Catherine Ashcraft, PhD & Brad McLain, PhD
Center for Technology Workforce Innovation (CTWI) at CU Boulder
Culture isn’t something an organization has. It’s something individual people do every day, in every interaction. The question isn’t whether your team will develop a culture. It’s whether that culture is being developed by design or by default.
The good news: you don’t need a new policy, a training mandate, or a big budget to start shaping it. You need small, deliberate actions (what we call microbehaviors) repeated often enough that others notice them, mirror them, and pass them on.
Culture Is Built in the Five Seconds After Someone Takes a Risk
Think about the last time someone spoke up in a meeting with an idea that wasn’t fully formed. What happened next? Did people build on it or dismiss it? Did someone else take credit? Was the person interrupted before they finished?
Those small, often unnoticed moments are where culture actually gets made. Nearly every interaction answers two questions for the people in the room: Do I belong here? Do my ideas matter? The answers accumulate over time into something we eventually call “the way things are around here.”
Failing to act intentionally in these moments where subtle slights happen is the epitome of culture-by-default rather than by design, and it can result in hidden costs that derail talent and impede innovation. Research shows that these kinds of slights happen far too often.
The Hidden Cost of Subtle Slights
Approximately 61% of employees report experiencing a mental or emotional tax at work due to microaggressions and subtle slights (Travis & Thorpe-Moscon, 2018). This isn’t about dramatic incidents. It’s the slow accumulation of small signals: being talked over, having an idea ignored until someone else repeats it, being mistaken for someone more junior, and the list goes on.
Importantly, these experiences create an expensive cognitive load not just for the individual, but for the entire team who witnesses them. When people spend mental energy wondering whether it’s safe to speak up or whether their perspective is truly welcome, that’s energy not going toward innovation. On the flip side, research shows that psychological safety, or the belief that you can take risks without fear of punishment, is a top predictor of a team’s creativity, task performance, and engagement (e.g., Edmondson, 2019). It even overrides talent, team composition, and experience. Lack of contribution almost always reflects the environment, not ability. When you change the environment towards safety in risk-taking, contribution follows.
Why Small Actions Have Outsized Impact
And this is where microbehaviors come in. These small everyday actions work because they operate at the level where culture actually lives — in the moment-to-moment signals people send and receive about who belongs and whose ideas matter. They’re also relatively low-effort and high-frequency, which means their effects compound. Done consistently, they become visible. And once visible, they become socially contagious.
Research on social networks, ripple effects, and tipping points shows that behaviors can spread dramatically, influencing people you’ve never even met (e.g., Fowler & Christakis, 2010). And when approximately 25% of a group commits to a new norm, the majority rapidly follows, even when incentives favor the old way of doing things (Centola et al., 2018). In some cases, just one more person acting differently tips an entire team’s behaviors.
What This Looks Like in Practice
And the even better news is that you can start implementing these behaviors at your next meeting. You don’t need to launch a fancy program or formal culture initiative. Start with the interactions you’re already having. Here are a few places to begin:
Amplify and attribute ideas.
When someone’s idea gets passed over, name it: “I want to come back to what X said; I think that’s worth exploring.” Credit travels. Make sure it goes to the right person.
Invite quieter voices in.
Not everyone signals readiness to speak in the same way. A simple “we haven’t heard from everyone yet” or “X, what’s your read on this?” can open the door for perspectives that would otherwise go unspoken and unheard.
Notice and name patterns.
A single slight can be an accident. But a recurring pattern is a culture signal. So be on the lookout for patternslike the same people getting interrupted, the same voices going unacknowledged. Name these patterns calmly and directly. “I’ve noticed a pattern I’d like us to talk about as a team.” This is how leaders at every level can build culture by design, not default.
Follow up privately.
Not every moment of repair needs to happen in public. A quiet “how did that land for you?” after a difficult meeting can often do more to rebuild trust than a well-intentioned intervention in the moment ever could.
Model the vulnerability you want to see.
Sharing your own learning, such as “I used to approach this differently, and here’s what changed my thinking,” signals that growth is not just tolerated but expected. It lowers the cost of being wrong and raises the likelihood that others will take intellectual risks.
Start Somewhere. Be a Little Clumsy. That’s Okay.
One of the most paralyzing myths about this kind of work is that you have to get it perfectly right. But the goal is interruption not perfection. Interrupting the default. Interrupting the silence. Interrupting the pattern that’s quietly eroding trust and stalling innovation.
Which brings us to one of our favorite mantras: better clumsy than complicit. A slightly awkward redirect is far more valuable than a perfectly crafted silence. However, all these positive microbehaviors require a common element: presence. Situational awareness, observing team dynamics, noticing individual interactions, and spotting subtle patterns are all habits we can develop, even when work also demands our attention to tasks and problem-solving. By focusing on both the processes of teamwork and the content, teams can cultivate cultures-by-design that prioritize people and accelerate innovation.
So, pick one thing. Try it in your next interaction. Notice what shifts. Then do it again.
Dr. Catherine Ashcraft, Director of Organizational Research & Change
Senior Research Scientist Center for Technology Workforce Innovation
College of Engineering & Applied Science
University of Colorado, Boulder
https://ncwit.org/profile/catherine-ashcraft-ph-d/
Dr. Brad McLain, Director of Corporate Identity & Culture
Center for Technology Workforce Innovation
Managing Director of the Center for STEM Learning
College of Engineering & Applied Science
University of Colorado, Boulder
https://ncwit.org/profile/brad-mclain-ph-d/
The Center for Technology Workforce Innovation (CTWI) at CU Boulder works to advance inclusive, innovative technology workplaces. Learn more about upcoming sessions and resources at ctwi.colorado.edu.
