There is a general truth about leadership that few leaders get, and yet it’s crucial to understanding their role in an organization. It is simple: the culture of an organization is a reflection of the consciousness of the leadership. This means that the attitudes, beliefs, personalities and inner paradigms that the leaders hold will inevitably show up in the organization and its culture and ultimately shape its dynamics. You can see it almost all organizations. Steve Jobs is brash, bold and creative and so, too, is Apple. Bill Gates is brilliantly strategic and aggressive and so, too, is Microsoft. Herb Kelleher is quite playful while his COO, Colleen Barrett, is quite organized; Southwest Airlines is a rare combination of the two.

This general truth plays out an important drama not to be missed. So often, I get CEOs who ask me to help them strengthen their organization and its culture. They say to me, “Keith, I’m troubled by how so many people don’t take initiative. Would you help me create an organization guided by a greater sense of personal responsibility?” What they don’t often get is that the dynamics they seek to change are a reflection of their own tendency toward a command and control style of management where their micromanagement tendencies snuff the life force out of the very culture they want to change. They create organizations centered around themselves and wonder why people don’t take more initiative. Or consider the charismatic leader filled with vision and wonderful ideas. Underneath the organization’s brilliant marketing machine is a culture of scattered initiatives where so much falls through the cracks and lack of coordination among efforts runs rampant.

Recently I heard a story that is a wonderful example of this truth. One of my partners was invited to do an analysis of an organization to determine the reasons why current and potential customers choose to either no longer buy their products or not buy in the first place. It turns out that one of the key reasons sales are lost or never gained is due to the attitude of sales people who believe that the customer should buy no matter what. If a sale is dropped it is often explained as an inability on the part of the customer to understand the value of the product. In other words, the customer is blamed. Many customers say they don’t like the pushy nature of the sales people. When my partner shared this information with the leadership of the organization, the President immediately went on a rampage (one of many he is noted for) to chew out the sales force in general, and the particular sales people who were the greatest perpetrators. In other words, he blamed them. What he could not nor would not take into account was that his tendency to blame created a fear-filled and pressure-filled environment in which the sales force paid it forward toward the customer. The more the President blames the sales force, the less likely anything will change for the positive because he sets the tone for the entire organization. His own leadership behavior style and the paradigms he holds about leadership create these patterns in the first place.

As difficult and painful as it might be, all leaders would be do well to look in the mirror when feeling frustrated with their organization, its results, and its counterproductive patterns, for almost always they are a reflection of themselves in a very meaningful way.