Culture · Shaping it · Component

Leader behaviour commitments

What named leaders will visibly pay attention to and how they will meet the first critical incident, read by the people who report to them.

The deliverable

What it is

Schein’s primary embedding mechanisms are behaviours: what leaders attend to, measure and control, how they react when something goes wrong, and whom they reward. People take their cue from these more than from anything leaders say, and they notice inconsistency quickly.

This component records a small number of specific commitments from named people. Leadership roles, succession and decision rights belong to the Organisation object; this is only the behaviour through which a leader carries a culture shift.

One level in

What it is made of

Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.

  1. Visible behaviour

    The specific thing a leader will do, repeatedly and observably, that signals the intended assumption to others.

    3 attributes: Leader · Commitment · Committed for

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  2. Incident response

    How the leader intends to respond the first time the new behaviour costs something, decided before it happens.

    3 attributes: Intended response · Actual response · Logged as

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  3. Upward read

    How the people who report to the leader say the commitment is being kept, collected at intervals and without attribution.

    3 attributes: Seen as kept · Respondents · Read on

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The first time the new behaviour costs something, everyone watches the leader. Decide in advance what they will see.