I was in a room with a leadership team a while back. We were talking about culture and someone said, "We're in a good spot. People seem happy."
I asked how they knew that.
Long pause. Someone brought up the holiday party. Someone else mentioned a Glassdoor review from a year ago.
Guess what? Those things are fine, but it's not a data point on your company's culture. The fact is that your employees can read information accurately and immediately about your culture. They know what the real rules are, usually within the first few months of starting the job. It's impossible to hide.
Culture is the social order of your organization.
A great example: A company puts "collaboration" on their values wall. But every performance review is individually ranked against peers. The incentive structure actually punishes people for helping each other. Nobody's going to collaborate their way to the bottom of the ranking. So people stop sharing. They protect their numbers. They look out for themselves.
And that's the lived culture at a business.
I've worked with leaders who genuinely believe they have a great culture because nobody's complaining. But nobody complaining isn't a signal that things are good; it can just be a signal that people have stopped trying.
Belonging isn't a perk: People who don't feel respected and included at work don't perform well, don't stay, and don't tell you why they left. The research on this goes back decades but most organizations just haven't taken it seriously enough to change how they operate.
And the pressure-and-fear approach to performance. It works for a while. Short bursts, sure. But you're running a tab. Eventually you get burnout, turnover, and a team that does exactly what's asked of them and nothing more.
Do you want a high-performing culture? Building something that actually works means being honest about the gap between what you say you value and what your daily decisions demonstrate. And those two things can often be pretty far apart. Closing that gap is where the real work is.
It all starts with a singular leader willing to ask, with genuine curiosity, what people are actually experiencing.
Will you be brave enough to ask?
We're on your side,
Lauran Arledge
Founder, Bold Font
PS: I've had one song on repeat this week and it's been the right company for this topic. Marvin Gaye wrote "What's Going On" in 1971 and somehow it still applies: "Talk to me, so you can see." Most culture problems don't get solved because nobody's actually asking. This week, ask!
