Meet the team: Darlene Roberts
Introducing Darlene Roberts, the latest member of the Culture Impact team. Joining us as a Leadership & Culture Consultant, she specialises in organisational transformation, leadership development, and culture strategy.
In her previous role as Head of Culture, Conduct and Accountability in the finance industry, she worked with boards, regulators, executive teams, and external stakeholders, with experience spanning HR leadership, organisational development, and executive coaching.
We’re delighted to welcome Darlene to the team and excited for our clients and network to get to know her, starting with a short Q&A.
What led you into your coaching and culture background?
My career hasn’t followed a linear path to culture and coaching, but there has always been a common thread: understanding people, what influences behaviour and how organisations turn strategy into something meaningful in practice.
I’ve worked across stakeholder engagement, communications, organisational development and financial services, and increasingly found myself drawn to the people and behavioural side of organisational challenges.
Coaching felt like a natural extension of that work – a way to better understand how individuals make sense of change, challenge their own thinking and translate insight into different behaviour.
What are you most passionate about when it comes to working with leaders and developing organisational culture?
What matters most to me is removing the perception that culture is intangible.
Culture can sometimes become quite abstract, but ultimately it shows up in everyday decisions – what leaders pay attention to, which behaviours are rewarded, what gets challenged and how safe people feel to speak honestly.
What can clients expect when working with you?
Curiosity, challenge and pragmatism.
I like to understand what’s happening before jumping to a solution, and I’m comfortable asking questions that get underneath the presenting issue. That said, I am also very practical. I want the work we do to be useful in the real world and not just theoretically sound.
I’m adaptable. I don’t believe there’s a standard culture or leadership intervention that works everywhere – context is key.
What’s one thing you think organisations should be paying more attention to?
Intention vs impact.
Organisations generally have no shortage of strategies, values, frameworks and initiatives. The more interesting question is whether they are actually changing what happens when people make decisions under pressure.
I think organisations could spend more time looking at the conditions that shape behaviour – incentives, leadership signals, informal norms, systems and everyday trade-offs – rather than assuming that communicating an expectation will automatically translate into action.
What's a book, podcast, or thinker that has influenced your work?
Perhaps unexpectedly, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s fiction, but it raises fascinating questions about power, hierarchy, freedom and the way societies organise themselves. Many of the themes aren’t that far removed from the questions we grapple with in organisational culture.
What’s a surprising fact about you?
I climbed in the Annapurna region of Nepal when I was 16. I’d like to think my adult self is just as adventurous, but I’m not quite sure…Kilimanjaro is the dream!
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
I love travelling, good food, reading – usually with some music playing in the background. I’ve recently started collecting records, and I love discovering a new album and slowly figuring out what deserves a place in the collection.
Meet the team
See our full team and network of associates, who are ready to help leaders and organisations achieve measurable impact and lasting results.
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