289: Leadership Choices That Define Your Culture

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:01]:

If you’re tuning in to the podcast in real time, then a very happy New Year to you. This is my first episode that I’m recording in 2026. There are some upcoming interview based episodes. They were all recorded quite a bit in advance, and the solo episodes I typically do much closer to the release time, which means that I can take into consideration any trends that I’m seeing out there, anything like that. So, so a very happy New Year to you. And I also wanted to add this. The date that I’m recording this is the 7th of January, and Larry David has this saying that you cannot wish people Happy new year after the 7th of January. He says it’s already passed.

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:41]:

That’s Larry David from Curb youb Enthusiasm. And I know there are a few Curb fans out there listening today, so I wanted to share that as well. Do you think it’s too late to wish people a happy new year after the 7th of January? I certainly don’t. I will continue to wish people Happy New Year probably well into January, especially if I haven’t seen them. If you are a leader who talks an awful lot about positive workplace culture, but you’re still seeing people hesitate, you’re still seeing a sense of disengagement and people not really stepping up and taking full ownership for what it is that they are responsible for, then today’s episode will really resonate with you. It is written with you in mind. So. So bear that in mind as we go through today’s episode.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:30]:

When I am working with leaders in global organizations, one of the things that I see a lot, one of the biggest mistakes I see is defining culture as something that employees experience, as if leaders don’t have any role to play in how that culture is experienced. I suppose one of the shifts that I think we need to make collectively is thinking about the role that leaders play in shaping the culture as people experience it. So rather than thinking of culture as something that’s quite separate or something that people just experience, it’s thinking about what active role can I play as a leader in designing the culture that I would like to be part of. I’m not going to go wild into definitions of what culture is and what culture is not, but think about what culture actually means to you and what it doesn’t mean, and maybe how it’s being perceived. So for me, culture is not your value slide that you present when someone joins the organization, or when you have a team meeting, or when you’re presenting externally, or when you have clients. That is not what culture is about culture is not about the results from your engagement survey. It might give you some clues into how the culture is perceived, but that is not what your culture is either. Your culture also, also is not about the energy in the room on a good day.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:54]:

At its very basic. Your culture is what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated at work, and the kinds of things that get repeated, especially when the pressure is on. And I know there’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of changes, there’s a lot of talk of AI. All of these things happen, but your culture still exists. And your culture exists when the pressure is on as well. And especially when. When the pressure is on is when culture becomes even more important. I say all of this not to lay blame for anyone.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:27]:

It’s not actually your fault oftentimes. And I talk about this in my upcoming book, Thriving Talent. Oftentimes it’s a result of us being unintentional as leaders and the kind of culture that we would like to create. And we let things slide or we tolerate the wrong things. We don’t speak up or we don’t allow others to speak up. So. So it’s not your fault what’s going on around you. And I’m not saying this to lay blame, like I said, on anyone.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:55]:

And the culture doesn’t emerge as a result of people not caring about what they do or about the organization or about the other people in the organization. The thing I hear most when people leave an organization, and this has been my own experience, and I know a lot of other people have had this experience, the thing that people miss most is, is the people. So they care about the other people. But oftentimes our culture unintentionally slides into this kind of toxic, negative territory. And I will cover this on the next solo episode. I’ll be going on a deeper dive into toxic workplace cultures. But I wanted to reassure you that it’s not your fault. It’s oftentimes the system that we are operating in that gives mixed signals.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:44]:

So as an example of this would be talking about, well, being while having the expectation that people work 70, 80 hours a week, not giving people breaks, or not being a role model for showing what it looks like to take time off or to take proper breaks or to leave work on time. Now, many people ask me why I wrote the book in the first place. And if I’m being brutally honest, I’ve wanted to write a book since I was very, very young. And when I was younger, that looked like novel and probably leaning more towards the Chick lit side of things. I’m a bit more interested in crime novels these days. But as my career grew, I knew that I really wanted to write a business book. I didn’t know yet what that business book might have looked like. And based on the research I did for my masters, I came up with my Thriving Talent framework.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:41]:

And the book Thriving Talent is based all around the framework. And so the framework is about having a foundation of psychological safety. And here’s a little extra information for you. I have an upcoming episode, hasn’t been recorded yet, with a very special guest all about psychological safety. And she is a world renowned expert in the area. And so I’m not going to talk about psychological safety today, but I am going to have a deep dive with her on the podcast. So foundation of psychological safety then we have three pillars. The first pillar is workplace culture, which is what I’m talking about today and in the next solo episode.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:18]:

So today is all about positive workplace culture. The next one is all about toxic workplace culture and how we unintentionally create that toxic workplace culture. Then the second pillar is all about our drivers or our motivators at work. What are the things that really motivate us and how can we as leaders understand what those drivers are and create the conditions for people to really do their best work? The third pillar is capabilities. So that’s understanding what people’s unique capabilities are, what their strengths are, but also bringing that to a team level. How does the team interact? And also at an organizational level, how do we use AI? How do we bring people together who have complementary strengths? How do we remove some of the obstacles that are getting in the way of people doing their best work? The framework has a capstone of leadership. So that’s all about leaders behaviors and especially when it comes to leading ourselves. So as a leader, how do I lead myself first and then once I can lead myself, how can I expand that to be able to lead other people? So just a quick recap.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:25]:

