Latest / Daily Influence / 742. Culture Is What You Repeatedly Tolerate: Leadership, Accountability & the Truth About Organizational Culture

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742. Culture Is What You Repeatedly Tolerate: Leadership, Accountability & the Truth About Organizational Culture · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:38
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• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, Brian Smith here with the I'm team series and your daily influence and today I'm going to talk about culture and culture is probably one of the most discussed topics in leadership and business today and maybe one of the most misunderstood people talk about culture like it's something written on a wall something built in a retreat something created through branding or omission statement for a list of values and an employee and but you know culture.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: doesn't live on paper.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Culture lives and what happens when things go wrong.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Culture lives and what gets corrected and what gets ignored.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And over time, culture becomes the result of a leadership repeatedly tolerates.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you do not become your stated values, become your practiced values.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mission statements do not build culture, repeated tolerated behavior builds culture.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And that can go either way.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: whether intentional or accidental every leader is shaping culture every single moment.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you permit eventually becomes normal and culture is formed through that repetition, not intention, not aspiration, but repetition.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your poor communication is repeatedly allowed for communication becomes normal.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: If deadlines continue to slip without accountability, missed deadlines become normal.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: People avoid difficult conversations of avoidance becomes normal.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if leaders say one thing, but behave in another way, then that inconsistent C becomes normal on people inside organizations, pay attention to these patterns.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They watch what leadership rewards.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: They watch what leadership ignores, and they watch who gets corrective.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: and they especially watch who doesn't.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, people stop asking, is this acceptable?
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to give a summing, this must be how we do things here, especially new people.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is culture taking shape.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: In look at accountability is a cultural tool.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: In smart management, we often talk about accountability.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Almost all the time, in fact, not as a punishment, but as clarity.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Healthy accountability creates healthy culture, weak accountability creates confusion, selective accountability creates resentment, and as an accountability creates dysfunction.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability doesn't mean intensity either.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean anger, doesn't mean pressure, it means standards applied consistently.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: The strongest cultures aren't usually the loudest cultures.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're the clear ones, the transparent ones,
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: People know what to expect.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: They know what success looks like.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: They know what happens when commitments are met.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what happens when they're not.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: When accountability is fair and consistent, culture stabilizes.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: When accountability is emotional, inconsistent, or selective, culture fragments.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Culture follows discipline every time.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: We call it taking the high run.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: The good news is tolerance works both ways.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just like poor habits spread, strong, positive habits spread too, clarity spreads.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Transparency spreads, ownership spreads.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Preparedness spreads, respect spreads.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Consistency spreads professionalism spreads.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: High standards become culture the same way low standards do, through repetition.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: When communication is timely, when promises are kept, when accountability is equal, people may get adjusting upward around them.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That becomes contagious.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Teams rise to what is consistently demonstrated good or bad, which means leaders have enormous influence, not just through words, but through visible, repeated behavior.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Culture is not what leadership announces.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Culture is what leadership
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: demonstrates consistently enough for others to repeat.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So look, culture is often treated like something mysterious, but it usually isn't.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to understand a company's culture, watch what gets tolerated, watch what gets rewarded, watch what gets repeated, because eventually every organization becomes what leadership permits, and that should challenge all of us, because every conversation
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: every delay in response, every exception, every moment of accountability, every standard enforced or ignored, is shaping culture in real time.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: The question isn't whether you have influence over culture.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You already do.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The question is, what are you building with it?
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining me today on Daily Influence, and I hope you'll join us again in the future for another episode.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have a great day.