Why CEOs Fail to Recognize the Culture Problem
By Gretchen Fox Palmer, CEO of MTO Agency and Creator of EQ @Work
CEOs often struggle to recognize culture problems and the lack of social-emotional skills within their organizations for several reasons:
1. Distance from Day-to-Day Operations
- Insulated from Ground-Level Realities: CEOs are often focused on high-level strategy, financial performance, and growth, which can distance them from the everyday experiences of employees. This distance can lead to a disconnect, making it difficult for them to see the nuanced cultural issues or skill gaps that exist at different levels of the organization.
- Filtered Feedback: Information reaching the CEO often goes through several layers of management, which can lead to a filtering of negative or uncomfortable truths. This results in a rosier picture of the company culture than what employees actually experience.
2. Focus on Traditional Metrics
- Emphasis on Narrow List of Metrics: CEOs are typically focused only on a few specific outcomes like revenue, profitability, market share, and productivity. While social-emotional skills and cultural health have been proven in research for more thirty years to impact the bottom line, the support role they play is often deferred for:
- Short-Term Priorities: The pressure to deliver short-term financial results can lead CEOs to prioritize immediate, tangible business objectives over even short-term investments in culture and employee development, including social-emotional learning.
3. Lack of Awareness and Understanding
- Unfamiliarity with SEL: Many CEOs may not be fully aware of what social-emotional skills entail or how critical they are to a healthy workplace culture. Traditional business education and leadership training often emphasize technical and strategic skills over emotional intelligence and social competencies.
- Underestimating Cultural Impact: Some CEOs might underestimate the role that culture plays in business success, viewing it as a “soft” issue that is secondary to more pressing concerns. This can lead to a neglect of efforts to cultivate a positive, emotionally intelligent work environment.
4. Cultural Blind Spots
- Personal Success Bias: CEOs who have risen through the ranks often do so by excelling within the existing corporate culture. This can create a bias where they assume that the current culture is effective because it worked for them, making it harder for them to see its flaws or areas for improvement.
- Resistance to Change: Changing organizational culture requires acknowledging that the current culture may be flawed or outdated. This can be challenging for CEOs who are invested in the status quo or who may perceive cultural change as risky or unnecessary.
5. Perceived Irrelevance
- Misalignment with Corporate Goals: CEOs may not see the direct link between social-emotional skills and business success, especially in industries where technical skills, efficiency, and productivity are prioritized. They may view SEL as unrelated to the core competencies that drive business performance.
- Focus on Innovation and Competitiveness: In highly competitive industries, the focus on innovation and staying ahead of competitors can overshadow the importance of culture and social-emotional skills, leading CEOs to overlook these areas.
6. Challenges in Measuring Culture
- Intangibility of Culture: Culture is often seen as an intangible and elusive concept that is difficult to measure or manage. Without clear metrics or benchmarks, CEOs might struggle to assess the state of their company’s culture or recognize when there are issues.
- Inconsistent Feedback: Employee surveys and feedback mechanisms might not always provide an accurate picture of cultural health, especially if employees fear repercussions for speaking out or if the survey questions don’t capture the real issues.
7. Organizational Complexity
- Large and Diverse Workforces: In large organizations, different departments, teams, and locations can have their own subcultures, making it difficult for CEOs to get a unified view of the overall company culture. Problems in specific areas might be overlooked or dismissed as isolated incidents.
- Rapid Growth or Change: In rapidly growing or changing companies, the pace of expansion or transformation can outstrip efforts to maintain or build a cohesive culture. CEOs may be more focused on scaling the business or managing change than on nurturing social-emotional skills and a healthy culture.
8. Echo Chamber Effect
- Surrounded by Like-Minded Leaders: CEOs often surround themselves with senior leaders who share their perspectives and priorities. This can create an echo chamber where dissenting views or cultural concerns are downplayed or ignored.
- Overconfidence in Leadership: Some CEOs may believe that their leadership alone is enough to sustain a positive culture, underestimating the need for deliberate efforts to build social-emotional competencies throughout the organization.
9. Delegation of Cultural Issues
- Reliance on HR: CEOs may delegate cultural issues and employee development to HR departments, believing that these areas are outside their direct responsibility. This can lead to a lack of executive-level attention to culture and social-emotional learning initiatives.
- Limited Engagement with Employee Development: In some cases, CEOs may not engage deeply with employee development programs, viewing them as operational rather than strategic. This can result in a lack of emphasis on social-emotional skills at the highest levels.
10. Cultural Lag
- Outdated Leadership Models: Some CEOs may still operate under outdated leadership models that prioritize command-and-control approaches over collaboration, empathy, and emotional intelligence. This can hinder the recognition of the importance of social-emotional skills in a modern workplace.
- Slow Adaptation to New Norms: As workplace expectations evolve, there can be a lag in how quickly CEOs adapt to new norms, including the growing importance of culture and social-emotional skills. This slow adaptation can lead to a disconnect between the CEO’s perspective and the realities of the modern workforce.
Want to learn more? I recommend reading this next: 8 Signs Your Company Has a Performance Problem called Culture
Or skip to learn about EQ @Work, the step-by-step blueprint to: Inspire Performance in the Post-Pandemic Workplace by:
- Increasing Employee Capacity & Resilience
- Improving Productivity
- Reducing Problematic Behaviors
