The Culture Nobody Talks About: What Employees Learn by Watching Leaders

Employees may be hired into an organisation’s culture, but they often grow into their manager’s habits.

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I have been dealing with an interesting workplace challenge for some time now. Despite repeated communication and efforts to encourage employees to work from the office, attendance in some teams remains below 30%. Initially, one might assume that employees are reluctant to return.

However, my observations suggest something different. In some cases, managers who expect their teams to be in the office are themselves not coming regularly. Interestingly, within the same organisation, other teams attend consistently because their leaders do, without HR having to intervene or send reminders.

The organisation is the same, the policy is broadly the same and the expectations are similar. Yet the behaviour is different. What changed? The leader. It reminded me of something we have discussed for decades but perhaps have not paid enough attention to in practice. Employees learn culture by observing their leaders, often more than by listening to what they are told.

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Culture Is Experienced More Than It Is Communicated

I have always believed that culture is far more personal than we acknowledge. Organisations invest considerable time defining values, communicating expectations and creating frameworks around culture. While these efforts have their place, an employee’s everyday experience is significantly influenced by the person they report to.

Two employees working for the same organisation can experience completely different cultures because their managers operate differently. One may experience trust, accountability and respect, while another encounters uncertainty, inconsistent expectations and poor communication.

Also Read: How to Foster a Culture of Fulfillment and Achievement

Gallup’s research suggests that managers account for approximately 70% of the variance in team engagement. This reinforces how strongly the immediate manager influences the employee experience. We spend considerable time discussing culture at the organisational level, but perhaps we need to pay equal attention to what happens within individual teams.

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“An organisation may define its culture, but employees often learn what it really means from their immediate leaders.”

People Follow What They See, Not Always What They Hear

We often hear that children learn more from watching their parents than from listening to their instructions. I see a similar pattern in workplaces. If a manager is consistently late for meetings, punctuality gradually loses importance. If a manager frequently overcommits and misses deadlines, employees may begin to consider delayed delivery acceptable.

Similarly, when leaders communicate casually, avoid difficult conversations or refuse to take ownership, those behaviours can become normalised. The reverse is equally true. A manager who honours commitments, communicates clearly, respects time and accepts responsibility creates a different environment.

We have spoken about walking the talk for years. Perhaps the challenge is that we continue to treat it as an exceptional leadership quality when it should be a basic responsibility. Employees observe behaviours even when nobody is consciously teaching them. Over time, repeated behaviours become accepted practices, and accepted practices gradually become the team’s culture.

DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025 reported that only 29% of respondents expressed trust in their immediate managers, a substantial decline from 2022. This raises an important question.

Are employees losing trust because organisations are failing to communicate their values, or because their everyday experiences do not consistently reflect those values? While the answer may differ, leadership behaviour deserves closer examination.

Accountability, Ownership and What Leaders Choose to Tolerate

Accountability is among the most frequently discussed expectations in organisations. We expect employees to take ownership, meet commitments, manage time and deliver results. But what happens when managers do not demonstrate these behaviours?

Consider someone who expects timely delivery but frequently delays approvals, or demands advance leave planning while making last-minute changes without considering the team’s commitments. Employees notice these inconsistencies and gradually distinguish between what is officially expected and what is actually practised.

Culture is also shaped by what leaders choose to ignore. When disrespectful communication goes unaddressed, employees learn something. When repeated missed commitments have no consequences, they learn something else.

When good work is overlooked but poor behaviour from a high performer is tolerated, the message becomes stronger. None of these lessons requires a formal announcement. Silence can communicate approval, even when approval was never intended.

Research published by MIT Sloan found that toxic workplace culture was approximately 10 times more powerful than compensation in predicting employee attrition during the Great Resignation period studied in 2021. This should make organisations reconsider the cost of overlooking everyday behaviours.

Poor communication, inconsistent accountability and unfair treatment may appear to be isolated managerial issues, but their consequences extend to engagement, retention and organisational credibility.

What leaders repeatedly tolerate can become as influential as what they repeatedly demonstrate.

Communication plays an equally important role. A manager who listens patiently, provides constructive feedback and explains decisions encourages a certain standard of interaction. Small behaviours such as acknowledging emails, respecting planned leave, giving credit, admitting mistakes and communicating changes in advance collectively determine whether employees feel respected. People also learn how to treat one another by observing how their leaders treat others.

From Compliance to Conviction

Returning to my original example of office attendance, I have increasingly realised that policies and reminders can influence compliance, but leadership behaviour can influence willingness.

When employees see their manager consistently following an expectation, they understand that it is genuine and shared. Of course, legitimate personal circumstances must be considered, and individual accountability remains important. However, organisations should not have to depend entirely on HR intervention to reinforce behaviours that managers themselves can demonstrate.

Perhaps the most important question leaders should ask is not simply, “What culture do I want in my team?” but “If my team started behaving exactly the way I behave, would I be satisfied with the culture we create?”

Every manager influences culture through decisions, conversations, reactions and everyday conduct. Employees contribute through their own choices, making culture a shared responsibility rather than merely an organisational instruction.

Culture is not created only during town halls, leadership meetings or engagement initiatives. It is created when somebody keeps a commitment, takes responsibility, communicates respectfully, acknowledges a mistake or chooses to do the right thing when nobody is watching.

Employees may forget what leaders repeatedly tell them, but they rarely miss what leaders repeatedly do.

Perhaps the culture nobody talks about is the one we are teaching every day without realising that we are teaching it.