cultural force.
Culture Is a Daily Leadership Practice
Peter Drucker believed management was a moral responsibility. Leaders are stewards of people, not just outcomes. Culture, in that sense, is not an initiative to roll out or a committee to strike.
It is a daily practice.
Owning the culture means paying attention to patterns. It means noticing what behaviours are rewarded, which ones are ignored, and which ones quietly erode trust. It also means being willing to look inward.
More often than not, culture doesn’t need fixing “out there.” It asks something of leadership first.
A Practical Place to Start
If culture feels overwhelming, start small. Real change rarely begins with sweeping declarations. It begins with one intentional shift.
You might reflect on:
One behaviour I will model more consistently
One behaviour I will no longer tolerate
One way I will make it safer for people to speak honestly this week
Culture is not shaped in the big moments alone. It is built in the everyday.
And that is where leadership truly lives.
I work with organizations and leaders who really want to level up and find FLOW for themselves or with their teams. If you would like to chat about your workplace culture I would love to have a virtual coffee date with you. You can book time with me here.
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