In our survey work, we consistently see the same drivers of disengagement surface across industries and organization sizes. Employees feel uninformed, unrecognized, stagnant, or disconnected from their leader. Each of these is addressable, and addressing them does not require a new program or a significant budget. It requires consistent, intentional leadership habits applied over time. Below are four strategies that make a measurable difference.

Communication is the foundation on which everything else is built. In times of high change, employees crave communication at a much higher rate than leaders typically realize, and what counts as great change has shifted considerably. For many organizations, constant change has simply become the new normal. That means the baseline level of communication leaders need to provide has permanently increased. The goal is not to overwhelm people with information but to ensure employees are consistently informed about goals, challenges, and anything that directly affects their work. When employees know where to find information and can predict when it will come, the rumor mill quiets and trust builds. A regular team meeting, a brief weekly update, or a consistent check-in rhythm costs very little and pays significant dividends in stability and morale.

Recognition is the counterpart to communication and is just as important. One of the most common things we hear from employees in our surveys is that they only know how they are doing when their annual review arrives. That is a problem. By the time a review comes around, it is too late for feedback to change anything, and employees who have been operating in the dark for months are rarely engaged or confident. The goal is to operate on a no surprises basis, meaning employees should have a clear, and ongoing sense of how they are performing long before any formal review. Specific, timely recognition, whether a brief verbal acknowledgment, a note after a strong meeting, or a public callout in front of the team, tells people their effort is seen and valued. That signal is more powerful than most leaders realize.

Investing in professional development is the third lever, and it is one that directly addresses one of the top drivers of voluntary turnover. The most engaged employees consistently cite development opportunities as among the most important things they look for in a role. When leaders invest in their people’s growth, whether through formal training, stretch assignments, or the simple act of delegating meaningful work, they signal that employees’ futures matter to the organization. Delegation, in particular, is worth highlighting here because it serves two purposes simultaneously. It develops the employee’s skills and confidence while freeing the leader to focus on more strategic work. That is a return on investment that few other leadership behaviors can match.

The fourth strategy is connection, and it is the one most likely to be sacrificed when a leader is under pressure. Employees want to work for someone who genuinely cares about them as people, not just as contributors. Building that kind of relationship does not require lengthy conversations or elaborate gestures. It requires the habit of checking in, asking how someone is doing, and following through on what you hear. Leaders who make this a consistent practice find that their teams offer more discretionary effort, raise concerns earlier, and stay longer. The relationship between an employee and their immediate manager remains one of the strongest predictors of engagement and retention we measure, and it is shaped almost entirely by small, repeated moments of genuine attention.

Consistency is what ties all four of these strategies together. Any one of them, applied once, will produce limited results. Applied regularly, over weeks and months, they compound into something much more significant: a team that trusts its leader, believes in its work, and chooses to bring its best every day. The stronger that foundation, the more your team is capable of, and the more you are capable of together.

Dusty Tockstein is a senior consultant at Peter Barron Stark Companies. Dusty works with clients to improve their corporate culture through a variety of tools, including Employee Engagement Surveys, 360 Leadership Development Assessments, Leadership Coaching, and Organizational Assessments.

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This is one of the hardest leadership truths to sit with: intent does not equal impact. Most leadership breakdowns do not start with bad intent. They start with leaders who care deeply about their people and are genuinely trying to do the right thing. The managers we work with are often thoughtful, well-liked, and committed to creating a positive team environment. And yet, despite those good intentions, they find themselves facing disengagement, frustration, or quiet resistance they did not see coming.

What happens is that many leaders unintentionally confuse being supportive with avoiding discomfort. Supportive leadership absolutely matters. Employees want empathy, flexibility, and understanding, especially in times of change. But when support is not paired with clarity and consistency, it creates confusion rather than commitment. Leaders avoid tough conversations because they do not want to upset someone. They step in to help rather than holding people accountable. They quietly make exceptions instead of reinforcing shared expectations. None of these behaviors comes from a bad place. They come from a desire to be fair, kind, or liked. But over time, they send unintended signals, and teams are always watching.

While leaders focus on intent, employees experience outcomes. When expectations are unclear, employees fill in the gaps themselves. When accountability is inconsistent, high performers carry more than their share and eventually grow resentful. When decisions are delayed or avoided, trust erodes. People stop raising concerns, stop offering ideas, and stop pushing for improvement, not because they do not care, but because they have learned that extra effort does not change anything. This is often the moment leaders are blindsided by disengagement or turnover. From their perspective, they were protecting morale. From the team’s perspective, leadership felt unpredictable and unfair.

Avoidance is at the heart of most of what we see. Avoiding a difficult conversation today almost always creates a bigger problem tomorrow. Avoiding accountability to preserve harmony shifts the burden onto the wrong people. Avoiding clear decisions forces employees to guess what actually matters. Over time, this erodes the one thing leaders cannot afford to lose: credibility. Employees do not need their leaders to be perfect. They need them to be clear, consistent, and willing to act when it is uncomfortable.

