Leadership Lives in Context: Shaping Culture with Intention

A leadership team gathers to navigate uncertainty, emphasizing open dialogue, shared understanding, and intentional decision-making that shapes organizational culture.

by Bego Lozano, PCC

Right now, every leader I talk to is under pressure and navigating disruption. Between geopolitical uncertainty, the unknowns of how AI will impact both the day to day and the future, and layoffs happening across industries, leaders are facing increased pressure to be a guidepost for their teams. In my experience, when pressure increases, culture does not stay neutral. It either holds, or it starts to fray in ways that are hard to see until the damage is done. Leaders shape the culture of teams, organizations, and companies, whether they are intentional about it or not. Leadership does not exist in a vacuum, or only on the org charts. Leadership exists in a context, and that context is often the culture.

The question is not whether you are shaping culture: you are. The question is whether you are doing it with intention and purpose.

Where culture actually lives

Culture does not live in the employee handbook or the job descriptions. As Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker wrote in School Culture Rewired, "the culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate." I would add that it also lives in what is rewarded, what is avoided, and what emerges under pressure. In short, it lives in the things we do and don't do every day.

The gap between what leaders say and what they do is where culture actually gets defined. If you say you value innovation but shut down new ideas, or if you don't tolerate mistakes made while learning, the real message is that you value stability over experimentation. People are very good at reading that gap, even when nobody names it out loud.

Many leaders think culture just happens, like the weather. Something to observe and describe. But leaders have far more agency than they often realize. Every decision, every reaction, every silence is a lever they are already pulling, consciously or not.

When a meeting runs long because people ramble without purpose, the message is that time doesn't matter here. When you don't address an employee who consistently misses deadlines, the message is that commitments are flexible. When you reward individual heroics over team collaboration, you are telling people what actually counts.

What gets left unsaid

Some of the most powerful cultural forces in any organization are invisible. They are not in the meeting notes or the performance reviews. They live in what people know but don't say.

Elizabeth Morrison and Frances Milliken's research on organizational silence found that employees routinely withhold information about problems, concerns, and ideas. They do this not because they don't care, but because they have learned, often through experience, that speaking up carries risk. The culture and the system taught them to stay quiet.

Think about your own team. Are there topics that never come up in meetings, even though everyone is thinking about them? Are there conversations that happen in the hallway or on Slack/Teams but never in the room? Are there things people tell you privately that they would never say out loud in a group? That silence is data.

When leaders consistently sidestep certain topics, skip difficult conversations, or accept "everything is fine" at face value, they teach their teams what is discussable and what is not. Over time, those unspoken rules become part of the culture, and they are very hard to undo. You cannot lead what you cannot see or name. And in times of disruption, when organizations most need honest information to flow freely, silence is particularly costly.

Helping people make sense of uncertainty

Even when people are speaking up, uncertainty creates another challenge: interpretation. In periods of disruption, employees naturally try to make sense of what is happening around them. When information is limited, people fill the gaps with assumptions, speculation, or worst-case scenarios. In many cases, uncertainty itself is less damaging than the stories people create to explain it.

Leaders do not need to have every answer. They do need to provide context. Being transparent about what is known, what is still unfolding, and what principles will guide decisions gives people something stable to hold onto. As Karl Weick's work on sensemaking suggests, people look to leaders for cues on how to interpret complex situations. The way leaders frame uncertainty becomes part of the culture itself, influencing whether people respond with confidence, curiosity, or fear.

Leading with intention

The gap between words and actions becomes most visible under pressure. How you show up when you are not hitting your numbers, when a key client is unhappy, when the team is overwhelmed, that is the culture your team actually experiences. This is where leaders lose credibility or earn it.

The shift from passive to active culture-shaping starts with awareness. You cannot change what you do not notice. Begin by asking yourself some honest questions:

• What behaviors am I tolerating that I should be addressing?

• What am I rewarding, formally and informally?

• What topics does my team avoid, and why?

• How do I behave when I am stressed or under pressure?

• Is what I am doing consistent with what I say I believe?

Most leaders who sit with these questions find the same thing: they already know the answers. There is a conversation they have been postponing. A behavior from a high performer they have been excusing. A topic that disappears every time it comes close to the surface. Awareness does not require a diagnostic or a consultant. It starts with being honest about what you already know but have not yet named.

Edgar Schein spent decades studying how leaders embed culture. His findings are practical. Leaders shape culture through what they pay attention to and measure, how they respond to critical incidents and crises, what they reward and who they promote, and how consistently their actions match their words.

Each one of these is a daily choice. If you open every meeting asking about numbers but never ask how the team is doing, people learn what matters. If you promote someone who delivers results but leaves a trail of damaged relationships, people learn what actually gets rewarded. If you ask for honest feedback but get defensive when it arrives, people learn to stop giving it.

Awareness is where the shift begins. Once you notice a pattern, you can choose differently. And if you catch yourself after the fact, not just in what you said, but in what you did, what you rewarded, what you allowed, that counts too. Noticing after the moment is still noticing. Keep doing it. Awareness precedes choice, and choice precedes change. Each time you choose differently, you are changing something. Over time, those choices add up. That is how culture shifts, in a team, a department, an organization.

The choice is yours

Culture gets shaped either way. The only question is whether you are doing it deliberately or by default.

In uncertain times, the leaders who help their teams navigate best are not necessarily the ones with the clearest roadmap. They are the ones who create cultures where honest conversations happen, where people feel safe to raise concerns, and where behaviors align with values.

The leaders who do this work build organizations where people thrive, results are delivered, and change becomes manageable.

At SZH Consulting, we work alongside leaders and organizations to make that shaping intentional. If you are ready to look honestly at the culture you are creating and lead with greater purpose, we would love to be part of that conversation.

If you're ready to take a closer look at the culture you're creating, strengthen leadership effectiveness, or explore how intentional organizational design can support your strategy, we'd welcome the opportunity to connect. Reach out to us at info@szhconsulting.com or visit www.szhconsulting.com to learn more about how we can support your organization.

Primary Sources

Gruenert, S., & Whitaker, T. (2015). School Culture Rewired: How to Define, Assess, and Transform It. ASCD.

Morrison, E. W., & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 706-725.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.