Today, I want to look at the importance of living your values at work, and why leadership consistency builds real culture.
Most workplaces proudly display their values — integrity, teamwork, respect — on walls, websites, and onboarding documents. But research shows that real workplace culture isn’t built by slogans. It’s shaped by what leaders consistently do, not what they say. When behaviour and values don’t match, employees quickly feel the gap — and the impact on trust, morale, and engagement can be huge.
When the Culture You Promise Isn’t the Culture People Live
Many workplaces I’ve been in have had values printed on posters, or displayed on banners and screens from the second you walk through the door. However, in practice, the culture is not created by those posters, but by the choices leaders make every day.
I once worked with a manager who often talked about putting “family first”, yet the moment pressure arrived from above, the message flipped to “business first”. It didn’t take long to realise that the people who rushed to please were the ones who got recognised and rewarded. The talk sounded good, but the walk never matched it.
The Cost of Culture Dissonance: What the Research Says
Research consistently shows that when an organisation’s stated culture doesn’t match employees’ lived reality, trust erodes quickly, and the effects ripple across wellbeing, performance, and retention.
This gap has names: organisational hypocrisy, values incongruence, or culture dissonance.
Here’s what the evidence shows:
Values Incongruence Increases Stress and Burnout
A 2020 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that when employees experience misalignment between their leaders’ stated values and their everyday behaviour, stress, burnout, and withdrawal behaviours rise sharply.
Culture Dissonance Quickly Damages Trust
Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends highlights that misalignment between stated culture and lived culture is one of the fastest ways to lose employee trust — and trust is a critical driver of engagement and retention.
Alignment Drives Engagement
Gallup’s global research shows that employees are four times more likely to be engaged when they see leaders align with organisational values. Misalignment signals that the values are performative rather than real.
In simple terms, when leaders don’t walk their talk, people stop believing the talk.
What This Means in Everyday Work Life
Walking your talk isn’t about perfection. It’s about being congruent — showing people that your values are visible in your behaviour.
Ask yourself:
- Are your decisions consistent with the culture you say you want?
- Do people experience your values through your behaviour, not just your language?
- If someone shadowed you for a week, would they see integrity, respect, balance, or transparency in action?
Culture is created in the small moments, not the presentation slides.
Reflection Prompts
You can use these questions to increase self-awareness for yourself, and/or for your team:
- Do my daily choices at work reflect the mission or values I claim to believe in?
- Am I modelling the behaviours I expect from my team or colleagues?
- If someone shadowed me for a week, what would they conclude I really value at work?
Action Step: Embody One Value This Week
Pick one value you’d like to embody more clearly at work — respect, balance, kindness, boundaries, transparency, curiosity — and take one small, visible action that proves it.
Values come alive through behaviour, not intention.
Closing Thought
Walking your talk in leadership is fundamentally about building influence through integrity in action, not job titles. Inconsistent cultures breed distrust.
Consistent behaviour builds credibility and psychological safety, and people genuinely want to be part of that kind of workplace.
If you’re a midlife professional, manager, or team leader wanting to bring more alignment, calm, and clarity into the way you work — or you simply want to rediscover who you are beneath the expectations — coaching can help. My values-based approach supports you to reconnect with your authentic self and build a working life that feels like yours again. Book a free 30-minute discovery call to explore what this could look like for you.
Further Reading & Research
- Jung & Takeuchi (2020), Frontiers in Psychology – Value incongruence and burnout
- Deloitte (2023), Global Human Capital Trends – Culture dissonance and trust
- Gallup – State of the Global Workplace report
- Edgar Schein – Organizational Culture and Leadership
- Patrick Lencioni – The Advantage (practical culture-focused leadership)