The goal is not to abandon empathy or flexibility. It is to pair them with the leadership behaviors that create clarity and trust. A few shifts make a meaningful difference.

Be clear about what you are rewarding. People repeat what works. Take an honest look at where you give flexibility, attention, or praise. If the same people are always stepping in to save the day, that pattern is worth examining closely.

Address issues earlier than feels necessary. Most leaders wait too long, hoping problems will resolve on their own. Early conversations feel supportive. Late conversations feel punitive. The timing of feedback matters as much as the content.

Be transparent about trade-offs. When you say yes to one request, you are often saying no to something else. Sharing your reasoning helps employees understand decisions, even when they do not love the outcome.

Separate care from avoidance. You can care deeply about someone and still hold them accountable. In fact, accountability is often one of the clearest signals of respect. It says, I believe you can meet this standard.

Ask for feedback on your impact. This is difficult and powerful in equal measure. Ask your team what is helping them succeed and what is getting in the way. Listen without defending. Patterns will emerge quickly, and they will tell you more than any survey ever could.

One reason this pattern persists is that leaders rarely receive honest feedback about how their behaviors land. People tend to protect well-intentioned leaders. They do not want to seem critical or ungrateful, so the gap between intent and impact stays invisible until it shows up in an engagement score or a resignation.

The most effective leaders we work with eventually make one critical shift. They stop asking “Am I being supportive?” and start asking “Am I being clear?” Support without clarity feels kind in the moment but costly over time. Clarity paired with empathy builds the trust, engagement, and performance that every leader is ultimately trying to create.

Good intentions are a strong starting point. But leadership is measured by impact, and the leaders willing to examine the gap between the two grow the fastest.

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The communication gap employees were experiencing had nothing to do with strategy or direction. It was the small, everyday things that were falling through the cracks. Employees wrote about finding out a colleague had transferred to another department only after going to their desk and finding it empty. They described new hires showing up on their first day to a team that had no idea anyone had been hired. Staffing changes, the kind that leaders often treat as administrative details, were landing on teams as disruptions that affected their work, their relationships, and their sense of being kept in the loop. The leaders had been communicating the big things. They had missed the human ones.

This is where onboarding breaks down in most organizations. It is treated as a process rather than a leadership responsibility. The paperwork gets completed, the system access gets arranged, and the new employee is pointed in the right direction and expected to find their footing. What is missing is the deliberate, consistent attention from their leader and their team that tells a new employee, in every small interaction, that they made the right decision accepting this offer. That signal, or the absence of it, shapes whether a new hire becomes a long-term contributor or starts quietly reconsidering their choice within the first few months.

The research on this is consistent with what we see in our survey work. Employees decide remarkably quickly whether they belong. The relationships they form, the clarity they receive about expectations, and the degree to which they feel seen and supported in their first weeks set the tone for everything that follows. A new employee who arrives to find their team unprepared for them, their workspace unready, and their manager too busy to check in does not conclude that their leader is simply having a hectic week. They conclude that this is what the culture feels like, and they begin measuring the gap between what they were told in the interview and what they are experiencing on the ground.

Well-executed onboarding does not require elaborate programs or significant resources. It requires some preparation of the leader and the team to welcome a new colleague. Before a new employee arrives, the team should know they are coming, understand their role they will fill, and be ready to welcome them. That preparation costs very little and signals a great deal.

From there, the leader’s role is to stay actively engaged through the first ninety days, not to hover, but to check in with intention at regular intervals. A structured approach to those early months makes a consistent difference.

Before the employee starts, the leader should meet with them to review the job responsibilities in detail, set clear expectations for the role, and outline what success looks like in the first 30, 60, and 90 days. This conversation should happen on day one, if possible. Some companies have day one as an orientation process, which is great, but the first day in their department should include a sit-down with the employee.  A new employee who arrives with clarity about what is expected of them is far better positioned to contribute quickly and feel confident in their new environment. Without it, even the most talented hire is left guessing. They should also be assigned a buddy. Someone they can go to for questions, work-related and culture-related.

At thirty days, meet with the new employee to revisit those expectations and assess progress. Are they clear on their priorities, know the resources available to them? Is there anything creating friction that could be addressed quickly? This conversation is also the moment to check in with the broader team. Is the addition working well? Is the new employee integrating into the culture, and is there anything the leader or team can do to support that process more effectively?

At sixty days, the focus shifts slightly. The new employee should be finding their footing by now, and the conversation can go deeper. Revisit the job responsibilities and expectations set at the outset. Are there gaps between what was outlined and what the role actually requires day-to-day? Are they engaged with the work and feeling connected to their colleagues and the team’s goals? Are there development needs surfacing that the leader should be aware of? This is also a good moment to acknowledge early contributions specifically and publicly, reinforcing that the employee’s presence is noticed and valued.

