Rethinking Leadership: From Setting the Cultural Tone to Sharing It

“Your behavior as a leader sets the tone for your team.”

That’s the line we often hear. And yes, it can be true, if you believe it’s only the leader’s role to do so.

But what if leadership wasn’t about setting the tone, but enabling it to be set collectively?

Imagine instead of one person determining the culture of the team, you had a system that allowed anyone in the team to fairly course-correct the tone of another team member, even the leader.

That’s the paradigm shift I’m working toward.

Another one we hear a lot on Linkedin is:

“Leaders are responsible for their team’s environment”,

I believe this to be true, but not in the way most people think. It’s not about control of the culture or being this shining example of how to behave; I believe it’s about adopting a fair process where everyone in the team can hold each other to account for their behavior in real-time.

That’s what we’re designing and building at SpatzAI, a simple way for teams to call out misbehavior safely, respectfully, and proportionately.

Because a healthy environment isn’t maintained by one person’s tone.
It’s maintained by everyone’s willingness to tune it together.