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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.228: Behavior in Motion: The Transformative Power of Culture-Minded Leadership, with Adriana Vaccaro, click here to listen now.

Leadership shapes behaviour and behaviour shapes culture. The real work of building a great culture in your team isn’t in defining values (although they can certainly be helpful). Where the meaningful and effective work truly lies is in creating the conditions where the right actions become consistent. In this week’s episode of Leading with Integrity, I spoke with Adriana Vaccaro, culture strategist, behavioural psychologist, and HR expert. Adriana’s work sits across leadership, behaviour, and organisational culture, helping businesses move beyond statements and into consistent, observable actions.

Our conversation focused on a challenge that many organisations recognise but struggle to address: the gap between intended culture and lived experience. Most businesses can describe their values, paint them on the office wall or throw them on a website or marketing deck. They can even explain what they stand for and how they want people to behave. But what actually happens day to day often tells a different story.

We explored why that gap exists, how behaviour, not intention, defines culture and what leaders need to do differently if they want culture to become something real and sustainable.

At the centre of it all is a simple but demanding idea: culture is not something you declare, it’s something you design, reinforce and live through behaviour. One of the clearest themes in the conversation was that culture is not defined by what organisations say it is defined by what people do.

This sounds obvious but it has significant implications. Values statements, mission statements, internal messaging… all play a role. But they’re only meaningful if they translate into consistent behaviour across the organisation and from the Board and CEO right the way down to the newest employees.

Adriana emphasises that people don’t experience culture through words but through interactions; how decisions are made, how feedback is given, how people respond under pressure. These moments form the real culture of an organisation.

When there is alignment between what is said and what is done, culture feels consistent. When there is a gap, people notice it quickly and once that gap becomes visible, trust can to erode.

A common challenge Adriana talks about is that many leaders genuinely want to build positive cultures but struggle to translate that intention into action. This is a theme we’ve heard a few times before on the podcast too (most recently in Ep.224 with Mickey Anderson).

Part of the issue is that culture is often treated as something separate from day-to-day operations. It becomes a project, an initiative, a “living document” (🤢) or a set of workshops; rather than something embedded in how work actually happens. Culture that sits alongside the business rather than within it.

Leaders may talk about collaboration, accountability, transparency or openness. But if systems, processes, incentives and actual real-world actions don’t support those behaviours, they won’t become consistent.

People respond to what is reinforced. If speed is rewarded over quality, speed will dominate. If individual performance is prioritised over team outcomes, collaboration will be limited.

This doesn’t mean leaders are being inconsistent on purpose, it means the systems around them are sending signals that override their intentions. Bridging this gap requires looking beyond messaging and into how the organisation actually operates.

A key part of Adriana’s approach is focusing on behavioural design. Rather than asking, “What results do we want?” the question becomes, “What behaviours will lead to those results and how do we make those behaviours easier to repeat?”

Leadership becomes more deliberate and involves identifying the actions that matter most and ensuring they are supported by the environment. Including how goals are set, how performance is measured and how feedback is delivered.

For example, if open communication is a priority, leaders need to create spaces where that can happen consistently. If accountability is important, there need to be clear expectations and follow-through.

These are not one-off actions but crucial patterns.

Adriana describes culture as behaviour in motion, it’s shaped by repeated actions over time, where small, consistent actions have more impact than large, occasional initiatives.

Designing for behaviour also makes culture more practical: it moves the conversation from abstract ideas to observable actions and that in turn makes it easier for people across the organisation to understand what is expected.

Another important theme in this week’s episode is the role of leadership signals.

Every decision a leader makes sends a message. What they prioritise, what they question, what they ignore, their subconscious tells or expressions, all of these influence how others perceive the reality of their leadership, their culture and as a result how people behave.

These signals are not always intentional, but they are always noticed…

If a leader talks about well-being but consistently rewards overwork (or burns themself out!), the signal is clear.

If they routinely arrive late or miss meetings, but reprimand others for poor punctuality, the hypocrisy is obvious.

If they encourage open discussion but react negatively to challenge, people will hesitate to speak up.

Over time, these patterns shape how decisions are made across the organisation, how the culture is seen and understood by those working within it, and what behaviours and expectations become the norm, the way things are done, the culture.

Adriana points out that leaders don’t need to control every behaviour (we’re only human, after all) but they do need to be aware of the signals they are sending; consistency matters. When actions align with stated values, trust builds, but when they don’t, people adjust their behaviour to match what they see, not what they hear.

Organisations are not static, as we all know, they grow, adapt, face new challenges and (hopefully) overcome. And as they do these things, their internal culture can shift too, sometimes in unintended ways.

One of the risks Adriana mentioned is that as complexity increases, the focus on behaviour can fade. Leaders become more focused on performance, targets, metrics, the ‘doing’ and the immediate outcomes. All entirely understandable especially as we grow a business and while those things are important, they can also overshadow the behaviours that sustain them.

This is often the moment of greatest risk, where culture needs to be maintained deliberately. Not through large initiatives or big words but through consistent attention to how work is done:

These questions help ensure that culture remains aligned even as conditions change. Because without that attention drift can occur and, over time, that drift can create the same gap between intention and reality that many organisations are trying to close.

This conversation with Adriana was one I really enjoyed (I know, I ALWAYS say that, but it’s always true, soooo…..) it really demonstrated how leaders should and can bring culture back to something practical and grounded; real, dare-I-say, authentic.

It moves the focus away from statements and towards behaviour what people actually do, every day. It also highlights the role of leadership in shaping those behaviours not through occasional interventions, but through consistent signals, clear expectations and environments that support the right actions.

For leaders, the takeaway is not to rethink culture entirely, but to approach it differently.

Look beyond what is written and focus on what is repeated.

Because in the end, culture is not defined by intention, it’s defined by behaviour and by how consistently that behaviour is experienced across the organisation. Lead by example, after all.

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Listen to the full episode on your preferred podcast platform, find the links (or a web-player) here: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-228-behavior-in-motion-the-transformative-power-of-culture-minded-leadership-with-adriana-vaccaro-leadership

If you prefer video then you can watch on YouTube too: https://youtu.be/1zGxas6TvHQ

Join us again next week when I’ll be communicating about communicating, with my next guest Salvatore Manzi.

I say this every week too, but it’s important to me to keep saying it anyway:
THANK YOU for reading, for listening, for supporting Leading with Integrity. There’s no show, no newsletter, no future of leadership without each of you.

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here for new managers and first-time founders working in tech or specialist driven teams to help with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful teams.

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