At ninety days, the onboarding period is drawing to a close. Continue to review expectations and the employee’s performance. This check-in is an opportunity to discuss longer-term goals, clarify the path forward, and signal that the leader’s commitment to the employee’s success did not end when the orientation paperwork was filed. Employees who feel supported and clear about their direction during their first 90 days are significantly more likely to stay through their first year and beyond.

The onboarding experiences don’t need to become more elaborate. Retention does not begin at the six-month mark when a leader notices someone pulling away. It begins on the first day, in the first conversation, and in the preparation that happened before the employee ever walked through the door. The organizations that understand this do not just hire good people. They keep them.

Dusty Tockstein is a senior consultant at Peter Barron Stark Companies. Dusty works with clients to improve their corporate culture through a variety of tools, including Employee Engagement Surveys, 360 Leadership Development Assessments, Leadership Coaching, and Organizational Assessments.

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This is the most expensive mistake organizations make with engagement surveys, and it has nothing to do with the survey itself. The questions, the platform, the benchmark data, none of that matters if the results sit in a folder and collect dust. Conducting a survey is half the battle. What you do with it is the second half, and that is the half most organizations underinvest in.

We see a second pattern just as often in our survey work. An HR leader will tell us they know something is off in the organization but cannot put their finger on it. When the survey is complete and the results are in front of them, the picture comes together quickly. They can see the patterns, identify the problem areas, and understand what has been driving the disengagement they sensed but could not name. That moment of clarity is genuinely valuable, and most leaders are grateful for it.

When clients receive their data, they are usually energized to work on the culture. The challenge is what happens next. Even the most motivated leader can default to inaction when handed results without a clear plan to address them. Acting on the data, having honest conversations with their teams about what it revealed, and building a credible plan to address the low-scoring areas, which is where the support tends to disappear. And that gap between insight and action is where survey processes go to die.

This is where resistance sometimes surfaces. Some leaders are reluctant to share results with their teams, particularly when the scores reflect on their own leadership challenges. We always tell these leaders, “The employees already know the results; it is not a surprise to them; it’s their opinions.” It is an understandable instinct, but it is also the instinct that ensures nothing changes. When a leader does not act on the results, their team does not conclude that everything is fine. They conclude that the leader saw something they did not want to discuss, which erodes trust faster than any low score ever could. It is the responsibility of senior leadership to ensure that action plans are completed at every level, without exception. That accountability is not optional. It is the only mechanism that turns a survey into actual organizational change.

So, what does following through actually look like? Below is the process we walk our clients through, and the one that consistently separates the organizations that improve from the ones that resurvey a year later and wonder why nothing has changed.

Share results and build the plan together. Once results are available, share your team-level data openly with your team, the highs, and the lows. Together, identify the lower-rated areas and build an action plan that includes both leader and employee commitments. When the team helps create the plan, they are far more invested in seeing it through.

Share results with your manager. Bring your results and your action plan to your own leader. Their feedback and support will strengthen the plan and signal to your team that accountability flows in both directions.

Revisit the plan regularly and adjust. Check in on progress at 45 days, 90 days, 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months. Most teams do not get it right on the first attempt, and that is expected. The goal is not a perfect plan. It is a living one that improves with each review. We call it keeping the survey alive.

Resurvey in eighteen to twenty-four months. Once the action plan has had time to take hold, resurvey to measure progress. This closes the loop for employees and demonstrates that the process was never just about collecting data. It was about building a better workplace.

The employees who send that skeptical email at the start of a new survey process are not being cynical for the sake of it. They have simply learned from experience that participation does not lead to change. The good news is that this is entirely within a leader’s power to reverse. When teams see their feedback reflected in real decisions, when they watch the action plan get revisited quarter after quarter, and when they notice that the things they raised are actually being addressed, participation goes up, trust goes up, and the survey becomes what it was always meant to be: a tool for building a better workplace, not just measuring a broken one.

The survey will tell you what is wrong. What you do next determines the level of trust in your organization for years to come. A healthy culture, where employees love coming to work and leaders love leading, is built on follow-through. If you are not prepared to act on the survey results, you are better off not doing a survey at all.

Dusty Tockstein is a senior consultant at Peter Barron Stark Companies. Dusty works with clients to improve their corporate culture through a variety of tools, including Employee Engagement Surveys, 360 Leadership Development Assessments, Leadership Coaching, and Organizational Assessments.

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The default for most leaders, particularly those early in their careers, is to manage. It is the more visible part of the job. Tasks need to be assigned, deadlines met, and results delivered. Managing feels productive because it is concrete and immediate. Coaching, by contrast, requires patience, relationship-building, and a willingness to invest in outcomes that may not be visible for weeks or months down the road. When time is short and pressure is high, most leaders reach for the tool that produces the fastest result, and that tool is usually a directive.

