3 Signs That Disruption Is Impacting Your Leadership Culture
You don’t need a culture survey to know how your team is doing. Disruption reveals it.
The way people show up under pressure—how they speak (or don’t), how they respond to feedback, how they collaborate or retreat—tells the truth about your culture. Not the aspirational version, but the lived one.
In stable times, culture can hide behind polished comms, performance rituals, and ping-pong tables. But under strain, the real norms surface. Do people escalate or avoid? Get resourceful or freeze? Pull together or self-protect?
This isn’t about blame—it’s a moment of insight. Leaders who are willing to really pay attention during disruption gain something invaluable: real-time data about their culture. Data you can actually use.
Because disruption doesn’t just test systems—it tests assumptions. And the smartest leaders use that test to recalibrate: toward more trust, more agility, and more shared ownership.
Culture isn’t just a backdrop. It’s the operating system for how you lead through complexity.
Disruption Sign #1
Leaders Decide to Go It Alone
When disruption hits, some leaders default to self-reliance. They retreat inward, determined to carry the weight alone.
On the surface, this can look like strength. But in practice, it often creates distance, bottlenecks, and burnout. It sends an unintended message: I can’t be real with you, and neither should you.
In moments of upheaval, how leaders collaborate becomes a cultural blueprint. If you want a culture of shared ownership, it starts with showing that no one—including you—has to hold it all alone.
Coaching Question: In what ways might your silence or solo problem-solving be shaping team norms right now?
Take Action: Choose one challenge you’ve kept close. Name it in a team setting or with a trusted peer. Invite others into the solution—not just the execution.
Disruption Sign #2
Leaders Are Overcommunicating the Wrong Things
Disruption creates pressure to reassure—to say something that sounds confident, decisive, or upbeat.
But culture isn’t shaped by how much you talk. It’s shaped by what you choose to say when people are paying attention. When messages feel sanitized or disconnected from people’s lived reality, trust erodes.
Teams don’t need spin. They need clarity. And they’re watching: Are we the kind of culture that speaks to the hard stuff—or works around it?
Coaching Question: Are your messages reinforcing transparency—or masking discomfort?
Take Action: Before your next communication, ask: What’s the most important thing people need to hear? Say that. Even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.
Disruption Sign #3
Avoiding Conflict to Preserve Harmony
Disruption shakes up priorities. It exposes misalignment. But when leaders avoid naming those tensions, teams don’t stay “aligned”—they stay confused.
What gets avoided becomes part of your culture too. When real conversations are off-limits, people stop expecting honesty. The cost isn’t just clarity—it’s morale.
A healthy culture isn’t one without conflict. It’s one where conflict can be surfaced and moved through with respect, empathy, and purpose.
Coaching Question: What tension have you been tolerating instead of addressing—and what message is that sending?
Take Action: Identify a conversation that could shift a stuck pattern or relationship. Prepare for it with clarity and care—and take the first step to initiate it this week.
Disruption doesn’t create culture—it exposes it.
Every choice you make in these moments sends a message about what’s normal, what’s valued, and what’s possible. Make yours count.
Leadership Practice
Take 10 minutes this week to reflect:
When was the last time your team felt stretched? What behaviors stood out?
What did that moment reveal about your unspoken norms?
Where might your culture need a gentle reset—or a bold redesign?
Culture is happening whether you shape it or not. Disruption gives you the chance to shape it with clarity.
Author
Athena Williams, Founder and CEO of Tenacious Leadership Institute, has been supporting leaders worldwide to become more tenacious for over 20 years. She has found that tenacity is the key to sustained leadership success in today’s ever-changing world. Through her coaching and leadership development programs, she helps leaders expertly handle change, complexity and other challenges so they can quickly get better results for themselves, their teams and their organizations.
Take the first step to becoming a tenacious leader by scheduling a call with us.
