When I was a teenager, we would climb trees to harvest wild mangoes and oranges. The ripe ones were often at the top branches, and some trees had thorns especially citrus. One day, I saw a friend wear thick gloves and a helmet. These were very rate items at the time. We laughed. He looked ridiculous. But when the ants came, he was the only one who didn’t jump down screaming. He was prepared for a war that should not have existed.
Now imagine needing such armor just to enter your office every morning. That is not culture. That is a battlefield. And too many leaders confuse emotional suppression with professionalism.
If your staff must disguise who they are, mute their accent, hide their beliefs, suppress their identity, then what you have is not a workplace. It’s a theatre of anxiety.
And no, it’s not them. It’s you. Because a workplace that punishes authenticity is not high-performance. It’s high-pretense.
“Culture is not what you declare in vision statements. It is what people whisper in the bathroom and the corridors.”
The consulting case that changed everything
We were called into a telco whose staff turnover was becoming a joke. Exit interviews had no red flags. Leadership was baffled.
But when we sat with the staff, the truth spilled:
- Employees were over-coached on “executive presence” until they stopped speaking up.
- One Muslim engineer was told not to pray during work hours “to appear more focused.”
- A brilliant lady manager with a local accent was told to let someone else present to the Board.
So yes, they wore masks. But not for roleplay. For survival. And performance dipped. Innovation died. Because pretense is the enemy of bold ideas.
We advised a culture reset: define non-negotiables, re-audit leadership behaviors, install a feedback loop where truth could be spoken without retaliation.
Within 14 months, retention improved by 40%, and a junior staff’s innovation saved the company Ugx. 940M in network losses and unfulfilled service level agreement. That is the power of a healthy cutlure.
To transform,
- a) Audit your culture. Are people performing or performing for approval?
- b) Empower managers to create safety, not just KPIs.
- c) Stop rewarding silence disguised as alignment.
And ask yourself: “What unwritten rules are forcing my people to act like someone they’re not?”
Because when people pretend to be someone else, it’s not professionalism. It’s pain. You can not build a legacy on fear. Culture is not what you declare in vision statements. It is what people whisper in the bathroom and the corridors.
And if you need a partner to audit, transform, and realign your culture to one that wins, without masks, reach out. www.summitcl.com. Let’s unmask performance.
Mr. Strategy
