Welcome to Friday 411, issue #108. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll transform your team’s culture by reshaping your own habits.
1 Insight:
The culture of your company is shaped less by what you say and more by what you tolerate. If you want to fix your culture, start by taking a look at what you’ve been tolerating.
Jake is a first-time manager in a large company. He’s smart, eager to succeed, and well-liked by his team.
One of his team members, Sarah, is sweet and considerate, but she’s been missing deadlines for months.
At first, Jake said nothing. He didn’t want to seem harsh. Plus, Sarah always had a good reason—her dog was sick, her Wi-Fi was down, she misunderstood the due date. But over time, Jake noticed that other team members started missing deadlines, too.
Jake’s gut-punch moment happened one Friday when a project completely fell through. When his boss, Larry, asked what happened, Jake repeated the reasons his team had given him. Larry then reminded Jake that this wasn’t the first time they had missed critical deadlines.
Jake started to blame his teammates. Larry stopped him and shared one of his favorite quotes: “The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the [highest] leader is willing to tolerate.”
Jake sat silently while the quote — and its implications — sunk in. It hit him that he had built a culture of missed deadlines by allowing them to happen. He realized that it was his tolerance of poor behavior that was hurting the team, the company, and his own reputation.
There are five ways that leaders shape a healthy culture. The most overlooked of those five ways is that leaders shape culture by what they tolerate.
Maybe you’ve experienced the same pain Jake felt— the pain of realizing that you have tolerated poor behavior. Whether it’s missed deadlines, poor attitudes, ignoring safety protocols, showing up late for meetings, bullying co-workers, or mistreating customers, you have to face the truth: every culture devolves to the worst behavior you—the leader—are willing to tolerate.
If you, like Jake, realize that you need to change the way you deal with certain behaviors, transformation takes five steps. These five steps will move the culture in the direction you want:
Step 1: Determine What’s at Stake
Before taking action, leaders need to ask: What will happen if I let this continue?
Jake did this and realized:
- Projects would continue to be late.
- His team’s trust in him would fade.
- His reputation with senior leaders would diminish.
- The company would waste or lose money on rework and delays.
Envision the unintended results of continuing to tolerate destructive behavior.
Step 2: Decide If It’s Okay to Keep Tolerating the Behavior
Once you’ve identified the consequences of continued tolerance, you have a decision to make: Is it okay to continue tolerating the behavior?
Jake realized he had avoided awkward conversations with Sarah simply because they made him feel uncomfortable. As a result of his inaction, what he tolerated became contagious. He had to choose between:
- Staying quiet and letting the problem spread
- Or speaking up and risking discomfort for a better future.
Unintentional culture always becomes unhealthy.
Step 3: Prevent the Behavior from Happening
This is your proactive plan—how you stop a behavior before it occurs. Decide how you can address it and begin replacing bad habits with good ones.
Jake called a team meeting and owned up to his mistake.
He said, “I’ve been too quiet about missed deadlines, and that’s caused confusion. From here on out, we’re resetting expectations. If you’re going to miss a deadline, you need to tell me and everyone affected by it at least 48 hours in advance. Otherwise, it’s considered a missed commitment.”
Then he made it even clearer:
- He explained that the first missed deadline would earn a warning, the second a specific consequence.
- He created a shared spreadsheet with all deadlines.
- He added a column for “Status Updates.”
- He set weekly 10-minute check-ins to keep things on track.
Now everyone understood the expectations and consequences of not meeting them. His team started enjoying giving status updates, celebrating progress, and asking each other for help if they were struggling to meet a deadline.
Step 4: Respond When You See the Behavior
Even if you immediately address a problem behavior, you can be sure of one thing: that same behavior will pop up again. When leaders tolerate undesirable actions for a while, it takes time to change it.
This step is your reactive plan—what you’ll do the next time the behavior shows up. You can pre-decide how you will handle the situation the when you see it.
Jake took a simple, clear approach. Here’s what he did when Sarah missed her next deadline:
- He asked her to step into his office for a quick chat.
- He said:
“I know I’ve let a lot of deadlines slide these last few months. That’s on me. But we can’t keep operating this way. It’s hurting your reputation, our team, and the company. You missed the deadline for the client proposal last Thursday. Can you get that to me by the end of today?”
Sarah assured him she would.
Then he added: “One last thing—when I said this is on me, I meant it. I’ve tolerated this behavior, and that’s my mistake. But if you miss another deadline you’ve committed to, that will be on you.”
Jake reminded Sarah of the consequence of strike two.
By pre-deciding what he was going to do, he could take immediate action when it came up. He knew that every person who missed a deadline would hear the same message.
Step 5: Reinforce the Right Behavior
Whatever gets reinforced and rewarded gets repeated.
Identify ways you can draw attention to and celebrate progress.
Jake decided to:
- Praise team members in meetings when they hit tough deadlines.
- Send short thank-you emails to people who stayed on track.
His team noticed. They felt seen. And things started turning around.
1 Action:
Make a list of 1-2 behaviors you’ve been tolerating and follow these five steps to change your culture today.