The deeper reason many leaders default to managing over coaching, though, is not just time pressure. It is confidence. Leaders who are early in their development, or who have never been coached themselves, often lack the skills and the security to lead through the relationship. And when confidence is low, leaders tend to lean on the one thing that feels certain: their title. We have seen this pattern repeatedly in our coaching work. The moment a leader says “I am the VP of…” in the middle of a difficult conversation, they have already lost the room. A title tells people where you sit on an org chart. It does not tell them why they should follow you. That only comes from the relationship you have built over time. And, relationships are built through coaching, not directing.

The practical difference between the two shows up most clearly in how a leader responds when an employee comes to them with a task or a challenge. A managing response tells the employee what to do and how to do it. A coaching response asks whether they understand what is needed and what support would help them get there. One is a closed door. The other is an open conversation. Both may produce a result in the short term, but only one develops the employee’s capacity to handle similar situations independently in the future. Over time, the leader who coaches builds a team that requires less direction, brings forward more ideas, and delivers more consistently. The leader who only manages builds a team that waits to be told what to do next.

Coaching also requires the leader to be present in a different way. It means checking in regularly, not to monitor progress, but to remove obstacles and demonstrate genuine care for the employee’s success. It means providing feedback in real time rather than saving it for a formal review. It means holding people accountable to clear expectations while also showing empathy for the human being behind the work. These are not soft skills. They are the conditions under which people do their best work, and creating those conditions is the leader’s responsibility.

If you are ready to shift from managing to coaching, the change does not require a complete reinvention of how you lead. It starts with a few deliberate adjustments to how you show up in everyday conversations.

Stop telling, start asking. When an employee brings you a task or a problem, resist the instinct to provide the answer immediately. Ask them what they think, what they have already considered, and where they feel stuck. You will often find they are closer to the solution than you realized, and the conversation will develop their thinking in a way that a directive never could.

Ask what support they need. Rather than assuming you know what an employee requires to succeed, ask them directly. This shifts the dynamic from oversight to partnership and signals that your role is to enable their success, not to control their process.

Check in with intention. Regular check-ins should be conversations, not status reports. Ask how the work is going, what obstacles have surfaced, and what would make the employee more effective. These moments build the relationship that coaching depends on.

Provide timely feedback. Feedback loses most of its value when it is delayed. When you see something worth addressing, whether a success or a development opportunity, address it close to the moment it happened. Specific, timely feedback is one of the most powerful coaching tools a leader has.

Hold people accountable with empathy. Accountability and compassion are not opposites. You can hold an employee to a clear standard while also acknowledging the pressures they are navigating. The combination of high expectations and genuine care is what great coaches do consistently.

The client who asked us to replace the word “manager” with “coach” on their survey was not just making an editorial change. They were making a statement about what kind of leader they wanted working for them and what kind of culture they were committed to building. Every leader has the same choice. The title on your door tells people your position. The way you show up in conversation tells them who you are.

Which one are you leading with?

The post Are You a Manager or a Coach? Why the Difference Matters More Than You Think appeared first on Peter Barron Stark Companies.

That leader was not indifferent. They were not a poor manager by any measure. They were doing what a surprising number of leaders do when faced with a difficult people decision: they were waiting for a more convenient moment that, in reality, would never feel convenient enough. In the meantime, the employee had no idea there was a problem, the team was absorbing the impact of the underperformance, and the leader was carrying the stress of a situation they had the power to address but had chosen not to.

We worked with the leader to have the conversation earlier, and we worked with them on how to do it well. Not as a confrontation, but as a clear, structured discussion that outlined the specific performance gaps, the actions needed to close the gaps, and the goals the employee would be held to going forward. Within a few weeks, something shifted. The employee was motivated and doing well. They had actionable feedback they could run with, and it inspired them. That employee ended up becoming a strong performer. The feedback, tied to clear actions and aligned to real goals, was exactly what they had needed all along. The conversation the leader had been dreading for months turned out to be the most valuable one they had.

This pattern is a consistent pattern we see in our coaching work, particularly with newer leaders. The reluctance to have a direct performance conversation, to deliver honest feedback, or to make a difficult call about a person’s role is rarely about a lack of caring. It almost always traces back to one of two things. The first is a high need to be liked. Many leaders, especially those early in their leadership journey, are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that a direct conversation might damage their relationship with an employee or cause that person to view them negatively. So they delay. They soften. They wait for the right moment. And in doing so, they deprive the employee of the one thing that could actually help them – feedback on their performance.

The second root cause is a lack of tools. A large number of leaders are promoted because they are technically excellent at their jobs. They know the work, they deliver results, and they are respected by their peers. What they have rarely been given is formal training in how to lead people, and specifically how to deliver feedback in a way that is honest, constructive, and tied to outcomes. Without that foundation, even a well-intentioned leader will default to avoidance because they genuinely do not know how to have the conversation effectively.

