Culture is something most leaders strive to cultivate, but creating the right culture can be incredibly difficult.  To date research has largely presumed that culture is a response to the internal and external needs of the group, with the culture then supporting the performance of the group.

New research from the University of Toronto suggests that the leader’s past experience can play a much bigger role on the culture of their team.  It’s this experience of past cultures that ultimately shapes the culture of the group they’re trying to lead.

The researchers examined newly formed sales teams within a manufacturing company alongside a second group of teams that were created in the laboratory.  The leaders in both groups were new to each group, with the subsequent behaviors examined to see how influential the leader was.

Cultural transfer

When the results were analyzed, it emerged that the leaders were indeed influential on the culture of their group, and this influence was largely based upon the past cultural experiences they had.  It’s a process the researchers refer to as cultural transfer.

As a result of this phenomenon, the cultures that were developed on past groups have a much smaller chance of working on the subsequent groups due to the fundamentally different environment in both scenarios.  The authors urge leaders instead to develop cultures based on the unique circumstances of their new team.

“Many companies talk about building effective cultures. But our research shows that leaders rely too much on their past experience. They believe that their past experience will continue to provide effective solutions in a new situation,” they explain. “So what we need to do is to disconnect them from their belief. They should be aware that their past experience in their former groups could actually be a liability in this new situation. To create effective cultures, leaders should look at the current situation, not the past.”