Your Organisation Is Watching the Leadership Team

In this October article we explore how leadership teams set the standard for organisational culture.

Whether they realise it or not, every Executive Leadership Team (ELT) is sending messages to the organisation every day.

Not just through what they say, but through what they do, the decisions they make, and the behaviours they demonstrate.

People are watching, listening and learning.

When I start working with a leadership team, one of the areas we explore is the impact their collective behaviour has on the broader organisation. It is a conversation that often creates some interesting reflections.

We tend to think about leadership in terms of our individual responsibilities, how we lead our people, deliver results and contribute to the organisation. However, there is another dimension that is just as important.

What does the organisation learn from watching us operate as a leadership team?

Behaviours Speak Louder Than Words

Most organisations have a set of values and expectations about how people should work together. We talk about accountability, collaboration, respect, trust and openness.

But what happens when the leadership team doesn't consistently demonstrate these behaviours?

We ask people to speak up, yet become defensive when someone challenges our thinking. We encourage accountability, yet find it difficult to acknowledge our own mistakes. We promote collaboration, yet make decisions based primarily on what is best for our individual function.

And sometimes, we feel we need to have all the answers, rather than being comfortable saying, "I don't know."

Showing vulnerability, acknowledging mistakes and being open about uncertainty are not signs of weak leadership. They demonstrate the very behaviours we often want to see across our organisations.

If we want our people to behave differently, we need to demonstrate what that looks like.

The Symbols We Send

Leadership teams also communicate through symbols. These are the visible actions and choices that tell people what is genuinely valued.

Consider work-life balance.

An organisation might actively promote wellbeing and encourage employees to maintain a healthy balance between work and life. Yet members of the ELT regularly work late into the night, send emails at all hours, or expect people to travel on weekends without recognising the impact on their personal time.

What message does this send?

Regardless of what the organisation says about wellbeing, employees may conclude that being available at all hours is what is really expected if they want to succeed.

What we tolerate, reward and demonstrate often carries more weight than what we communicate.

And it is not just about working hours. Who gets recognised? Which meetings take priority? How do leaders respond when things go wrong? Do we make time to celebrate success, or simply move on to the next challenge?

These everyday actions create powerful signals about the organisation's culture.

Systems Reinforce What Really Matters

Then there are the systems and processes we put in place.

We might encourage collaboration across the organisation, yet have KPIs that reward individual functions rather than collective outcomes.

We talk about empowerment and accountability, yet require the CEO to approve every travel request, even when the expenditure is already within an agreed budget.

We want people to be efficient and focused, yet continue to introduce systems and processes that make their work more complicated.

Our systems can either reinforce the behaviours we want or quietly undermine them.

This is where leadership teams need to look beyond their individual areas of responsibility and consider the organisation as a whole.

Are our decisions, processes and measures aligned with the culture we say we want to create?

The Leadership Team Sets the Standard

The dynamics within an ELT rarely stay within the meeting room.

If leaders operate in silos, their teams are likely to do the same. If disagreements are avoided at the leadership table, difficult conversations may be avoided throughout the organisation. If decisions are revisited or challenged outside the meeting room, people quickly learn that agreement doesn't necessarily mean commitment.

Equally, when an ELT demonstrates trust, constructive challenge, collective accountability and genuine support for one another, these behaviours can flow through the organisation.

The leadership team becomes a living example of what is expected.

This doesn't mean the ELT needs to be perfect. Far from it. People don't expect perfection, but they do notice authenticity, consistency and the willingness to acknowledge when things could have been handled better.

A Question for Your Leadership Team

At your next leadership team meeting, take a moment to consider:

• What behaviours are we demonstrating that we would like to see more of across the organisation?

• What messages might our actions, decisions and systems be sending that are different from what we intend?

• If our people were to describe what really matters in this organisation, based purely on watching us, what would they say?

These questions may not always be comfortable, but they matter. Culture is shaped less by what leaders say than by what they consistently demonstrate.

Your organisation is watching. What is it learning?