Melissa LaciOrg Psychologist
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Culture Curriculum · The research

Where the seven behaviors come from.

Edgar Schein described a set of primary embedding mechanisms: the everyday leadership actions that install culture far more powerfully than any stated value. Four of the seven behaviors build on that work. Three come from Melissa’s practice inside and alongside organizations, where the same patterns kept showing up and did not have a name in the room.

PRIORITIZE
Builds on Schein
What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis is one of the strongest ways culture gets embedded.
MODEL
Builds on Schein
Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching by leaders.
REWARD
Builds on Schein
How rewards, status, and promotion get allocated.
CORRECT
From practice
What carries a real consequence, and for whom. People read accountability faster than they read a values page.
TOLERATE
From practice
What keeps happening that nothing happens about. Tolerated behavior sets the floor.
PROTECT
From practice
Who is exempt from a standard that applies below them. Exceptions teach quickly.
CELEBRATE
Builds on Schein
How leaders react in a crisis, and what gets marked as a win afterwards.
How culture gets embedded

Culture is learned. A group works out, over time, what has worked here before, and new people are taught it as the way things are done. That teaching happens through behavior long before it happens through documents.

This is why a values statement and a culture can point in different directions without anyone lying. Words are one input. What leaders attend to, reward, tolerate, and celebrate is the stronger one, and people follow the stronger one.

Sources

Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership. Plus twenty years of practice building and advising organizations, and graduate research in industrial-organizational psychology at Harvard.

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