Here’s how almost every call with a CEO starts. They want team building. Maybe a ropes course. (Just nothing with trust falls.) 😂

Fifteen minutes into the call, I ask what’s actually going on, and the story changes completely. Their best people are leaving. The culture has become toxic. Nobody’s being held to the standard anymore.

What I tell them next is never easy to say, but something they need to hear: 

“You don’t have a team building problem. You have a leadership accountability problem…and here’s why….”

Remember Playing the Telephone Game as a Kid?

One person whispers, “Susan has a blue sweater”, to the next person, who then whispers it to the next, and by the time it reaches the end of the line, it  somehow became: “Susan bought a blue Corvette.” 

That’s what happens to your culture. Except nobody’s laughing at the end of this one.

An employee raises a concern. It moves through a supervisor, then a manager, then a director. At every level somebody softens it a little. Not out of malice…out of self-preservation. Nobody wants to be the person who walks into the corner office saying they have a toxic culture. So, “three people quit because of their manager” becomes “we’ve had some turnover,” which becomes “the market’s competitive right now.”

Context disappeared somewhere around person four. Accountability became nobody’s responsibility. And leadership ends up hearing a completely different version of what was originally said. I call it the ‘Executive Echo.' (The workplace version of the telephone game.)

Why Doesn’t the Executive Leadership Team Know What the Culture Is Really Like?

Because executives experience a different company than the people working inside it every day.

We asked 750 working adults whether upper management really understands what the workplace culture is like, and only about half said yes. (National Workplace Trends Study.) Read that again. Roughly one in two people has already decided you either don’t know or aren’t safe to tell.

That is not a communication problem. It’s a proximity problem. The higher you climb, the more likely your information was filtered before it ever reached you.

So Who Actually Knows What Employees Are Experiencing?

Most often, it’s your middle managers.

They’re close enough to hear what employees say after the daily meeting, and high enough to hear what executives believe happened during it. Middle managers live in the gap. They know which comments are theater, and they know which employees already have a résumé out.

And here’s the irony. Middle managers are the leaders organizations develop the least. The development dollars get concentrated at the executive level, or invested in emerging leaders because that one photographs well. Meanwhile the managers handling conflict, giving feedback, recognizing performance, coaching people, and translating every executive decision into an everyday experience are expected to figure leadership out somewhere between their 9:00 am meeting and the end of their shift.

Now, you might be thinking: hold on, if middle managers are shaping the culture, aren’t they the problem? Partly. The person close enough to feel what your culture is really like is the exact same person close enough to shape it. They’re your cultural translators, and most of them are translating because no one ever taught them the language.

The One Question That Changes the Whole Conversation

Most leadership teams ask this: “What kind of culture have we created?”

Start asking this one instead: “What kind of culture are people experiencing?”

Those two answers can be wildly different, and the gap between them is your real culture. When somebody finally tells you the second answer, don’t shoot the messenger. Get curious about the message.

You must encourage your staff at all levels to become what I call a ‘Courageous Communicator’. It’s #10 out of 12 Bar Raiser™ traits. A Courageous Communicator doesn’t just tell the truth, they also build the conditions where other people can afford to tell it as well.

Here’s the ROI. Every honest conversation a middle manager feels safe having with you is a resignation you don’t have to pay for six months later. Replacing one good manager costs you months of lost productivity, a new hire training fee, and the quiet cost of everyone who watched them walk out. That’s what saves your company thousands to millions down the road.

The Middle Manager Check: 4 Moves, 30 Days

Ask the layer below your direct reports.

Your direct reports have every incentive in the world to tell you things are fine. The people who report to them do not. Book four of those conversations this month.

Change the question. “How’s it going?” gets you “good, busy.” Try this instead: “What’s something everyone on your team senses about the culture that I probably don’t?” Then listen.

Reward the person who brings your honest answers. The first time  somebody walks in with something  hard to hear, your face decides whether anyone ever does it again. Thank them by name, in front of other people, for the telling… not just the fixing.

Develop your middle managers.  Put real budget and real calendar  time into the middle layer you’ve been skipping. They need the leadership development, and they’re shaping your culture every  day either way. The only question is whether they’re doing it with any support.

The Tolerator Tell: A Tolerator isn’t a bad person. They’re a comfortable one, and comfort is how culture standards slip without anybody deciding to let them. Here’s how you spot one in yourself this week. Somebody hands you information you didn’t want, and you explain it away instead of listening to it.

The Bar Raiser™ Move: Ask one person two levels below you what everyone on their team feels about the culture that you don’t know about. Then sit there and let them answer, even when it gets uncomfortable.

Remember, words don’t define your culture. Employee experiences do. 

The goal isn’t for the C-Suite to know every complaint in the building. It’s to build a company where the truth can travel all the way up before you lose your best people. Because the greatest danger isn’t discovering that leadership’s read on the culture was wrong. It’s never discovering it at all.

Tell me, what other questions do you need to be asking? Go have that conversation, and keep raising the bar! 💪

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is there often a disconnect between leadership and workplace culture?

Information gets filtered as it moves up through organizational layers, and senior leaders experience a different workplace than frontline employees do.

Why do middle managers matter so much to workplace culture?

They translate organizational decisions into daily employee experience through coaching, communication, feedback, accountability, and recognition. They see the culture accurately because they are close enough to shape it.

How can executives better understand their workplace culture?

Create direct listening channels, compare what leadership believes against what employees experience, develop managers at every level, and assign clear accountability when cultural problems surface.

SHARE THIS: 

If you’re a middle manager who already knows exactly what your culture is like, send this to the leader who should be asking you. And if you run the company, send it to your middle managers with one line: “I want to hear your version.”

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About Betsy: Betsy Allen-Manning is the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. She’s a high-energy leadership keynote speaker and creator of the Bar Raisers™ Movement: a proprietary system redefining how organizations are approaching performance, leadership, and culture. Featured on FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, and TEDx, Betsy works with organizations across corporate, franchise, association, nonprofit, and government sectors. She’s the lead researcher behind the National Workplace Trends Study, and delivers programs around her Bar Raisers™ and Leadership Mastery frameworks. She is the founder of Destination Workplace®, an award-winning leadership development firm in Dallas, Texas.