Both of these are solvable problems, but only if the leader is willing to recognize them. The cost of not solving them is high, and it compounds over time. When performance issues go unaddressed, the team notices. High performers, who are already holding themselves to a high standard, watch the leader accommodate underperformance and draw their own conclusions about whether effort and results are truly valued. Trust erodes. Morale follows. And the leader who wanted to protect a relationship by avoiding a hard conversation, often ends up damaging every other relationship on the team by avoiding the difficult conversation.

There is also the cost to the employee being avoided. When a leader waits until an annual review, or worse, until a termination conversation, to tell someone their performance has not been meeting expectations, they are not being kind. They are being unfair. Every person deserves the chance to know where they stand and what is expected of them. Withholding that information does not protect the employee. It denies them the opportunity to grow.

So what does a direct, honest performance conversation actually look like in practice? A few principles make a consistent difference.

Be specific about the gap. Vague feedback like “your performance needs to improve” gives an employee nothing to act on. Name the specific behavior or outcome that is not meeting expectations and connect it clearly to the goals of the role.

Focus on the work, not the person. Frame the conversation around tasks, outcomes, and expectations rather than personality or attitude. This keeps the discussion professional and gives the employee something concrete to change.

Ask questions. Rather than delivering a verdict, invite the employee into the conversation. Asking “what do you think is getting in the way?” or “what do you need to be successful in this area?” often brings to light information the leader did not have and signals that the goal is improvement, not punishment.

Set clear expectations and a follow-up date. End the conversation with a review of the expectations and a mutual understanding of what success looks like and when you will reconvene to review progress. Scheduling the follow-up before leaving the meeting signals that you are serious and invested in the employee’s success.

Document the discussion. After the meeting, send an email with a brief summary of what was discussed and agreed upon. This protects both the leader and the employee and ensures there is no ambiguity about what was said. For a deeper look at managing difficult performance conversations, see our earlier piece on strategies for when feedback conversations go south. [ Strategies for When Your Performance Feedback Conversation Goes South – Peter Barron Stark Companies]

The leaders who navigate this well share a common mindset. They have come to understand that a direct, honest conversation is not a threat to a relationship. It is an investment in one. When feedback is delivered with clarity, specificity, and genuine care for the person’s success, it almost always strengthens the dynamic rather than damaging it. The employee feels seen, not attacked. They understand what is expected, not just that something is wrong. And they have a path forward, which is what most struggling employees are quietly hoping for anyway.

Avoiding people decisions never makes it easier. It only raises the cost of having it later. The conversation you are putting off today is the one your team, and the employee, need you to have right now.

Dusty Tockstein is a senior consultant at Peter Barron Stark Companies. Dusty works with clients to improve their corporate culture through a variety of tools, including Employee Engagement Surveys, 360 Leadership Development Assessments, Leadership Coaching, and Organizational Assessments.

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If you have ever said those words, or thought them? If so, you are in good company. It is one of the most common things we hear from leaders at every level, and it is also one of the most expensive beliefs a leader can hold onto.

The trap is easy to fall into. Leaders who rise through the ranks typically do so because they are exceptionally good at their work. They are reliable, thorough, and accountable. Those same qualities that made them outstanding individual contributors can quietly become liabilities once they are leading a team. This is because the skills that got them promoted are not the same skills that will make them effective as leaders. At some point, the job stops being about doing the work and starts being about developing the people who do it. That transition is harder than it sounds, and many leaders never fully make it.

The reasons we see most often are consistent. Some leaders simply do not want to lose control. If the work goes through them, they know exactly where it stands and how it is being handled. Delegating means accepting uncertainty, and for a leader who has built their reputation on delivering, that can feel genuinely uncomfortable. Others have not invested enough in developing their staff to the point where delegation feels safe, creating a cycle in which the team never grows enough to handle higher-level work, and the leader never delegates because the team has not grown. This is the delegation trap.

And then there is the belief, sincere and deeply held, that they are the only ones who can do it right. This is perhaps the most limiting of all, not because it is always wrong, but because it leaves no room for the team to grow and develop.

That executive we were coaching eventually agreed to start small. He identified a few tasks he had been holding onto and handed them off, reluctantly at first, with more oversight than was probably necessary. But his team delivered. Then he delegated a little more, and they delivered again. It was not always seamless. There were moments where things did not go exactly as he would have done them, and he had to resist the urge to take the work back. But over time, something shifted. The more he delegated, the more capable his team became. And the more capable his team became, the more time he had to focus on the strategic work his role actually required. He began making real progress on department goals that had been sitting untouched for months because he had never had the bandwidth to address them.

