The Role of the CEO in creating Culture

by: Steven Bowman
Copyright 2008 by Conscious Governance.
All rights reserved. You may forward this in its entirety to anyone you wish.

Culture is a term that is often used to describe the underlying working environment of an organisation, yet there is much mystique and misidentification of what actually makes up "culture" and how it is created. The culture of an organisation is routinely created from the verbal and nonverbal messages expressed by the CEO and leadership team about how people are expected to behave, what is important, what is valued, and what people have to do to fit in and be rewarded. Most organizational cultures, in our view, are formed unconsciously by the CEO and leadership team and habitually sustained by employees and stakeholders. In working with numerous organisations from a diverse range of industries, we observe that in most organisations the CEO and leadership team are often unaware of the messages they display and express. Our point of view is that culture is something that can be consciously influenced and crafted by the CEO.

The culture of an organisation powerfully shapes the identity and behavioral norms for the employees and stakeholders. It influences the employee’s enthusiasm and impetus. The culture of an organisation can be either expanding energy or sapping energy, depending on whether it is conscious, unconscious or anti-conscious. A truly conscious organisation is one where the CEO chooses to embrace a culture of consciousness and aims to operate consciously across the broad spectrum of the business concerns – from strategic planning, to recruiting, to operating systems and processes, to developing the vision that guides the organisation. The conscious CEO creates a balanced integration of organizational vision, strategic and operational realities by encouraging and nurturing higher levels of conscious behaviour and attitude among staff and stakeholders.

The CEO is the Single Greatest Potential Influence on the Organizational Culture

The CEO can provide conscious and aware leadership and thus create a conscious culture of awareness and innovation, or can provide unconscious leadership and watch a series of subcultures be created around them, possibly without even being aware of them, or in fact can provide anti-conscious leadership and create a culture of fear and blame.

The culture of an organisation that has a conscious CEO is characterized by a focus on integrity, trust, creativity, intuition, innovation, freedom, flexibility and generosity. The culture is one which searches to create conditions for cohesion, community spirit, and mutual accountability, and that recognizes the importance of strategic alliances with suppliers and customers. There is a shift from control to trust, fear to truth, privilege to equality, and fragmentation to unity. The conscious CEO knows what culture they want, and establishes the processes to ensure that the culture is implemented.

The culture created by an unconscious CEO is characterized by hierarchical power structures, a strong emphasis on quality and process, very busy being busy with a general unawareness of what is influencing decisions, actions and feelings related to the results, a general lack of creativity and an unwillingness to uncreate and destroy form and structure. One of the indicators of an unconscious CEO is when many subcultures have been created within the organisation.

The culture created by an anti-conscious CEO is typically autocratic, uncaring, fear driven with attempts to control everything. There is a general underlying fear of invalidation and reprisals, and a distinct lack of sharing of information. The culture is one of what is right or wrong, good or bad, and is typified by the “you are either with me or against me” point of view. This environment is a major incubator for the CEO Syndrome, where staff will only provide information they know the CEO is able to accept, and will go to great lengths to filter, manipulate or hide information they perceive will cause a reaction (see link to Conscious CEO article

If you choose to be a conscious CEO, then how might you go about creating the culture you perceive is most expansive for your organisation? From experience we have found that leaders have a number of key responsibilities in developing a culture that can provide expansiveness to their organisation and people if applied consciously.

Related Reading: The Five Conscious CEO Practices for Developing Culture

About the author: Steven Bowman is an international speaker, best-selling author and global leader in providing practical frameworks and comprehensive approaches to assist Boards and Senior Executive Teams to reach higher levels of conscious awareness in governance, leadership, strategy and risk. Authors of Conscious Leadership-the Key to Success, and Leading Yourself to Money with Consciousness.

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