Organizations have culture whether they want it or not. How they get it is up to them. In my experience there are three ways culture happens:
- Leaders set behavioral norms and enforce them directly and by training subordinates to enforce them when the leader isn’t around
- Leaders take a hands-off approach and accept a sort of Bring Your Own Culture within a very broad range of behavioral limits which they set and enforce
- Leaders ignore culture entirely
Each of these approaches creates culture and each of them has the possibility to create both virtuous and toxic cultures, but the probability that you get a toxic culture is higher the less a leader is involved in caretaking.