Delegation, done well, is not about offloading work. It is about investing in your team’s growth while reclaiming your own capacity to lead at the level your organization needs. The question is not whether your team can handle it. It is whether you are willing to give them the chance to find out.

If you are ready to start, here is the process we walk our clients through.

Start small. Choose a task that is meaningful but not critical, something that will stretch the employee without setting them up to fail. Early wins build confidence on both sides.

Plan it out. Before handing anything off, take a few minutes to think through what success looks like, what resources the employee will need, and where the potential obstacles are. A little preparation prevents a lot of rework.

Explain the overall goals. Do not just describe the task. Help the employee understand why it matters, how it connects to the team’s priorities, and what a successful outcome looks like in the broader context.

Outline your expectations. Be specific about deliverables, timelines, and the standard of work you are looking for. Clarity at the start prevents frustration on both ends.

Discuss available resources. Make sure the employee knows what tools, information, budget, or support they have access to. Nothing stalls a delegated project faster than an employee who hits a wall and does not know where to turn.

Confirm understanding. Before the conversation ends, ask the employee to summarize what they are taking on and how they plan to approach it. This surfaces any misalignment early and gives you confidence that they are set up to succeed.

Ask for questions and follow up regularly. Create space for the employee to come to you without feeling like they are failing. Check in at agreed intervals, not to micromanage, but to remove obstacles and recognize progress.

The leader who told us he had no time to explain things to his team eventually became one of the most effective delegators we have coached. His team grew. His results improved. And for the first time in years, he felt like he was leading rather than just surviving. That shift did not come from working harder. It came from finally letting go.

The work your team cannot do today is often the work you have never trusted them enough to try.

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A Lesson in What Culture Really Means

Recently, my son started an internship. He was so excited to be working in his field and doing the work he had been studying. But a few weeks in, something had changed. He didn’t seem excited anymore.

When I asked him about it, he said it wasn’t what he expected. The examples he gave were telling you weren’t allowed to talk to upper management, as an intern, you had to remember you were “at the bottom of the barrel,” and it didn’t seem like anyone actually wanted to be there.

This was a disappointment for him, but it became a powerful lesson in culture. Fortunately, his prior jobs at fast-food restaurants had exposed him to good cultures where people cared, so he knew what a healthy workplace looked and felt like. I told him this was why culture matters so much. These cultures really do exist and are why consultants stay in business.

The Question Every Leader Must Answer

As leaders, how do we create cultures where people care and want to work? While HR helps design and sustain the systems that shape culture—engagement surveys, onboarding programs, recognition frameworks—it’s managers who make culture real. Every 1:1, team huddle, and project kickoff either reinforces or erodes the organization’s culture.

That’s why culture isn’t just part of your strategy. It is the strategy.

So, what does it take to build a winning culture where employees want to work, and customers love to do business? It takes three interconnected pieces: executive support, HR strategy, and manager execution.

It Starts at the Top

It’s hard to build a culture that resonates throughout the organization without the support of the executive team. You’ve heard the saying that culture starts at the top and trickles down—and it’s true. While individual leaders can create their own department culture that differs from the broader organization, it takes executives living, breathing, and modeling the desired behaviors for culture to truly resonate throughout.

Why Culture Belongs to Managers

But here’s where theory meets reality: culture shows up in moments. It’s how you handle feedback, respond to mistakes, or celebrate wins. Managers are closest to those moments, and they set the tone and tempo of the culture that employees actually experience.

When employees describe a “toxic” or “supportive” culture, they’re often referring to their immediate manager’s behavior, not to an executive policy. In fact, up to 75% of employees’ satisfaction is directly correlated with their relationship with their manager. That’s because the manager sets the tone for the department culture.

This is why, when engagement scores dip, the fix isn’t another survey; it’s helping managers own their cultural impact by examining lower-rated areas and focusing on improving them. It takes this daily execution on the manager’s part to keep the culture moving in the right direction.

The Shared Work: HR + Managers

While executives set the vision and managers drive the daily experience of culture, HR builds the infrastructure that sustains it across the organization. This three-way partnership is essential.

Here’s how it works:

HR measures the culture. Through engagement surveys, pulse checks, and exit interviews, HR tracks trends that show where culture is thriving or struggling.

HR sets the systems. They design recognition programs, training, and feedback tools that give managers structure and consistency.

Managers activate it. They bring those systems to life through conversations, coaching, and example-setting.

When HR, executives, and managers align, culture becomes measurable and actionable—not just aspirational. Executives keep the big picture visible, HR provides the structure and measurements, and managers shape the everyday reality.

Culture as a Strategic Tool

Think of culture as a strategic multiplier: it turns good plans into great results. A healthy culture doesn’t just boost morale—it speeds decision-making, fuels innovation, and reduces turnover.

