Corporate Culture – How We Co-Create a Healthy Culture in Organisations
- Jan 7
- 6 min read
Sandra is renowned for her insightful approach to coaching leaders and leadership teams. With years of experience as an organisational psychologist and master coach, she brings breadth and depth to her work. She combines robust psychological theory with a practical approach to individual and team development.
In a world defined by constant transformation, hybrid workforces, rapid technological advances, shifting generational expectations, and global competition, organisations are recognising that culture is not a decorative accessory, it is a strategic imperative. Culture determines how people behave when no one is watching, how decisions are made under pressure, and how resilient an organisation becomes when facing uncertainty. It influences whether employees show up with creativity and energy or retreat in silence and survival mode. In essence, culture is the invisible operating system that drives performance, innovation, and well-being.
Yet despite years of leadership workshops, glossy value statements and motivational posters, many organisations still struggle to build cultures that are genuinely healthy, empowering and sustainable. I have witnessed versions of the gap, organisations that claim to value collaboration but reward competition, who say they prioritise well-being but do not address burnout, who advocate transparency but practice secrecy at the highest levels. When culture is dictated from the top rather than co-created, people disengage. When behaviours do not align with espoused values, trust is eroded.
To build a healthy culture, organisations must embrace a fundamental shift, culture cannot be mandated, it must be co-created. To do that effectively, we must understand the psychological and systemic forces that shape collective behaviour. One of the most powerful lenses for understanding this is Transactional Analysis (TA), specifically the concept of organisational script.
What culture really is
Organisational culture is often defined as “how we do things around here”, but in reality, it is much deeper than visible behaviours or stated values. Culture is the lived experience of employees. It is the accumulation of daily interactions, unspoken expectations, leadership behaviours, and emotional climate. In essence, it is a set of unconscious agreements that influence whether people feel safe or threatened, valued or replaceable, and whether they are encouraged to contribute or pressurised to conform.
A healthy culture is not soft, it is structural. Research demonstrates that organisations with strong, supportive cultures achieve higher employee retention, stronger engagement, greater innovation, and stronger financial performance. Culture shapes decisions that ultimately build or break strategy.
When people feel psychologically safe and trusted, they take measured risks, share ideas, speak up, disagree without being disagreeable, and create healthy relationships. When people feel blamed, shamed, judged, or ignored, they shift into self-protection, compliance, silence, and resignation. In a modern landscape where human creativity and agility are essential, survival mode cultures are organisational liabilities.
Why culture must be co-created, not imposed
The traditional model of corporate culture creation has been top-down, leaders decide what the culture should be and expect everyone to adopt it. Culture cannot be installed like software. People commit to what they co-create. Co-creating culture means inviting employees at all levels to actively participate in designing the work environment. It means recognising that culture is not designed by posters and slogans but by relationships and the quality of everyday conversations. When culture is consciously co-created, ownership replaces compliance, engagement replaces resistance, trust replaces fear, and resilience emerges as a collective capability, enabling people to adapt, grow, and thrive together.
Culture is not built through leadership programmes, initiatives, or value statements. These are the tools that can support culture, but they cannot create without robust alignment between intention and action. Culture is either reinforced or undermined in every meeting, every leadership decision, every performance review, and every informal exchange. It does not live in an employee handbook, it lives in the human nervous system.
Transactional analysis and organisational script
Transactional Analysis (TA) is a social psychological theory developed by Dr Eric Berne, and it helps us understand how beliefs, behaviour, and psychological dynamics shape relationships. One of TA’s core concepts is the life script, defined as the unconscious narrative that an individual develops in childhood to make sense of the world and that later influences adult decisions, beliefs, and relational patterns.
What is less widely discussed is that organisations also develop scripts. An organisational script is a set of unspoken messages, expectations, emotional rules, and behavioural patterns that shape how the organisation functions. It determines what is permitted, what is rewarded, what is feared, and what is forbidden. It shapes whether people speak up or remain silent, whether mistakes are treated as learning opportunities or as punishable offences, and whether leadership is authoritarian, paternalistic, participatory, or empowering.
