Culture is not PowerPoint, but the vital energy that sustains the organization
When lived at every level, culture transforms relationships, strengthens leadership and drives results
Throughout all these years leading teams, creating products and innovation strategies, every time I talk about people management, I begin with culture. After all, it is a strategic theme that permeates the entire individual and team journey, one that connects directly to the development of competencies and to reaching goals, starting from the moment of talent recruitment. I have seen companies with perfect plans and mediocre results, and others with simple plans, but connected people who reached incredible results. The difference was in culture: it is directly tied to purpose as a living tissue that transforms relationships, stimulates collaboration and drives people’s engagement toward common objectives.
A company’s culture is not created on a slide, nor is it reduced to inspiring phrases on the wall. It begins at the first encounter, but it needs to be cultivated day by day. This runs through the example of leadership and permeates the behaviors and postures of each team member. It is a constant and necessary balance so that culture manifests in a transparent, trustworthy way, favorable both to better performance and to the well-being, happiness and sense of belonging of each person.
A living and true culture is not mere protocol, but one of the main engines of individual, team and company growth in perfect synergy. It is not a short sprint, but a bet that also encompasses the medium and long term. It is only possible when it is done in a human way, eye to eye.
Recruitment and selection: the search for the truth of people
Throughout these many years recruiting and leading people for diverse teams, whenever I take part in selection processes, I try to look beyond diplomas and experience. Hard skills are very important, but I am much less interested in whether someone studied at Oxford or any other prestigious institution, and much more in whether I can trust that person. It is at this moment that culture truly manifests: in the kind of relationship established from the start, within a common purpose.
For this reason, many of the “cultural fit” tests that appear right at the initial stages of a selection process have always bothered me. The candidate does not yet even know what the company values, but is being evaluated by criteria they are unaware of, characterizing an asymmetry. Likewise, when poorly applied, this kind of filter turns culture into an impersonal, automated process. This is the first symptom that the mission and values have already stopped inspiring and have become merely an internal discourse, often disconnected from the reality that moves people.
I intimately believe that the role of the recruiting leader is something completely different: to seek the truth about people. That truth is not found in resumes, but in frank conversations, in the ability to find a genuine link between what the company needs and what the candidate is truly looking for. It is not about romanticizing the relationship, but about establishing transparency from the start.
We know that often a position is filled out of necessity, whether by the person who needs to relocate or by the company that needs to fill a space that brings performance. Even so, this encounter does not need to be blind. When there is clear intention, responsible conduct and human sensitivity, it is possible to build a true relationship from the first contact. Many processes fail precisely for lack of this clarity: the company does not make clear what it is looking for and the candidate, in turn, is not honest about what they can do. When the relationship begins without truth, it rarely evolves in a healthy way.
First the human, then the technical.
The question is understanding whether there is identification with the company’s purpose, whether there is a real willingness to grow and contribute. That is why I usually start interviews by presenting who we are, our values and what we expect. Only afterward do I try to understand whether there is a fit, before technique, listening.
This order makes a difference. People need to feel belonging before being held accountable for performance. A writer, for example, can write texts, research story ideas or help define themes. But before deciding where they will work, I want to understand what motivates them, what makes them give their best. Engagement is not imposed, it is cultivated, and that requires sensitivity. So I believe the phrase “hire for character, train for skills” is true in essence, but not absolute. Character and competence do not compete: they strengthen each other.
Culture, relationships and management: trust is the enemy of control
The culture of a group is always made of relationships. It is not about controlling, but about accompanying. It is a continuous movement of listening, feedback and learning. It is not about “pulling the rope and letting go” of the employee to see how far they will go. It is about walking together, welcoming, guiding and developing. This is the culture I believe in and seek to cultivate for the best fluidity of processes and for the company’s progress, as reaching and surpassing goals. Personal and institutional objectives and purposes walk together.
All of this goes far beyond onboarding, beyond a week of training and integration. If all of this is lost from there on, there will be no support, security and fertile ground for human development. The pretty words in the company’s PowerPoint will have no effect, and the results will reflect this disparity. When culture is lived and not merely stated, people stay. They grow. They evolve along with the company.
This welcoming vision comes close to what I call “Living Culture HR”, a model that unites empathy and rigor, purpose and method. An HR that understands that culture is not a manual, but a living organism, in constant evolution, with multiplying cells that renew themselves with each interaction. More than executing policies, the new HR needs to represent people with the same strength with which it represents leadership.