Here’s a concrete example: if your organization values collaboration, but meetings feel like turf wars, the culture is working against the strategy. The manager’s job is to close that gap by modeling the value in action—inviting input, giving credit, and making it safe to disagree.

This is the crucial connection: culture and strategy aren’t separate. Strategy explains what to achieve; culture determines how people work together to achieve it.

Practical Ways to Own Engagement

The good news? Managers can shape culture intentionally with a few consistent habits:

Start with clarity. Revisit team goals often and connect them to the bigger picture. People engage when they see how their work matters.

Model what you expect. If you preach transparency but avoid tough conversations, the culture learns avoidance. Live the values in small, visible ways.

Make feedback normal. Normalize short, constructive check-ins rather than saving feedback for performance reviews.

Build small rituals. Whether it’s opening meetings with a quick “win” or a shoutout, rituals create rhythm and shared identity. And when you have shared values and rituals, the sense of belonging increases.

The Bottom Line

Culture starts small—with consistent leadership choices—and scales through shared ownership. Executives set the tone and direction. HR creates the framework to measure and strengthen culture. Managers bring it to life every day.

Every time you clarify expectations, show empathy, or celebrate a success, you’re not just managing tasks—you’re reinforcing the culture your organization depends on.

That’s how leadership and HR turn culture into strategy—together.

Dusty Tockstein is a senior consultant at Peter Barron Stark Companies. Dusty works with clients to improve their corporate culture through a variety of tools, including Employee Engagement Surveys, 360 Leadership Development Assessments, Leadership Coaching, and Organizational Assessments.

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He was not indifferent. He was not disengaged. He genuinely believed his team’s competence meant they needed little communication from him. What he did not realize was that his silence had already spoken for him, and his team had been listening closely.

Before the assessment was complete, that department had lost several of its highest performers. The employees who remained had quietly stopped offering ideas, having concluded that their input was not valued. Morale had deteriorated not because of a dramatic event or a bad decision, but because of an absence. A vacuum that people, as they always do, filled with their own interpretation. And in uncertain environments, people rarely interpret silence generously.

This is one of the most consistent patterns we see in our work with leaders at every level of an organization. Silence is not neutral. When leaders go quiet, especially during periods of change, ambiguity, or pressure, their teams do not simply wait patiently for information. They begin to construct their own narrative. They wonder whether their jobs are at risk, whether leadership has lost confidence in them, or whether the organization’s direction has shifted in ways no one is willing to say out loud. The rumors that fill the void are almost always more damaging than whatever truth the leader was hesitant to share.

What makes this pattern so difficult to address is that most leaders who go silent do so for reasonable reasons. They are waiting until they have more certainty before communicating. They do not want to alarm their teams unnecessarily. They assume that no news is good news, or, like the leader in our story, they trust their people to ask when they need something. These are not bad instincts on their own. The problem is a high risk of misreading what employees actually need or what they are thinking. This is especially true in high-change environments.

The research is consistent on this point, and so is our own survey data. Employees do not expect their leaders to have all the answers. What they need is to feel seen, included, and valued. They need to know that someone at the front of the room is aware of the uncertainty and actively considering how to navigate it. A leader who says, “Here is what I know, here is what I do not know yet, and here is how we are approaching it,” builds far more trust than one who waits for perfect clarity before speaking. Waiting for certainty, in most organizations today, means waiting indefinitely.

Communication during uncertainty needs to increase in frequency, not decrease. It does not need to be lengthy or formal. A brief team check-in at the start of the week, a quick note acknowledging a project milestone, a direct conversation about shifting priorities before the rumor mill gets there first. These moments cost very little time and contribute significantly to developing trust, morale, and retention. The leaders we work with who do this well are not necessarily the most naturally communicative people. They are simply the ones who have accepted that keeping their teams informed is as much a part of their job as any operational responsibility. And helps improve productivity and engagement.

There is also a belonging dimension to this that leaders often underestimate. When people do not know the goals, do not understand the priorities, and do not feel included in the team’s direction, they stop feeling part of something. Shared vision and shared purpose are not built through mission statements on a wall. They are built through the consistent, ongoing communication that connects each person’s work to the larger picture. When that communication stops, so does the sense of belonging, and with it, the discretionary effort that separates a good team from a great one.

The leader in our story was not a poor leader. He cared deeply about his team and respected their abilities. But respect, without communication, reads as indifference. His best people did not leave because they were unhappy with the work. They left because they did not feel connected or valued for their contributions. That is an expensive lesson, and an entirely preventable one.

Your silence is not a blank space. It is a message. The only question is whether you are the one writing it.

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We hear belonging described as a soft concept, something aspirational that organizations gesture toward in values statements and DEI initiatives. But in our survey work, the fingerprints of low belonging are everywhere in the hard numbers. It appears in low engagement scores, in teams where ideas stopped flowing, in departments where the best people leave, and the remaining ones go quiet. Belonging is not soft. It is one of the most practical drivers of performance and retention that we measure.

