In the first article in this series, How to change culture when it’s stuck or turning toxic, we looked at how culture can drift, how to recognise the warning signs, and the first practical steps to strengthen it.

Once you’ve had those honest conversations and mapped where you are, the next step is to rebuild your foundations: the why, what, and how that make culture real every day. This is where purpose, values and behaviours come in. Purpose helps people understand why their work matters. Values describe how you do what you do, what you believe in and how you treat each other. Behaviours make both visible.

Strong team cultures aren’t built by pizza Fridays or away days; they’re created through shared understanding and everyday consistency. When people know why the work matters, what the organisation stands for and how they’re expected to show up, culture starts to feel coherent, human and alive again.

In this article, we’ll explore how to co-create culture with your team, defining purpose, shaping values and translating them into daily behaviours that bring them to life. In the next, we’ll look at how to embed culture change, keeping it alive through daily actions, through the employee lifecycle from recruitment to performance management.

Why Purpose, Values and Behaviours Matter

Culture is shaped by what your organisation stands for, how it acts, and why it exists. When these three are aligned, people understand where the business is going and the part they play in it. When they drift apart, teams lose clarity, trust and motivation.

Purpose gives meaning. It connects everyday tasks to a bigger goal and helps people feel part of something greater than themselves.
Values guide decisions. They show what’s important and what isn’t, how you work together, communicate, and collaborate. They shape how you treat customers, colleagues and stakeholders.
Behaviours make them visible and real. They turn good intentions into lived experience, what people actually see, hear and feel at work.

Start with purpose: why do we exist?

Purpose isn’t a marketing statement; it’s your organisation’s reason for being - the thing that unites people and gives meaning to their work. It’s not about what you sell or deliver, but why it matters. When teams reconnect with purpose, energy lifts almost instantly. You’ll hear people talk with pride again.

I often start with three simple questions:

Why does what we do matter?
Who benefits most from our work and how?
If our organisation disappeared tomorrow, what difference would the world notice?

Collectively discussing these questions helps to surface language that feels genuine and human, not corporate. From there, you can refine your purpose into a simple statement that captures both head and heart.

Reflection for leaders: When did you last explain or review your organisation’s purpose in a way that made people feel something?

2. Co-create values that mean something

Values describe how you do what you do. They express what you believe in and the principles that guide how you work, communicate and collaborate. When they’re clear and consistent, values act like a compass helping people make decisions, resolve tension and stay true to purpose even when things change. But when they’re vague, generic or disconnected from reality, they lose meaning fast.

The problem with values is that we often assume we’re all talking about the same thing because we use the same words. In reality, each of us interprets them through our own experiences. “Integrity”, “Respect”, and “Collaboration”, these words mean something slightly different to everyone.

In my culture workshops, I often begin with storytelling. I ask people to share a moment they’re proud of - a time when the organisation was at its best. Then we explore:

Co-creating values at a Culture workshop

What was happening in that moment?
What attitudes or behaviours made it possible?

The patterns that start to appear are your values in action, the ones people feel an emotional connection to.

Once you’ve surfaced them, test and refine them. Effective values should:

Be easy to understand
Resonate with your team
Resonate with your community or customers
Be relevant every day
Be exemplified by leadership

Keep your list of values short (three to five is plenty) and check that each one answers two questions: “What do we believe in?” and “How do we behave because of that belief?”

3. Translate values into everyday behaviours

This is where culture becomes tangible. Values are only meaningful if people know what they look like in action. Without that, they stay abstract, nice words on a poster or website that mean different things to different people.

Defining a behavioural framework turns the abstract into something concrete and usable. It gives people a clear roadmap of what “good” looks like, the standards, habits and signals that show when values are being lived (and when they’re not). It’s not about policing behaviour, but rather about creating consistency, fairness and clarity. It helps people understand not just what is expected, but why it matters. In practice, a behavioural framework sets out:

The things we reward and recognise, what earns praise, promotion or trust.
The things we challenge or call out, behaviours that contradict our purpose or values.
The shared expectations that shape how we communicate, make decisions and collaborate.

I start with a simple Say / Do / Don’t exercise:

If we really lived this value, what would we say and hear?
What would we do? What wouldn’t we do?
What would we praise and reward, or call out, in ourselves and others?

The output can then form your Behavioural Framework, a practical guide that turns abstract ideas into shared expectations. As you’ll see in the next article, this framework becomes even more powerful when it’s built into every stage of the employee lifecycle from recruitment and onboarding to feedback and performance management. For example, if one of your values is Collaboration, then:

Say: “How can we solve this together?”
Do: Invite different perspectives early.
Don’t: Work in silos, make decisions in isolation, take individual credit for teamwork or blame others when things go wrong.
We reward: actively seeking input from others early in a project, giving credit for shared success.

Try this: With your team, take one of your values and ask: What behaviours should we reward, recognise or challenge if we’re serious about living this? Capture the responses and turn them into 3–5 concrete examples.

4. Build belonging through rituals

Culture is reinforced through what you repeat - the shared moments, habits and stories that quietly define how it feels to work in your organisation. These small, consistent actions matter more than grand gestures. They create belonging, keep values visible, and turn intentions into everyday experience.

When we talk about rituals, routines and ceremonies, we’re talking about different kinds of cultural anchors that help people feel part of something bigger:

Rituals - Small but meaningful actions that connect people and create belonging and show that people matter as much as performance.. They’re often informal but repeated consistently.

Routines - Regular practices that keep work consistent, transparent and purposeful. Routines bring rhythm to work. They help people see how their contribution fits into the bigger picture — a key ingredient in belonging and motivation.

Ceremonies - Formal moments to recognise achievement, mark milestones and reinforce culture. Ceremonies matter because they make progress visible. They remind people of shared purpose and collective success — and they build pride.

5. Share stories to bring it to life

Sharing real examples of people living your values reinforces what good looks like far more effectively than any slide deck or email. Invite stories in meetings, newsletters, or leadership updates. Ask: “Who has lived our values this week and how?” or “What moment recently made you proud of our culture?”

These stories don’t just describe culture, they shape it. Over time, they become the folklore of your organisation: the examples new hires learn from, and the proof that your values are more than words.

Try this: Pick one small ritual or ceremony that already connects people in your team. How could you make it more intentional — or link it more clearly to your values?

Avoid the Traps

Don’t rush it - culture design is iterative. Space for reflection and conversation is where alignment happens.
Don’t aim for perfection. It’s more important to have values people believe in than a glossy set of statements.
Don’t make it a leadership exercise only. The goal is shared ownership — a culture that belongs to everyone, not a few.

Reflection

Do your people understand why you exist and can they connect it to what they do every day?
Which of your stated values truly guide decisions, and which are gathering dust?
What small rituals or practices already build belonging in your team?
Who else should be involved in shaping your values and behaviours going forward?
How will you know if people feel proud to be part of this culture?

When people feel part of something bigger, they care more. When they can be themselves, they create more. That’s what culture and belonging look like in practice, not a buzzword, but a lived experience that drives both performance and wellbeing.

In the next article in this series, we’ll explore how to embed culture change — keeping it alive through leadership, systems and everyday habits so it lasts for the long term

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How to build a strong culture: purpose, values & behaviours