HR cannot be an exclusive spokesperson for the company’s owner or C-level, but a legitimate link between strategy and the human. It is in this balance that it becomes the true guardian of culture: the one who welcomes, develops, sustains values and ensures that every decision is aligned with the collective purpose.
An HR like this values listening, follow-up and human development as much as business results, because it understands that these are the dimensions that, together, keep the company’s culture alive.
Feedback is a fundamental piece in this sense, but it only fulfills its purpose when it is welcoming and guides growth, and not when it judges or condemns. You have to realize that each person receives the message differently, depending on the moment, temperament and emotional state. Leaders who understand this adjust the way they communicate, take on part of the responsibility and help the other evolve, without turning criticism into personal attack. The corporate and the personal coexist: feedback is about actions and results, but it needs to consider the human being on the other side.
Contagious culture: how to ensure it is alive in all leaders, regardless of physical or geographic environment?
When a team member takes on a new leadership role, the leader above them should not shape their character, but help them understand the responsibility. This runs through the notion of autonomy. When the cultural gaps of the thin layers appear, the need for all leaders, at all levels, to fully experience the culture becomes visible.
In a hive, each of the bees has its role, and those that go out to gather pollen cannot fully absent themselves from the organism. It is their example that will make culture practical, not utopian, and always constant. Just as in a hive, where the movement of a single bee influences the rhythm of all the others, the behavior of a team leader silently reverberates throughout the whole organization.
From the C-Level to a beginning coordinator, all layers of leadership need to be inside the culture. Otherwise, any replacement will become an enormous problem, as if it were a transmission failure, a broken circuit, with cascading impacts across the entire ecosystem. A leader needs to know how to filter what they say and solve problems instead of just pointing them out, perceiving the impact of their own attitudes on the team’s climate. This refinement is a soft skill, not something cold and statistical.
How much courage does a person have? There is no ruler to define it, but it is easy to recognize. True courage does not need to be declared, it appears in difficult decisions, in sincere conversations and in the willingness to sustain values, even when it is easier to give in. How many leaders claim to be courageous, yet stay silent in the face of what is right?
Courage is not discourse or aesthetics. It is practice, it is action, it is coherence. And it is at this point that leadership truly reveals itself: in the example lived, not in what is said, but in what is done, in what is lived.
Today, holding a position of Head of Digital Product in Brazil, I also perceive how much corporate cultures are also tied to geographic cultures, even within the same umbrella of values and purposes. The good side is that culture can only vary when it exists. When visiting Google’s office in São Paulo and comparing it with the global headquarters in Silicon Valley, it is possible to perceive that the cultural pillars are there, though the characteristics of Brazilian people are different from those of North Americans, reflecting in some nuances. There are also regional business objectives. However, the application of a global culture in each office, in each team, will always depend on the real example of the focal or regional leadership.
Again, it is time to break the third wall of PowerPoint to understand the initiatives, products and performances in each context, which goes beyond the numbers. Everyone knows what the goals are, but what are the purposes behind them? In some companies, it is said that when people are at their best, they execute the plans. In practice, however, daily pressure, obligations and excessive demands make them work a lot, but without pleasure and connection with purpose. How does that sustain itself in the long term?
Excessive attachment to the results at the tip of the iceberg can lead to high exhaustion and mistaken evaluations, which can lead to losing competent and promising people. I have experienced situations in which clear goals brought financial results, but the attitudes to reach them were contradictory. It is human follow-up, with the involvement of all leaders at different levels, that will make a culture successful and spread a positive change toward results that make sense.
For a culture that builds bridges, relationships and innovations
Organizational culture is not a decorative artifact. It cannot become an internal joke or a reason for frustration when discourse does not meet practice. It needs to pulse in every decision, conversation and attitude. When it is genuine, it crosses positions, connects areas and turns the environment into fertile ground for growth, collaboration and innovation. It is on this terrain that people flourish, grow stronger and work with purpose, not out of obligation, but out of conviction.
If this article made you reflect on how your company lives (or merely displays) its culture, I invite you to continue this journey with me here on LinkedIn, where I hope to contribute with several other themes such as leadership, new technologies, innovation, intelligent communication, product, performance and business strategies.
I hope we can be connected to continue this conversation of growing together. I am curious to learn about other good practices, exchange experiences and put new ideas into practice. Follow my next articles, connect with me, comment and share your ideas!