Coaching for culture change: Culture starts with leadership behaviour

If you're trying to shift culture in your organisation, the critical success factor is not the quality of your comms plan, the strength of your engagement strategy, or the number of culture workshops you have lined up. It’s not the values statement, the away day, or the shiny new initiatives.  The real lever that determines whether your culture change efforts gain traction or stall out is the day-to-day behaviour of your leaders. 

This is where most culture change efforts succeed or fail. Not in intention but in execution. Because culture is not what we say, it’s what we do. In particular, it's what leaders do. Yes, when the pressure’s on and when the stakes are high. But also day by day, moment by moment, small interaction by small interaction.  

How do leaders build culture? 

Leaders are always creating culture because people are always watching. Every leadership moment sends a signal, whether consciously or not, about what’s normal, what matters, and what gets rewarded or ignored. These moments shape your culture far more powerfully than any corporate narrative or values deck ever could. 

We define culture as...

“the patterns of behaviours that are encouraged, discouraged or tolerated by people and systems over time”

and those patterns are reinforced or disrupted most strongly by those in positions of power and influence. So, if you want to build a culture that’s truly aligned with your strategy, your leaders must model the behaviours that reflect it. 

The reality is that some of your leaders will do that naturally, without prompting. Their personality is just wired that way. And, others won’t. Not necessarily because they’re resistant to what you’re trying to do (though that might be the case), but often because the way they have formed as a leader – because of their personality, the leadership they’ve been exposed to, their habits and mindsets – is not perfectly formed to build the culture that you want to build. 

Certain behaviours produce certain cultures 

This is where leadership coaching becomes a strategic lever, not just a developmental perk. When you need to shift ingrained patterns of behaviour, which are often held in place by strong, deeply help mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs, you need a level of support that matches the challenge. 

Want more accountability? You need leaders who are explicit about commitments, who follow up, and who hold their teams to agreed standards without accepting excuses when people let them down. And they need to be willing to be held to these same standards.  

Want to see a more innovative, learning-focused culture? Then create psychological safety at the top. Signal that thoughtful risk-taking will be backed, not punished, when it doesn’t work. And leaders must demonstrate curiosity, share their mistakes, and reward others for being open and honest about what they’ve done that hasn’t worked.  

Trying to address burnout? Then leaders need to stop modelling overwork and rewarding chronic busyness as a proxy for impact.

None of this happens by accident. It happens by design. That design begins with helping leaders reflect on their default behaviours and consciously recalibrate. Do they know where their blind spots are around the behaviours you want to embed? Do they know how, accidentally, unconsciously, or when under pressure, they revert to other behaviours which undermine your efforts? 

 

How leadership coaching can help 

Coaching is one of the most effective ways to enable this shift, because it gives leaders the space they rarely have elsewhere: space to think deeply, to reflect without judgement, to examine the impact they’re having, and to test new ways of showing up. It creates the conditions for powerful questions to be asked and answered, questions like: What am I reinforcing, intentionally or not? What message does my behaviour send about what’s valued here? Am I actually leading in a way that reflects the culture we say we want? 

Crucially, leadership coaching also helps close the gap between intention and impact. That gap, in culture work, is where so many efforts quietly unravel. We often hear from leaders who say, “That’s not what I meant,” or “I didn’t realise that’s how I came across.” Coaching doesn’t just surface those blind spots; it helps leaders build the ability to turn those moments into conscious choices – to notice the impulse, react a certain way, and to pause, then choose the best response, in the moment.  

This is a very real step in personal growth for many leaders, and coaching is one of the best ways to make it happen. It’s a space to think about how ‘I’ must change, before the things around me will change, and to really open up to what that will take from me. 

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about consistency, alignment, and being willing to acknowledge when we get it wrong. Leaders don’t need to get it right all the time. But they do need to be seen to be working on it, because people notice.

The humility to say sorry can also be transformational. Employees are constantly scanning for signs of integrity: do our leaders walk their talk? Do they reward what we’re told matters, or something else entirely? Are they willing to change themselves, or are they asking everyone else to do the changing? 

Leaders often need someone alongside them, a challenging but supportive thinking partner, to be able to do this. 

When you embed coaching as part of a wider culture change strategy, you help leaders to generate the right culture - not because they’ve memorised the narrative, but because they’ve done the inner work that aligns their attitudes, mindsets, and behaviour with the culture you're trying to build.  

Explore leadership coaching with Culture Impact

If you’re looking at your culture and wondering why change isn’t sticking, ask yourself: are your most visible leaders actually behaving in line with the culture you want to create? And if not, what support do they need to start? 

We have supported hundreds of leaders through coaching, helping them understand how they're modelling behaviours that could be undermining the strategy they're trying to lead and giving them the space to identify the changes they need to make to support their culture.

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