What culture reveals that policies don’t

“My boss asked several times if I could use Grindr to seduce some of our clients. Was a joke at first - until it wasn’t”.

One thing I notice again and again in this work is the gap between what organisations say about inclusion and how their culture actually feels to the people working inside it.

Most large organisations have EDI policies - things like statements on their websites, internal guidance documents, even a full calendar of events around diversity. On paper, the intentions are there.

But culture shows up in much more intimate settings - it’s in the daily interactions where your boss repeatedly jokes about you being gay (as per the above example from the work I did for Pride in Leadership recently) or in the way that HR fobs you off as not taking a joke when you raise something like this.

Those moments rarely make it into formal reports, but they can undermine everything that an organisation says about itself across its policies, and they can shape how people really feel about being at work.

Culture matters more. And culture is shaped far more by leadership behaviour than by written guidance. In fact, it’s disproportionate - a hundred good things that a company does can be undermined by one that is not perceived to be in line with its values.

Another thing I notice is how closely people watch their leaders. When leaders model curiosity, fairness and respect, it gives people a reference point for how things are done. So when a leader can’t make a simple decision without having to escalate it, or when they cover their behinds just in case something doesn’t work out, it shows a lack of trust and limits innovation. When behaviour that undermines colleagues is ignored, that sends a signal too.

People notice what gets challenged, what gets laughed off, and what simply disappears without resolution. Over time those signals tell them whether inclusion is genuinely part of the culture - and they are safe to try out new ideas - or if it’s just something that is written down somewhere.

None of this work is straightforward. Organisations are made up of human beings. Good people say clumsy things sometimes, and managers don’t always get things right first time. But the organisations that make progress are usually the ones willing to look honestly at their culture, not just their documentation. We can think about how we do this another time :-)

With love

Claire

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