Sean GlazeWorkplace Culture Speaker | Facilitator, Great Results Team Building · Leadership lessons from the locker room that change how your people work together.

CORPORATE CULTURE CHANGE DOES NOT START AT THE BOTTOM

22 Jun 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:14

In this keynote, Sean Glaze argues that genuine culture change in organizations cannot be achieved through bottom‑up initiatives such as culture committees, task forces, or middle‑manager training alone. He cites SHRM research indicating that 76% of employees view their direct manager as the primary source of cultural influence, emphasizing that culture is a symptom of senior leadership behavior. Glaze stresses that unless senior leaders visibly and consistently model the desired behaviors—especially when no one is watching—any training of frontline staff will be ineffective. The core message is that culture cannot be delegated; it must start with leaders changing their own actions.

Chapters

Culture change doesn't start at the bottom. Organizations build culture committees, they form engagement task forces, they train middle managers and launch initiatives from the ground up, and then they wonder why nothing really changes. Here's the truth that nobody in the committee meeting wants to actually say: culture change stalls when senior leaders' behaviors stay the same. SHRM research found that 76% of employees say that their manager sets the culture. Not HR, not the values retreat, the person that models behavior in front of them as an example for the entire organization. Culture is always a symptom of leadership, and it flows down. You can train your frontline all day long, but if leaders at the top are modeling different behaviors than the ones they're asking for, people will follow what they see, not what you say. You can't delegate culture. The most powerful thing a leader can do to change their team is to change their behavior first, visibly and consistently, when nobody is watching, especially then. I'm Sean Glaze, and that's the work I get to do every time I'm on stage.