What Is Tolerated Becomes Your Workplace Culture

What Is Tolerated Becomes Your Workplace Culture
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What Is Tolerated Is Your Workplace Culture: Understanding the Subtle Forces Shaping Organizational Identity
We know from Action Learning Leadership Development participants that workplace culture is more than what leaders say and celebrate. Workplace culture is also defined by what is implicitly tolerated. In fact, we know from organizational culture assessment data that the behaviors, actions, and norms that go unchecked or unchallenged often reveal more about an organization’s true culture than any formal mission statement or set of core values.

When it comes to creating a healthy and high performing culture, this principle of cultural tolerance is especially significant. Organizations thrive or fail based on the consistency between what they say they stand for and what they allow on a daily basis. This gap between cultural intent and reality can erode trust, limit growth, and impair performance.

The good news is that organizational alignment research tells us that when organizations align their true culture with their strategy, they are 71% more likely to have higher performance in terms of revenue growth, profitability, leadership effectiveness, customer loyalty, and employee engagement.

The Unspoken Rules: What Is Culturally Tolerated Is Your Workplace
While the concept of organizational culture is often associated with positive attributes — values, traditions, team norms, and shared business practices — its essence is shaped equally by what people and the organization permits, ignores, or turns a blind eye to. For instance, in an organization that champions innovation but routinely tolerates risk aversion, the prevailing culture is not truly one of innovation. Similarly, a business that emphasizes customer focus but does not allow sales or customer service to go “above and beyond” will not truly achieve a customer-centric culture.

This discrepancy between the official narrative and tolerated behavior is where the real culture lives. It is in these unwritten rules that culture is most deeply embedded.

The Cost of Cultural Misalignment: When Tolerance Undermines Strategy
When there is a significant gap between what is culturally tolerated and the formal culture an organization promotes, misalignment becomes inevitable. This cultural misalignment can manifest itself in several damaging ways:

  1. Inconsistent Strategy Execution
    Your strategy must go through your culture to be successfully implemented.  We know form project postmortem data that when the tolerated culture is at odds with strategic priorities, key strategic projects suffer.

    For example, one client had a growth strategy that required high levels of cross-functional collaboration to execute, but they tolerated self-centered and toxic behavior from a high-performing individual because of their contributions to the bottom line. Over time, this tolerance signaled to others that the organization valued individual results over relationships and team-based results.  This led to a culture of individualism and competition even though the executive team made a formal commitment to a culture of collaboration and respect.

    Is your culture helping or hindering strategy execution?

  2. Erosion of Trust in Leadership
    Employees quickly recognize discrepancies between words and actions. When a company’s stated values are at odds with its tolerated behaviors, it erodes trust in leadership. For example, if leadership preaches a culture of transparency but consistently withholds critical information and uses back-channels to make decisions, employees will become skeptical and disengage.

    Do employees trust that the way things truly get done in your organization are aligned with your cultural beliefs and strategic priorities?

  3. Decreased Employee Engagement
    Employees are less likely to invest discretionary energy in a culture that feels disingenuous. If leadership says one thing but tolerates the opposite, employees may become disengaged, feeling that their efforts to align with formal expectations are meaningless.

    Is your employee engagement waning?

  4. Talent Retention Challenges
    We know from employee engagement survey research that high performers are inclined to leave a culture that fails to reflect its stated corporate values. If talented individuals witness unethical behavior or inconsistency in leadership, they are more likely to seek environments that better align with their own values.

    Is your unwanted attrition of top talent higher than you want it to be?

How to Create an Authentic Organizational Identity
To create a culture that is both authentic and aligned with strategic goals, organizations must become acutely aware of what they tolerate. Here are key steps to ensure this alignment:

  1. Assess Your Current Culture
    First, assess your current organizational culture to get an honest snapshot of the behaviors you tolerate, not just the ones you promote. Every implicit action and attitude should be measured to see if they contradict or reinforce the stated culture required to best execute your strategic priorities.
  2. Identify Key Culture Gaps
    Once you know your current culture, your next step is to identify the critical few gaps between the present and what is required for the future to best execute your business AND people strategies.
  3. Create a Clear Plan to Close the Gaps
    This involves establishing a cadence of accountability to ensure that the right behaviors are promoted and that undesirable behaviors have meaningful consequences.  It also requires leaders that know how to actively foster the desired culture through regular feedback and open communication so that every action — no matter how small — aligns with the larger vision for success.

The Bottom Line
What an organization tolerates is often the most powerful indicator of its true workplace culture. Misalignment between what is formally stated and what is tacitly accepted can undermine strategy, erode trust, and limit growth. By becoming aware of these unspoken rules and making intentional efforts to address them, organizations can create healthy cultures that are not only authentic but also aligned with their strategic goals and values.

To learn more about why what is tolerated is your workplace culture, download A Purposeful and Aligned Organizational Culture – Your DNA for Success

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