Organisational scripts are transmitted through symbolic communication, such as who gets promoted, how conflict is handled, how leaders respond to being challenged, and how success is defined. Scripts are often inherited unconsciously from organisational history or industry norms. There are messages embedded in the unconscious of the system, for example:
“Don’t ask questions, just deliver results”
“Don’t show vulnerability, stay strong”
“Keep conflict quiet, don’t rock the boat”
“Don’t challenge authority, be compliant”
These examples are not written down anywhere, yet beliefs such as these, embedded in the system, powerfully govern behaviour. The problem with an unconscious script is that it operates automatically, even when it does not serve the organisation. The culture of the organisation is a result of the script and, left unexamined, reproduces itself through generations of employees.
Healthy cultural transformation begins with exploration of the script, once the organisation can see the narrative it is living with, it can consciously rewrite it. The act of rewriting is the essence of co-creation of a healthy culture.
Creating culture through shared purpose and psychological safety
At the heart of a healthy organisational culture lies psychological safety, the belief that we can speak openly, experiment, and bring our authentic selves without fear of blame, shame, or judgement. Psychological safety is the birthplace of innovation. Without it, people silence themselves, hide mistakes, suppress suggestions, and protect themselves.
When people feel genuinely listened to, they fully engage. When they feel part of something meaningful, they contribute more confidently. When leaders operate from curiosity rather than control, they unlock organisational intelligence. Leaders must be facilitators of conversations, model transparency, and humility. Leadership is less about power or status and more about relationships. A healthy culture is not one where everyone agrees, but one in which disagreement is safe and productive.
The work of cultural co-creation
Co-creating a healthy culture is not an event, it is a practice. It requires a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions and the patience to build new habits. It requires consistency and not only emotional intelligence but also social and relational intelligence. It requires leaders to look inward because culture mirrors leadership behaviours. Culture does not change when organisations declare new values, it changes only when leaders embody behaviours aligned with those values. People follow experiences, not words.
The real work of culture is the relational work, the way leaders respond to challenges, the way they deal with mistakes, their own and others, the depth with which they listen, their ability to embrace human frailty whilst driving towards excellence. Culture is co-created through conversations, experiences, and daily choices. When employees believe they can influence culture, hope replaces helplessness. When people’s voices matter, accountability becomes shared rather than enforced. When the dignity of individuals is honoured, performance becomes a natural outcome, rather than a pressure demand.
The future belongs to co-created cultures
We are living in a pivotal moment for workplace transformation. The 2020 pandemic exposed what had previously been unquestionable. People no longer want to trade well-being for steady employment. They want purpose, psychological safety, inclusion, and humanity. They want their workplace to be a community of contribution.
A healthy culture confers a competitive advantage on an organisation. More importantly, it is a moral choice. Leaders who rise to this challenge will attract talent, inspire loyalty, and adapt rapidly. Those who cling to outdated scripts will struggle to evolve. The future of work will be built on collaboration, not control, on partnership, not hierarchy, and on trust rather than fear. Culture is something we build together, not something senior managers own.
Closing reflection
The organisational script silently dictates the organisation's culture. Every employee contributes through their decisions, beliefs, and behaviours. Every leader reinforces it through their presence, not their policies. At any moment, we can reinforce the old story or co-create a new one.
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Read more from Dr. Sandra Wilson
Dr. Sandra Wilson, Business Coach, Mentor, and Consultant
With over 35 years of experience in organisation development, Sandra is a dedicated researcher of human behaviour both at an individual and systemic level. She defines her work as helping people get out of their own way, passionately believing in the untapped potential and limitless resources within every individual. Her mission is to support people in living richer, more fulfulling lives, both professionally and personally. Sandra works internationally as a consultant, teacher, coach, mentor and supervisor advocating for rigourouse development processes without rigid formulas.