That silence is not about the question. It is about whether the people in that room feel comfortable enough to answer it. They were included, but they did not feel like they belonged, and closing that gap is one of the most consequential things a leader can do.

What makes it difficult is that most breakdowns in belonging do not come from obvious failures of leadership. They come from subtle, accumulated habits that leaders rarely notice because their intent is good. Meetings where input is invited but decisions are already made. Recognition that is broad and generic rather than specific and personal. Unclear expectations about where an employee’s voice actually matters. These patterns are rarely intentional, but their impact is cumulative. Over time, employees draw a quiet conclusion: that their contribution does not change anything, so why try?

We see this dynamic regularly in our assessment work. A leader who, by every measure, is doing the right things, holding meetings, sharing information, inviting participation, and yet something is missing. Employees are present but not engaged, included but not connected. They have learned, through small, repeated signals, that the room may be open but is not entirely secure. And once people learn that, they stop bringing their best thinking to the table.

Belonging, at its core, is built through clarity, consistency, and care, and all three of those are operational responsibilities. Employees feel a sense of belonging when they understand how their work connects to the team’s mission, when they know what is expected and how success is measured, when they trust that disagreement will be heard rather than penalized, when they feel their manager is genuinely invested in them as people, and when they have a shared connection to the team. None of this requires grand gestures or new programs. It requires disciplined daily habits.

The most important thing for leaders to understand is that belonging varies enormously within the same organization, often within the same building. One team thrives while the one next door struggles, under identical policies and with access to the same resources. That variance almost always traces back to the immediate manager. Belonging is not built by the organization. It is built, or eroded, by the person running the Tuesday morning meeting. How that leader listens, how they respond to mistakes, how they distribute recognition, how they handle a moment of disagreement, how they foster shared values, these are the interactions that tell employees whether they truly belong or are simply present.

Shared values are another layer of belonging that leaders often overlook. When employees see their own values reflected in how the team operates, how decisions are made, how people treat each other, and what the group collectively stands for, they feel a deeper connection to their work and to the people around them. This is not about posting values on a wall. It is about whether the day-to-day experience of being on the team consistently reinforces those values. Leaders who take the time to involve their teams in shaping shared norms, who name the values they see in action, and who hold everyone, including themselves, to those standards, create an environment where belonging takes root naturally. When people feel they are part of something with a shared identity and purpose, they do not just show up. They invest.

This is also why belonging is so easy to overestimate. Well-intentioned leaders often assume their teams feel more connected than they do, because employees are unlikely to say directly, “I don’t feel like I belong here,” especially to a manager they respect. The signal tends to come later, in an engagement survey, in a pattern of quiet disengagement, or in a resignation conversation that catches the leader off guard.

So what does building belonging actually look like in practice? A few habits make a consistent difference.

Connect people to purpose. Regularly show employees how their work ties to the team’s goals and the organization’s mission. Do not assume they already see it. Say it out loud, often.

Welcome Opposition. Belonging grows in environments where people can challenge ideas without consequence. The tone is set not by how often you invite dissent, but by how you respond when it happens.

Be specific with recognition. Generic praise tells people they were noticed. Specific recognition tells them they matter. Name the contribution, not just the outcome.

Clarify where input counts. Tell people when you are seeking their feedback, rather than sharing a decision that has already been made. That clarity reduces frustration and builds trust over time.

Check in with intention. A brief, genuine conversation about how someone is doing carries more belonging-building power than most leaders realize. It signals that you see the person, not just the work.

Build shared identity. Involve your team in shaping the norms and values that define how you work together. Name the behaviors you see that reflect those values, and hold everyone, including yourself, to the same standard. When people feel they are part of a team with a shared identity and purpose, belonging follows naturally. Nothing exemplifies this more than a non-profit or startup. Everyone is 100% on board, knows where the organization is going, the purpose, and the energy couldn’t be higher.

For a deeper look at the key drivers of belonging and how they connect to engagement and retention, see our earlier piece, Belonging vs. Inclusion: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters.

The question that separates leaders who build strong belonging from those who do not is a simple shift in perspective. Instead of asking “Have I included everyone?” the better question is “How do people actually experience working with me?” Belonging is not about being liked. It is about being intentional, consistent, and honest about whether the environment you are creating every day is one where people feel valued enough to bring their best.

When belonging is strong, everything else gets easier. Engagement follows. Retention improves. Ideas surface that would otherwise stay buried, and you keep your top performers. The good news is that belonging, unlike many things in leadership, is entirely within your control to build.

Dusty Tockstein is a senior consultant at Peter Barron Stark Companies. Dusty works with clients to improve their corporate culture through a variety of tools, including Employee Engagement Surveys, 360 Leadership Development Assessments, Leadership Coaching, and Organizational Assessments.

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