Beneath the Surface: How Subconscious Patterns Shape Leadership and Organisational Culture

What truly drives behaviour - logic or emotion?

We like to think rational decisions and clear plans shape outcomes, but… a brief look at what happened across the pond tells us otherwise. 

Around 95% of our thoughts, reactions, and behaviours are driven by our subconscious mind.  A mind that processes up to 40 million pieces of information per second, compared to our conscious mind’s 40 pieces.

Contained within our subconscious mind are our emotional triggers, habits, and deeply ingrained patterns that operate beneath our awareness.  These are the forces that truly govern how we live and lead.

These forces don’t just influence individuals; they drive entire organisations, and populations at large.

Take Trump (no please, take him)

On a conscious level, he is a proven liar, has been criminally indicted on multiple charges, and was found liable for sexual assault. He lacks a coherent ideology or detailed policy framework and focuses instead on broad themes and emotional appeals. And yet, he won, easily.

Why?

Because Trump doesn’t operate on a conscious level. His campaign was a masterclass in tapping into the subconscious. A subconscious that doesn’t analyse, but rather feels. He speaks directly to emotions, fears, and deeply ingrained narratives that resonate with voters on an instinctual level. He doesn’t need to articulate a complex policy platform when his rhetoric, tone, and presence create a powerful emotional response.

Despite his scandals and obvious deficiencies, Trump projected strength and decisiveness, traits the subconscious mind often equates with leadership. His refusal to apologise or backtrack, even when the facts contradicted his statements, reinforced this perception, creating a sense of certainty in an uncertain world.

Trump understood the subconscious drivers of his audience. For many, his messages were not about truth (conscious) but about tapping into feelings (subconscious) of loss, anger, and nostalgia. His slogans like “Make America Great Again” or “America First” were simple, direct, and emotionally charged. They evoked a vision of the past - no matter how fabricated - that bypassed rational analysis and appealed to the subconscious need for security and belonging.

Now think about your last major cultural initiative - perhaps it was a bold mission statement, a shiny new set of values, or an employee engagement program designed to reshape your organisation. Did it stick? Did it change how decisions are made, how conflicts are resolved, or how your people actually behave day-to-day? Or did it quietly fade into the background, leaving little more than some new posters on the wall?

For most CEOs and leaders, the reality is sobering. Cultural initiatives often fail because they address only the visible, conscious aspects of culture while ignoring the powerful subconscious forces at play.

These forces - the unspoken norms, deeply rooted beliefs, and emotional undercurrents - are the real drivers of behaviour in your organisation. And if you’re not addressing them, you’re not changing your culture.

“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be promoted?”

A little piece of my heart broke as I sat in the office of my mentor in the early stages of my career, listening to his apparently sage advice.

I’d gone to him with an issue I was grappling with. A senior leader, my stakeholder, had deliberately misled a steering group about a key decision he’d made on a project I was managing. I knew he wasn’t being truthful and so did he, so I challenged him on it after the meeting. He did not take it well.

I can’t remember the exact conversation, just that he muttered something about either ‘getting on the bus or getting off it.’  What I do remember is that he was a bit of a sh!t to me after that.

I took the matter to my mentor and without naming names, I explained the situation I found myself in.

My mentor told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t have called my stakeholder out.

“But I was right,” I said.

 “Look Katharine, [stakeholder] will have a say on any promotions you apply for in this department. So, do you want to be right, or do you want to be promoted?”

I looked around my mentor’s office and noticed the beautifully produced poster with the company’s rousing, inspiring, workshopped-til-the-cows-came-home values.

The word “Integrity” stared back at me.

The Role of the Subconscious in This Exchange

In this scenario, the gap between espoused and enacted culture was obvious: ‘Integrity’ was celebrated as a core value, yet behaviours blatantly contradicted it.

But what created and sustained this misalignment?  

Subconscious programming.

My mentor’s advice to prioritise my career over integrity reflected deeply ingrained narratives about hierarchy and power - unspoken rules that were rarely acknowledged but widely felt.  Similarly, my stakeholder’s defensiveness likely stemmed from his own subconscious fears of losing status or control. These underlying patterns shaped leadership decisions and interactions far more than the company’s formal values.

From Awareness to Action: Transforming Organisational Culture

One of the most important responsibilities of a CEO or senior leader is to shape their organisation’s culture - whether they’ve built it from the ground up or inherited it. This involves not just addressing visible, conscious elements, but also delving into the subconscious patterns that truly shape how people experience work.

The journey begins with awareness. Leaders must first identify whether limiting subconscious patterns are at play within their organisation or team. These patterns often manifest through:

• High defensiveness: Employees fear blame or backlash, stifling innovation.

• Low psychological safety: Hesitance to share ideas or challenge the status quo.

• Over-reliance on hierarchy: Authority is unquestioned, and collaboration suffers.

• Burnout and disengagement: Fear drains energy and disconnects employees from their work.

Awareness is only the first step. To drive meaningful and lasting cultural change, leaders must take intentional actions to address these patterns. Here’s how to begin transforming subconscious dynamics into conscious, purposeful leadership:

• Prioritise personal evolution.
  Organisations evolve when their leaders evolve. If leaders aren’t actively exploring and addressing their own subconscious patterns, they risk unconsciously perpetuating the same dynamics in their teams and organisations. Action: Dedicate regular time for personal reflection, coaching, or gathering feedback.  Take the Neema Integrated Leader Assessment to reveal how unseen forces and limiting patterns are influencing your own leadership.

• Make self-awareness a team habit.
  Encourage reflective practices in key meetings by fostering discussions that challenge assumptions and surface hidden dynamics. Action: Ask questions like “What emotions might be driving our decisions?”, or “What’s something we’ve avoided discussing that might be holding us back?”

• Explore limiting narratives.
  Leadership teams often operate within unspoken narratives and outdated beliefs that need to be challenged. Action: At key decision points, ask: “What beliefs about ourselves, each other, or our stakeholders might be influencing our behaviour right now?”

• Measure cultural dynamics.
  Leverage tools like the Barrett Values Cultural Assessment to uncover hidden patterns, measure alignment, and identify opportunities for growth.

Conclusion: Aligning Culture with Vision

Great leaders don’t just set a vision for their organisation - they create the conditions for that vision to become a reality. By addressing the subconscious patterns that shape their own leadership as well as their organisation’s culture, leaders can align these hidden dynamics with their purpose and values, unlocking the full potential of their leadership, their people, and their organisation.