What Happens When Organisations Prioritise Results Over Behaviour?
Priyanka Ayodele is a leadership and organisational development specialist and the founder of The Leadership Method. As a Chartered Manager and Associate CIPD member, she supports organisations through leadership development, coaching, and culture-focused work with managers and teams
Most organisations have someone who is exceptionally good at what they do. Just reading that sentence will probably have brought one person to mind. That person is knowledgeable, reliable, and consistently delivers results.
They are the person everyone turns to when something needs to be done properly because we trust them. However, because of that trust and reliability, they become difficult to challenge. The conversation tends to go like this: “Yes, they can be difficult. That’s just how they are, though, and they’re good at their job.” Have you heard this conversation before?
On the surface, those comments don’t seem like a huge problem. The reality, however, is that they can start to influence an organisation’s culture far more than people realise.
I have always believed that culture isn’t defined by the values that have been put on a poster or an email signature. It is defined by the behaviours people display and experience every day. More importantly, it is influenced and shaped by the behaviours organisations choose to reward, tolerate, or ignore. So yes, those values in big writing on the staffroom wall matter because they set the expectation, but they’re only words until we collectively reinforce them through our actions.
It’s easy to look at someone’s results and behaviour as two separate conversations. I don’t think they are. The way someone behaves influences the people around them, and over time, that has just as much impact on performance as the numbers they deliver.
If one person regularly dismisses colleagues, speaks to people disrespectfully, or creates an environment where others don’t feel comfortable contributing, those behaviours don’t stay with them. They actually start to spread.
I have seen people stop sharing ideas because they know they will be shut down. I have seen managers avoid difficult conversations because they don’t think anything will change anyway. Before you know it, it isn’t just one person’s behaviour anymore. It has become part of how the team works. It is now the culture of your department.
The difficult thing is that organisations rarely connect the dots straightaway. Instead, they notice the consequences. What are those consequences? They include more employee relations cases, higher sickness absence, good people leaving, and declining engagement. Now we’re asking, “What happened?” The truth is that sometimes nothing has happened recently. It has been happening for years. Those behaviours were accepted for so long that they became deeply embedded in the culture and harder to challenge.
That’s not me saying we should expect perfection. That’s not realistic. However, being brilliant at your job shouldn’t become a reason to accept behaviour that slowly affects how everyone else works.
I also don’t think organisations have to choose between protecting performance and protecting culture. I think I would argue the opposite. The organisations that perform well over time are the ones where people feel respected, trusted, and comfortable speaking up. What happens when we stop doing those things? Performance drops. The strongest cultures aren’t built because everyone is exceptional. They’re built because everyone knows the standard expected of them, leadership is consistent, and the standard applies to everyone.
Every behaviour a leader ignores sends a message. Whether they intend it or not is another question.
Read more from Priyanka Ayodele
Priyanka Ayodele, Leadership and Business Specialist
Priyanka Ayodele (CMgr MCMI, Assoc. CIPD) is a Chartered Manager and Associate CIPD member and the founder of The Leadership Method. Her work focuses on leadership, team culture, and organisational development. Earlier in her career, she studied psychology and worked in mental health, which shaped her interest in how people experience leadership at work. Having experienced both poor management and the kind of leadership that helps people grow, she saw firsthand how much impact managers can have on someone's confidence and development. The managers who recognised her potential played a big part in shaping the leader she is today. That experience now influences the work she does at The Leadership Method
