How Leaders Shape Organisational Culture — One Way of Being at a Time
Updated June 2026
How Leaders Shape Organisational Culture — One Way of Being at a Time
There's a question I find myself returning to again and again with executive coaching clients:
How are you being — right now, in this moment — and what is that making possible or impossible for the people around you?
It sounds simple. It isn't. But the answer to that question, I've come to believe, is one of the most powerful levers a leader has for shaping organisational culture.
Meet Sarah
Sarah was the COO of a mid-sized financial services company. By any conventional measure, she was doing well — respected, results-driven, consistently delivering. But something wasn't working.
Her team, she told me, felt distant. Meetings were polite but flat. People did what was asked of them and not much more. Innovation was scarce. When she asked for input, she got silence — or worse, hollow agreement.
"I don't understand it," she said. "I'm approachable. I have an open door policy. Why won't they just talk to me?"
As we began to explore what was actually happening — not just in her thinking, but in her emotional state and in her body — a different picture emerged.
Sarah was anxious. Not visibly, not dramatically — but underneath the composed, professional exterior, she was operating from a constant low-level fear of things going wrong. Of losing control. Of being caught out. And that anxiety, invisible to her, was entirely visible to her team.
It showed up in the way she asked questions — with an edge that felt like interrogation rather than curiosity. In the way she held herself in meetings — tight, forward-leaning, scanning for problems. In the way she responded to new ideas — with an almost imperceptible frown, a slight pulling back, a "yes but" that landed like a door closing.
Nobody had ever told her this. But her team felt it every single day.
What Is Organisational Culture, Really?
In ontological coaching, we understand organisational culture as the collective way of being of the people within an organisation — and particularly of its leaders.
A "way of being" is the coming together of three interconnected dimensions:
Language — the words we use, the conversations we have, the stories we tell and the ones we listen for
Emotions and moods — the emotional atmosphere we inhabit and generate around us
Body — our posture, our gestures, our physical presence and the signals our body sends to others
These three dimensions are deeply interconnected. Change one and you shift all three. And crucially — how a leader shows up in these three dimensions ripples outward into the entire organisation.
The Leader as Cultural Architect
Think about the two leaders described below and consider what kind of culture each one is creating:
Leader A approaches their team with genuine curiosity. They trust people to make decisions. They welcome input, acknowledge uncertainty and respond to mistakes with a focus on learning rather than blame. Their body is open and relaxed. Their emotional tone is calm and engaged.
Leader B is anxious about their position. They guard information, second-guess their team and react to problems with tightness and self-protection. Their questions carry an edge. Their presence contracts the room.
Neither leader may be conscious of what they're doing. But their teams feel it — every day, in every interaction. And over time, those daily interactions become the culture.
This is what makes leadership way of being so significant. Culture isn't built through strategy documents or values statements pinned to the wall. It's built through the accumulated impact of how leaders show up — moment by moment, meeting by meeting, conversation by conversation.
Back to Sarah
As Sarah began to develop awareness of her own way of being — the anxiety underneath the composure, the physical tension she carried into every meeting, the questions that landed as interrogation — something shifted.
She started experimenting. She began meetings differently — with a genuine check-in rather than diving straight into the agenda. She practiced noticing when her body was contracting and consciously opening her posture. She started responding to new ideas with curiosity before evaluation.
The changes were small. The impact was not.
Within a few months, her team's energy had shifted noticeably. Meetings became more alive. People started offering ideas without being asked. The "open door" that had always been technically open now felt genuinely welcoming — because the person behind it had changed.
Questions Worth Living With
If you're a leader who wants to contribute to a stronger, more resourceful organisational culture, these are the questions I'd invite you to sit with regularly:
About your way of being:
What is happening in my language right now — in my thoughts and in what I'm saying out loud?
What mood or emotion am I operating from?
What is my body doing — where am I tense, contracted, open, relaxed?
What is my way of being making possible for the people around me — and what might it be closing off?
About your impact:
How are my actions as a leader shaping the culture around me?
What would I like my impact to be?
What would need to shift in my own way of being for that to happen?
The Good News
Culture change doesn't require a restructure, a new strategy or an expensive consultant. It starts with a single leader becoming genuinely curious about their own way of being — and willing to shift it.
That's where leadership coaching can make a real difference. Not by telling you what kind of leader to be — but by helping you see clearly how you're showing up, and supporting you to make the changes that matter.
You might also find these useful:
Between Stimulus and Response: How to Stop Reacting and Start Choosing
Composure: The Courage to Tolerate Discomfort
If you'd like to explore how your own way of being might be shaping the culture around you — and what a shift might make possible — I'd love to have a conversation.
Find out more about leadership coaching here or get in touch for a complimentary chemistry session.