Why leadership behaviour, not messaging, drives culture

Across UK financial services, culture remains one of the most talked-about priorities yet one of the least consistently delivered. Many leadership teams still treat culture as a communication exercise: a refreshed set of values, a new mission statement, or a high profile internal campaign. The assumption is that if people hear the right story, behaviour will follow.

Our experience working with mutuals and recent research published in the Harvard Business Review by Benjamin Laker and colleagues show this is rarely the case. Culture does not change through messaging alone. It changes when systems, incentives and power structures shift, and when leaders act consistently with the values they espouse.

The HBR study involved interviews with over 160 senior leaders across sectors internationally, including Europe. It found a consistent pattern: culture is often treated like branding, not behaviour; a project, not an operating system. Communication alone cannot drive trust, engagement or member confidence.

This finding will feel familiar to many in the mutual sector where purpose and member first values are often proudly stated but harder to live in practice. Members, colleagues and regulators increasingly look for tangible evidence that culture runs deeper than narrative.

Culture is not a campaign

The research found that 72 percent of organisations that launched formal culture initiatives showed no meaningful improvement in engagement or trust a year later. Posters, workshops or internal campaigns do little if day to day practices do not reflect the intended culture.

By contrast, organisations that changed how leaders behaved, how meetings were run, how feedback was given, how decisions were shared saw trust rise sharply even without a formal campaign. In building societies, this might mean more visible decision making around lending, local branch strategy or community investment. Culture is built in the moments that affect people’s experience, not the messaging about it.

Values only count when they cost you something

Employees judge values not by how often they are named, but by what leaders are willing to give up to live them. In the context of mutuals, this could be turning down commercial opportunities that conflict with member interests, or investing in long term branch presence despite short term cost pressures.

The HBR research highlighted that where leaders aligned incentives with values, engagement, retention and performance improved. When values remained symbolic, credibility and trust declined. The lesson is clear: culture is proven through trade offs and visible leadership risk.

Silence is not alignment

Nearly seven in ten employees withhold feedback because they believe it is risky or pointless. In member focused organisations, silence can mask disengagement. Culture improves when it becomes genuinely safe to speak up and when feedback drives visible action. Some UK firms have introduced reverse Q&A formats, giving employees or member representatives the chance to ask unscreened questions during leadership meetings. This small but structured change can quickly rebuild trust.

Perks do not fix systems

When culture feels strained, the temptation is to offer quick wins: wellbeing days, recognition awards or free lunches. HBR found that when perks replaced structural change, engagement often fell. The lesson for building societies is that real change comes from improving management capability, clarifying decision making, and strengthening workflows that affect both colleagues and members. Perks alone will not shift culture.

Leadership must model what it expects

Perhaps the most relevant lesson for mutuals is that culture flows from the top. Middle managers cannot carry what senior leaders do not model. Our work with societies shows that when executives redesign how they run meetings, make decisions transparently, and co-create priorities with employees, alignment and trust improve markedly. Culture is not a message to pass down it is a set of behaviours to demonstrate up close.

Culture is a system, not a story

Across every sector in the HBR study, culture changed only when leaders changed first, not in tone, but in structure; not in principle, but in power. The three levers that matter are:

• Power: who makes decisions and whose voices are heard
• Risk: what leaders are willing to give up to live their values
• Modelling: what behaviours are consistently demonstrated

For building societies, this is particularly relevant. Members, colleagues and regulators are all watching. The most credible societies are those where culture is embedded in the systems that guide behaviour, not just the stories that describe it.

Before launching any culture initiative, ask: what are we asking people to believe that we have not yet demonstrated ourselves? When leaders act first and consistently, culture stops being aspirational and becomes operational reality.

From Building Society Association Blog, November 2025