Many people mistake building culture for surface-level perks, such as the flexibility to work three days a week, casual dress codes, or having a manager who avoids challenging team members. While these aspects can improve the work environment, they don’t define an organization’s culture. Culture isn’t about memorizing a company’s mission statement or core values plastered on the wall. It’s also not intended to make everyone happy or to eliminate discomfort entirely. In fact, the most effective organizational cultures set high standards and expectations that often push people beyond their comfort zones.

What Culture Isn’t

The perks we often see in modern workplaces—such as sleep pods, free snacks, and gym memberships—don’t represent what culture is. They’re simply beneficial perks. While they can enhance the employee experience, confusing perks with the process of building culture often leads to misplaced priorities. In my 13 years of management consulting and advisory work, I’ve seen this misunderstanding derail countless efforts to build a thriving workplace with organizations of all sizes.

This isn’t to imply organizations shouldn’t strive to offer the best perks for their employees; it simply doesn’t capture the true essence of culture. Perks might create temporary satisfaction, yet they don’t automatically build a resilient and high-performing culture. Recognizing this distinction is crucial to understanding culture’s true essence. Confusing perks with culture is a path that often leads many organizations astray.

Culture as Behavior at Scale

So, what is culture exactly? At its core, culture is behavior at scale—the collective actions, mindsets, and decisions of people across an organization. It’s not just how team members behave when their manager is watching; it’s how they show up when no one’s looking.

Effectively building culture influences how people perceive their roles, interact with others, and approach their work on a daily basis. Consider this: on Sunday evening, do your team members dread Monday, or are they genuinely excited to contribute? These subtle, unspoken feelings reveal the true essence of your culture. It’s not about what’s written in a company handbook; it’s about what’s lived and felt every day.

Culture’s Role in Driving Excellence

Culture is the heartbeat of organizational excellence. Many leaders invest heavily in developing strategic plans but then neglect to consider the behaviors required to execute them. Culture acts as a link between strategic objectives and daily actions, propelling organizations towards excellence.

Transformational leaders understand that culture isn’t an afterthought but the foundation that supports everything else. The heartbeat of any thriving organization is its culture. Without a strong cultural backbone, strategy remains just a plan.

Engaging Hearts and Minds

Culture does more than drive execution, though. It connects with people on a deeper level, engaging their hearts and minds. While data and performance metrics play a role, they rarely spark the kind of passion or enthusiasm that truly ignites people outside a select few high-performing self-starters.

What inspires people is having a total understanding of their role in the organization’s vision and how their daily work contributes to the bigger picture. This clarity of purpose is what building culture helps instill, driving engagement and enthusiasm across all levels of an organization.

Driving Alignment and Organizational Success

A strong culture drives alignment across all business units and teams. Despite their differing responsibilities, everyone must clearly understand how their work contributes to the organization’s overall objectives. In such thriving cultures, every division collaborates, rowing in unison toward a shared destination.

Building culture isn’t just a component of organizational excellence—it’s the core driver. Culture isn’t about temporary emotional highs induced by perks but the sustainable fulfillment of knowing one’s part within a greater whole. For leaders, nurturing and sustaining a strong culture is essential for achieving excellence.

For deeper insights and actionable strategies for building culture, explore my Wall Street Journal bestseller, Culture Is the Way—a guide to building thriving, high-performing organizations.

The post Beyond Perks: Building a Culture That Drives Success appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

The performance and effectiveness of a company’s leaders are the ultimate differentiators, as I explain in Chapter 10 of my new Wall Street Journal bestseller, Culture Is the Way. Particularly when focusing on developing, shaping, and driving cultural excellence. Although there are many factors that contribute to shaping workplace culture, there is no doubt that it begins with leaders paving the way and setting the standard.

Understand the Importance of Workplace Culture

At its core, workplace culture is characterized by large-scale behavior. It is essential to organizational excellence. The core. The energy. It is at the forefront for leaders who want to improve performance and strategic alignment. Workplace culture is the heart and soul of any organization. Regardless of what a leader claims their workplace culture is, the determining factor is the collective mindsets, repeated efforts and actions, and consistent results experienced within and outside the organization.

Employee engagement, output, and retention can all benefit from a positive workplace culture, while high turnover, low morale, and low output are potential consequences of a toxic work environment. As a leader, you must recognize the importance of cultivating a positive and supportive work environment for your team and take action to do so. It takes time and effort, but one of the most important things a leader can do is build a productive and positive workplace culture. When the culture changes for the better, everything else benefits.

Lead by Example

Leading the charge is one of the most important ways for leaders to shape workplace culture. This entails modeling the attitudes and behaviors you want to see in your team. If you want your team to prioritize coaching, for example, make sure you are actively coaching others and encouraging team members to do the same. You can create a culture that supports and then adopts the values and behaviors you want to see in your team by demonstrating those values and behaviors. One of the most prominent problems when it comes to strengthening or changing workplace culture is leaders declaring a course of action without backing it up with their actions. I’ve seen this happen thousands of times in real time.

Everything leaders do, from how they treat others to how they behave and think, quickly circulates within the four walls of an organization, whether they are aware of it or not.

Recognize and Reward Positive Behaviors

In addition to modeling and leading by example, leaders should recognize and reward positive behaviors in their team members. It is critical to catch others doing the right thing when building workplace culture. Why bother recognizing behaviors team members should be doing is a dangerous but often adopted perspective among leaders. During my football career, the best coaches I ever had were tough on me and consistently challenged me, but even the smallest details would be recognized and called out when I did something right. Especially if they were trying to break a bad habit. This not only increased my self-confidence over time, but it also made me more susceptible to tougher coaching and accountability.

The act of simply saying thank you or giving a shout-out in a group setting can go a long way toward encouraging and rewarding positive actions. It may also include more formal recognition programs, such as employee of the month awards or bonuses for team members who exemplify workplace culture standards in exceptional ways. By recognizing and rewarding positive behaviors, leaders can reinforce the values and behaviors they desire to see in their team and foster an environment of positivity and excellence.

Do you want to find out more about building a world-class culture? Get a copy of my new book, Culture Is the Way. You will learn a five-step process for building an organization for speed, impact, and excellence.

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