Why Culture Change Fails Even When Leaders Say the Right Things

This exclusive interview with David Ribott was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.

Trust can disappear from a business long before leaders realise they have lost it. A CEO says one thing and rewards another. Poor behaviour goes unchallenged. A culture change announced at the top reaches the frontline as something else entirely.

David Ribott has spent more than two decades working with the people responsible for those decisions. The founder and managing director of Ribott Partners has more than 9,000 hours of executive coaching experience, advising boards, CEOs and senior leadership teams on trust, succession, culture and decision-making under pressure.

He also serves as Industry Faculty with NYU Abu Dhabi Executive Education and brings lessons from his earlier career as a semi-professional athlete into his approach to leadership.

Speaking to the Inspirational Leadership Speakers Agency, Ribott discusses why ethical leadership has consequences far beyond the boardroom, what CEOs get wrong when trying to build trust, and why even well-intentioned culture transformations can break down as they move through an organisation.

Question 1. What practical difference does ethical leadership make to a company’s culture and commercial performance?

David Ribott: “Without ethics, it becomes very difficult to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. There’s a construct in ethics called the 20-60-20 model.

“Loosely, it means 20% of people will always do the right thing, even when no one’s looking. 20% of people will lean towards their self-interest, and then the 60% in the middle, like a distribution curve, can be influenced by which one of those two is greater.

“So, if at the top of your enterprise you have leaders who are modelling ethical leadership, that has a positive downstream impact not only on workplace culture, but also on your clients and your business’s bottom line.”

Question 2. How should businesses judge whether their senior leaders are genuinely effective, and where does succession planning fit into that?

David Ribott: “If you’re in the role of a business unit head or CXO enterprise leader, to remain in role you need to be effective. That’s really the first answer to that question.

“The challenge is that we often have people who have been in role for reasons beyond merit, political gains and what have you.

“When we concentrate on measuring effective leadership, we have neutral data constructs and KPIs in place that allow us to leverage systems and governance to measure and assess whether leaders or leadership teams are operating in the best interests of the business.

“One of the downstream effects of being an effective leader, whether you’re at the N minus one level, which means senior leaders reporting into a CEO, or N minus two, two leaders removed from the CEO, is continuity in cascading that structure.

“If by invisible leadership we’re talking about leaders being able to build up the next line of leadership coming through, then, as we talk about succession planning, invisible leaders are much better positioned to develop the bench strength of the next generation of leaders in the organisation.”

Question 3. What do CEOs need to do in practice to build trust across an organisation, rather than simply talk about it?

David Ribott: “It’s simple: align your words with your actions.

“It’s simple to say, but putting it into action is where the challenge comes in.

“If a CEO can align their words with their actions, that’s phase one. The second part is that you can’t reward bad behaviour. If you’re trying to build a high-trust organisation, you need to understand what’s happening downstream.

“How is your senior leadership team behaving and managing its own team? Go down a layer below. The challenge isn’t always at the top. The challenge is how it is cascaded downstream and whether it is consistent with the measures from the top.

“If your frontline workers see bad behaviour in leaders and see it go unnoticed, unpunished or unaccounted for, that will erode trust. If you can address these things, you’re in good shape.”

Question 4. Why can culture transformation break down even when the leadership team is publicly committed to changing the organisation?

David Ribott: “Similar to the previous question, the signal from the top could be support, but there can be a gap between your senior management team and your frontline employees, depending on how great the distance is. It’s almost like playing a game of telephone.

“When I was a kid in school in the 80s, the first person you tell a story to hears one version. The further removed it gets from that initial conversation, by the time it comes back full circle, it’s evolved into a very different story.

“Transformation behaves the same way. If the chain of command, the chain of communication and the line of sight on what’s happening from one phase to the next aren’t measured and monitored for quality assurance along the way, you’re going to have gaps.”