We’ve got a foundation of psychological safety, we’ve got three pillars, culture, drivers and capabilities, and then a capstone of leadership. And that’s exactly how the book is laid out. As I mentioned, I have an upcoming episode that does a deeper dive into toxic workplace cultures. But I think it’s worth mentioning here that there is, you know, what actually happens. So leaders can have a tendency to over function. So they are taking up responsibility, they’re covering up for other people’s mistakes. And when you have an over functioner, then you, you are much more likely to have an under functioner at the other side. So you’re helping people, you’re enabling people to continue to under function.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:06]:

Another thing that happens is the high performers and usually people who are really highly engaged tend to be the ones who burn out. So the ones who are performing really well, the ones who are really into the organization, really into the work, they’re the ones who take on too much and they end up burning out. And maybe they’re the ones who are over functioning as well. Then let’s talk about feedback. So feedback tends to be on the polite side rather than the honest side because you haven’t created an environment of psychological safety. You haven’t made it safe for people to challenge what’s going on, to speak their minds and to say how things can be improved. And decision making slows down because people are afraid to take responsibility, they’re afraid to step up, they’re waiting for permission. I did a special episode about this before Christmas, all about me as an individual, but also others who have related to this episode this idea that we are waiting for permission and it’s okay that we don’t, we don’t have to ask for permission to do anything or everything.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:11]:

So go listen to that episode if that’s something that resonates or if you think that someone on your team might benefit from listening to that. There are also commercial implications. So most of the leaders that I work with, and my own background as well, is I’ve always worked in commercial roles and most of the leaders I work with are from that commercial side of the business. So either client facing or adjacent to those client facing roles. But oftentimes what I see in terms of the implications for this are missed opportunities with clients. So you might miss something because you’re focused somewhere else or things are not clear for you, or let’s face it, sometimes you just have too much on your plate or you’ve got to the stage where you’re close to burnout and you just don’t care anymore. So there’s missed opportunities, there’s inconsistent performance. So some once things are going really well and some once things are not so well and there’s this cycle of kind of, I was going to say boom and bust, but it’s the drought and the famine.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:10]:

So things go really, really well when maybe when the culture is positive and things then take a little bit of a turn, if people are closer to burnout, then it’s harder to get things over the line. And then there’s the higher attrition, especially of those people who you really cannot afford to lose. So the ones who are really good with clients, the ones who’ve been there a long time, have long standing relationships. Those are the kinds of people. And that was myself. I left roles that I had been in for a long time because exactly these things were happening to me. So the question that I want you to consider is what does your culture, you talk about this positive culture, but what does your culture make really easy? And what are the kinds of behaviors that your culture discourages? And I want you to think about this from your own perspective, from what you see, from the conversations that you have. And I want you to be really, really honest about this.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:01]:

It’s not from your surveys. It’s not, you know, the whisperings that you hear. It’s looking and observing and being really honest about what you see and telling it like it is and putting words to what it is that, you know, you see going on out there. This is not about what’s written. It’s not about what’s on the wall or in your email signature. It’s not about what people say when they’re in team meetings, about what the values are. This is really focused on how people are experiencing you or how people are experiencing the working environment. And it may be from conversations that you overhear, it may be from private conversations that you’ve had that cann be shared, but you know yourself what those conversations are.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:46]:

And from that position, that’s where you can start to look at, take a really good honest look at what is going on with the culture and how to elevate the culture and how to create a more positive culture. This kind of honesty will lead to much more insightful discussions than any sort of survey that you’re going to do. So if you’re able to create that kind of honesty, if you’re able to be honest with yourself, it will create those kinds of insights that you won’t get anywhere else. This kind of thinking so thinking about our workplace culture from a positive perspective and the steps that are needed in order to create that positive workplace culture, as well as looking at that toxic culture and how we unintentionally slide into that toxic culture and creating the conditions where people can do their very, very best work, where employees feel really fulfilled through the work that they do, leaders are focusing on people as well as results. So it’s not just about results and it’s not just about people, but it’s about both in tandem. These are exactly the kinds of things that I explore in my Thriving Talent book, I’m looking at culture as part of a wider system. So it’s not just culture on its own, it’s culture as part of this this wider system. My entire framework, which looks at other things like I mentioned, psychological safety, our motivators at work, our capabilities, and also leadership behaviors.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:19]:

As I mentioned, over the coming episodes, I’m going to dive deeper into each one of those elements and explore in a bit more detail what it means, what specific steps you can take, and give you a flavour for what the book is about without giving absolutely everything away. If you are interested in the book, you can check it out on thrivingtalentbook.com this episode is an invitation to stop treating positive culture as the goal, and to start seeing it as the outcome of deliberate leadership design.