The link between culture and business performance is undeniable. Companies with strong cultures are:
- 3x more likely to have higher profitability (Harvard Business Review)
- 4x more likely to retain top talent (Deloitte Human Capital Trends)
Today, it’s a given that building a healthy, high-performing culture is essential. What’s less understood is how to do it effectively.
Most organizations focus on top-down efforts: vision statements, HR initiatives, and executive communications. And while these matter, they’re not enough. The most resilient cultures are those that are co-created from the top down and the bottom up.
That means building culture can’t be delegated. It requires intentional ownership at every level of the organization.
This article outlines the distinct roles that executives, managers, and individual employees must play to actively reinforce and scale a bottom-up culture. No matter your level, you have both the opportunity and the obligation to champion the behaviors, habits, and systems that turn culture into something real and lasting.
Part 1: How Executives Can Champion a Bottom-Up Culture
Executives play a vital role in shaping company culture—but not by controlling it. The most effective leaders don’t push culture down. They create the conditions for it to rise up.
💡 Your job isn’t to talk about culture. It’s to live it visibly, reinforce it relentlessly, and build systems that help it stick.
What to Know:
- Your company’s culture is a reflection of its leaders. You don’t have to be perfect—but your consistency matters more than you think.
- Culture is defined by what gets rewarded, tolerated, and repeated—not what gets announced or written on a website.
- Employees will only take ownership of culture if they believe it belongs to them.
- Behavior-based systems are more powerful than belief-based slogans.
What to Do:
- Adopt a behavioral framework. Give people a shared language to describe and reinforce your culture in action.
- Lead with consistency. What executives model sets the tone for the entire organization.
- Push decision-making down. Empower teams to live the culture locally, in ways that make sense for their work.
- Measure what matters. Don’t just track engagement. Track behavior.
🎯 Executive Mindset Shift:
You don’t manage culture directly. You architect the system that allows culture to emerge and scale.
Part 2: How Managers Can Reinforce a Bottom-Up Culture
Managers are the culture translators. They bring company values to life (or not) in the daily rhythm of team life. No role is more influential.
💡 You don’t just lead projects. You shape how people experience your company.
What to Know:
- Your behavior sets the ceiling on your team’s culture.
- Team norms are shaped in everyday routines: check-ins, meetings, recognition, and accountability.
- Small culture conversations have big ripple effects.
What to Do:
- Use structured tools. Frameworks like BetterCulture’s 20 Tenets—focused on 20 powerful, people-first behaviors—help managers teach, reinforce, and coach culture in real-time.
- Celebrate the right behaviors. Recognition builds momentum.
- Create safe space for growth. Make feedback, reflection, and growth part of your team’s regular rhythm.
- Invite the team in. Co-create norms and expectations, so everyone has ownership.
🎯 Manager Mindset Shift:
You don’t have to create culture alone. You just have to lead your team in owning it together.
Part 3: How Every Employee Can Contribute to a Bottom-Up Culture
You don’t have to be in charge to influence culture. In fact, the everyday actions of employees shape the real culture more than any policy or program.
💡 Culture lives in your behavior, not in your job title.
What to Know:
- You contribute to culture every time you speak, show up, collaborate, or lead yourself well.
- Culture is built by habits, not hype.
- You have more influence than you realize.
What to Do:
- Control what you can control. Regardless of how others show up, choose daily to be the kind of teammate others respect, trust, and want to follow.
- Push yourself to improve. Ask: How could I personally develop to make an even more positive impact on my team?
- Celebrate your teammates. Show consistent and genuine appreciation for teammates who are contributing to great team “vibes.”
- Embrace the tools. If your organization is using something like the 20 Tenets of Culture, lean in. These frameworks exist to help you grow.
🎯 Employee Mindset Shift:
Culture isn’t a program. It’s a daily decision. And you get to make it.
Why BetterCulture Built the 20 Tenets
Executives don’t build culture alone. Managers don’t enforce it alone. HR doesn’t own it alone.
Employees create it. Leaders support it. Systems reinforce it.
That’s why BetterCulture created the 20 Tenets: to give organizations a practical, scalable way to activate the right behaviors across the organization. From the C-suite to the frontline, it works when everyone plays their part.
Ready to turn good intentions into daily action? Discover how the 20 Tenets can make bottom-up culture real in your organization—without adding complexity.
Learn more about BetterCulture’s 20 Tenets of Culture—a behavior-based framework for turning cultural ideals into everyday actions.
