Ever wondered where your kids’ good behaviors come from? What about the bad ones? Look no further than the mirror.
Children absorb what they see. They model what they experience. They normalize what we tolerate.
Why is this any different in organizations? It si still people, merely older.
Emile Heskey, a former England international footballer who played over 500 Premier League matches for clubs like Liverpool and Leicester, recently said something that made me pause: “We seem to have reached a point where abuse is somehow deemed acceptable.”
He wasn’t just talking about stadiums. He was talking about an entire culture where lines blurred so gradually that toxicity became routine. Where acceptable critique crossed into abuse so slowly that nobody noticed the transition.
Now a father watching his own sons play professionally, Heskey realized something uncomfortable. He didn’t want them in that environment. Not because of the physical demands or the competition, but because of what had become normalized.
Here is what stopped me. This is exactly what I see in organizations.
The meeting where someone gets publicly humiliated becomes “just how things are done here.” The executive who berates people gets excused because “they deliver results.” The passive-aggressive communication that undermines colleagues becomes background noise. The politicking and backstabbing that everyone knows about but nobody addresses.
We create bubbles where the unacceptable becomes routine.
And just like children, your organization is watching. Your team is absorbing what they see. They are modeling what they experience. They are normalizing what you tolerate.
The new hire who sees a senior leader throw someone under the bus in a meeting learns the real rules. The manager who watches executives play political games learns what actually gets rewarded. The team that sees values violated without consequence learns those values are just words on a wall.
You can have the best mission statement in the world. You can talk about respect and collaboration until you are exhausted. But your culture is defined by what you tolerate, not what you articulate.
Heskey’s response was to become director of a platform for reporting abuse, but his most important insight had nothing to do with technology. He said: “Accountability changes behavior.”
Not awareness. Not policies. Not another training module. Not a town hall about values.
Accountability.
When there are real consequences, when people are actually held to account, behavior shifts. Not because hearts changed, but because the cost became real.
I think about the organizations I work with. The ones stuck in patterns they know are destructive but cannot seem to break. The answer is rarely more analysis. It is rarely a better strategy deck or a new organizational chart.
It is almost always accountability.
Who is responsible for culture? Who owns the consequences when values are violated? Who has the courage to hold people to account, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is someone senior, even when they “deliver results”? It starts at the very top.
In organizations, people hide behind different facades than they do in stadiums. Seniority. Tenure. Political capital. Revenue generation. The facade changes, but the hiding is the same. And the damage compounds.
The question for every leader is simple: What are you tolerating that you know corrodes your culture?
And more important: What are you going to do about it?
Your organization exists in a bubble. And in that bubble, you have normalized things that the best version of you knows are wrong. Your team is watching. They are learning. They are becoming what you permit.
The path forward is not complicated. It is just hard.
Define what is acceptable. Make it clear. Then hold everyone to that standard. No exceptions for performance. No exceptions for tenure. No exceptions for who they know or how much revenue they generate.
Your kids learn by watching you. Your organization learns the same way.
Accountability changes behavior.
The question is whether you have the courage to enforce it.
