Every organization has its own culture. You can sense it in how people greet each other, how decisions get made, and how a team responds when something goes wrong. This culture is the shared pattern of values, expectations, and ways of working that shapes what happens day to day inside an organization.

A culture forms in every organization, whether anyone pays attention to it or not. It simply happens because people work together over time. The Genuine Contact Way of Working, an approach to organizational and leadership development, offers a way to look at this culture more closely. It does this by describing six distinct but connected parts of organizational culture. We call these the six cultural dimensions.

Each dimension focuses on a different part of how an organization functions. Together, they describe the internal environment that people experience every day at work. When all six are attended to, Genuine Contact calls the result a life-nourishing culture: an environment where both people and purpose can thrive.

The six cultural dimensions are:

  • Culture of Development
  • Culture of Well-Being
  • Culture of Service
  • Strategy-Focused Culture
  • Culture of Accountability
  • Culture of Leadership

Culture of Development

A culture of development means that growth, at every level, is built into how the organization works. This includes the growth of individuals, teams, leadership, and the organization as a whole.

Rather than relying on occasional training programs, this culture treats learning as part of everyday work. Gaining knowledge, sharing it, and applying it become a normal part of how the organization operates, not a separate activity set apart from the "real" work.

Culture of Well-Being

A culture of well-being recognizes people as whole human beings, not only as workers carrying out tasks. It treats people's physical, mental, emotional, and intuitive capacities as all relevant to their work.

This culture shows up in the structures, policies, and practices that make it possible for people to maintain a healthy balance between their work and the rest of their life. It includes support for physical health, and also for mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Culture of Service

A culture of service goes beyond how an organization treats its customers. It includes how people throughout the organization treat one another, at every level.

In this culture, the organization is in service to its employees, employees are in service to the organization's purpose, and employees are in service to each other, no matter where they sit in the structure. This three-way relationship of mutual care runs through the whole organization. It shapes how people support one another and meet the needs of everyone involved: customers, colleagues, and the wider community.

Strategy Focused Culture

A strategy-focused culture means everyone in the organization understands what it's working toward, why that matters, and how their own work connects to it. People know the larger purpose and the current priorities, so they can act with both focus and flexibility.

This culture takes shape through five connected parts: alignment between values and strategy, leadership that models and engages with the strategy, clear communication, empowerment paired with accountability, and ongoing learning and adaptation. Together, these give people a clear sense of direction without needing constant instruction from above.

Culture of Accountability

A culture of accountability means that responsibility, authority, and accountability line up clearly for each person and role. People know what they're responsible for, what authority they have to carry out that responsibility, and who they answer to.

This culture isn't about control or punishment. It's about creating clear boundaries, so people know where their own authority ends and someone else's begins. With this clarity, people can act within their own area of work with confidence, and the organization has the transparency it needs to notice and adjust course when needed.

Culture of Leadership

A culture of leadership is built on the idea that leadership is an action, not a title. In this culture, leadership can come from anyone in the organization, based on their ability and willingness to contribute, not their position.

People are trusted to lead their own work and, often, to take responsibility for the wider organization too. This requires openness about the principles and boundaries that guide decisions, so people can use the full scope of their own authority without uncertainty about where it ends.