Understanding Why Leaders Blame Culture Instead of Their Own Behavior
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Key Takeaways
- Leaders tend to blame cultural problems when performance stalls because it’s broad enough to describe everything and specific enough to implicate no one.
- Leaders who have stopped spending hands-on time with their people often don’t know what’s standing in their way. Ask how they’re feeling about the work, the pace and the environment.
- Ask people above you, your peers and your direct reports what they see as your strengths and your weaknesses.
- Reward people who raise problems before having a solution. Otherwise, issues stay hidden until they’re harder to trace and solve.
According to iHire’s 2026 Toxic Workplace Trends Report, 79% of employees who experienced a toxic workplace pointed to poor leadership and management as the cause, highlighting leaders who were unethical, unaccountable, or unsupportive. However, executives rarely share this perspective. When performance dips, the diagnosis that gets reached for first is almost always “culture,” a word that is broad enough to encompass everything yet vague enough to implicate no one.
Having spent nearly 20 years inside various organizations, observing leadership dynamics, it is clear that “culture” serves as a convenient scapegoat. It’s a safe explanation because it diffuses responsibility across the board, whereas naming one’s own decisions points directly back at a single individual.
Improving performance requires asking a tougher, more personal question: “What have I been doing, specifically, that’s producing this outcome?” Here are four practical areas to start examining:
1. Notice the Distance Before Diagnosing Culture
Executives seldom see themselves as the root cause when performance stalls. Often, they have distanced themselves from the day-to-day work, failing to notice their influence on outcomes. Jana Boone, SVP of growth enablement at full-funnel digital marketing agency Intero Digital, shares that the behavior leaders most commonly overlook in themselves is this very distance. “Poor performance gets labeled a culture problem when it’s often just distance,” she explains.
According to Boone, the problem usually isn’t culture but rather a leader who hasn’t spent hands-on time with their people recently. Such leaders instinctively try to solve problems quickly rather than listen and understand. Since the job has evolved since they last performed it, they may not appreciate what obstacles their team members actually face.
Boone advises leaders to pause and ask team members how they feel about the work, pace, and environment. “And then be quiet long enough to hear the real answer,” she emphasizes. This practice fosters deeper insight than assumptions or quick fixes.
2. Trace the Label Back to a Decision
The case of Boeing’s 737 Max safety issues highlights how vague cultural explanations can obscure concrete leadership decisions. After a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January 2024, the FAA’s audit revealed that Boeing’s culture prioritized mass production over safety standards. Yet, FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker clarified that the problem was less about a nebulous culture and more about specific, correctable leadership decisions—what was rewarded, what was skipped, and what was approved without proper safety briefings (NBC News).
This example scales down to any organization. Before attributing poor team output to “culture,” leaders should identify the concrete decisions behind it—what got approved, ignored, or rewarded inappropriately. A “culture” diagnosis is diffuse and hard to fix, but a decision can be traced back to a responsible individual.
3. Ask the Question You Don’t Want Answered
Most leaders who genuinely want to improve their habits don’t know where to start. This uncertainty often leads to avoidance. Boone recommends the uncomfortable but necessary step of soliciting feedback from all directions—people above you, your peers, and your direct reports. Ask them what they see as your strengths and weaknesses.
“You’ll get three different answers, and the gaps between them are the point,” Boone says. The challenging part is to listen without explaining, contextualizing, or defending. Instead, absorb the feedback, paying close attention to where perspectives diverge as much as where they align.
She suggests writing down your personal assessment of what’s going well and what needs improvement, then comparing it to the feedback received. The discrepancies between these lists reflect your true leadership audit. Most leaders skip this step because it leads to difficult conversations rather than comfortable workshops. “A culture diagnosis produces a workshop, while an honest look at your own habits produces a list of conversations you now have to have,” Boone explains.
4. Reward the Problem Before Demanding a Fix
A University of Iowa study led by researcher Daniel Newton found that management teams respond with more urgency to employees who raise problems than to those who come with ready-made solutions. The instinct to demand a solution alongside every problem is often counterproductive. When employees learn they must have a fix before speaking up, they tend to stay silent, allowing issues to fester and become harder to resolve.
This dynamic is not limited to front-line workers but also exists at the highest leadership levels. Leaders who only take concerns seriously when solutions are presented train their teams to withhold critical information that could identify the root causes of performance issues.
Loosening this filter—asking “What’s going wrong?” before “What should we do about it?”—helps surface problems earlier, making them easier to trace back to specific decisions rather than an amorphous culture.
You don’t need a workshop, survey, or new presentation deck to address these challenges. Start by noticing the distance, naming the decision, seeking honest feedback, and rewarding those who raise concerns without a ready fix.
Pick one of these four actions and implement it this week. Your team already knows which one you’ve been avoiding.
Source: Here
