Hidden Curriculum of Leadership: What does the environment teach leaders?
By Dayo Oyinlola
Institutions are ecosystems made up of individual units that live in symbiotic relationships with each other. In these environments, information is processed dynamically and learning occurs both formally and informally. We must consider this reality when discussing leadership development. Leaders learn through written documents and institutional codes of conduct: values, laws, behavioral manuals, KPIs and OKRs that organisations establish to hold leaders accountable. And then there are the experiences nobody formally teaches, but everyone learns. A young executive watches how decisions are made. They notice who gets rewarded and who gets overlooked. They observe what happens when someone challenges authority, misses a target, refuses to compromise or asks an uncomfortable question. Nobody necessarily sits them down to teach these lessons.
We often think of leadership development as something that happens through formal training, coaching, mentoring and experience. All of these matters, but leaders are also continuously shaped by the systems, institutions, cultures and circumstances within which they operate. And sometimes, the lessons being taught by the environment are very different from the lesson’s organisations believe they are teaching.
Consider an organisation that claims to encourage employees to challenge ideas, yet senior leaders consistently dismiss people who disagree with them. Employees then learn that deference is safer than speaking up.
Over time, people respond to what they experience rather than what they are told. The environment teaches what is rewarded. It teaches what is tolerated. It teaches how power works, whose voice matters and whether speaking up is valued or punished. It teaches people what leadership really means when it is exercised, not what the organisation says leadership means. This becomes particularly important in difficult operating environments.
But there is another question worth asking:
What happens when the environment consistently makes the wrong behaviour easier than the right one?
If people repeatedly experience an environment where ethical behaviour is punished and unethical behaviour is rewarded, the environment itself becomes part of their leadership development. This is why integrity cannot survive indefinitely as an individual act of courage. For it to become sustainable, it must become part of the collective environment.
For leaders operating in contexts where regulatory uncertainty, infrastructure gaps, talent shortages, limited access to capital and complex stakeholder expectations are part of the reality, this distinction becomes even more important.
These realities do not excuse poor leadership. But they shape the choices leaders have to make. Leaders therefore need the ability to understand the forces around them without becoming defined by them.
Leaders must learn to read their environment without allowing the environment to write their values for them. Understanding how power works is not the same as becoming captive to it. Adapting to circumstances is not the same as abandoning principle. And leadership maturity often lies in knowing when to adapt, when to resist and when to change the conditions themselves.
What are we teaching the next generation? Every organisation is developing leaders, whether intentionally or not. The way meetings are conducted sets the tone for voice and hierarchy. The way mistakes are handled reveals the real standard of accountability.
The way promotions are made is a clear indication of what is valued and rewarded. The behaviour of senior leaders teaches people what is genuinely acceptable.
Culture is therefore not simply what an organisation says it believes. It is also what people repeatedly experience.
This may be one of the less discussed dimensions of leadership in relation to its operating environment, which is a critical determinant of a leader’s capacity to move an organization from good to great.
Great organisations do not simply have capable leaders. They create environments that develop, reinforce and sustain the kind of leadership the organisation needs to thrive.
Good organisations can perform. Great organisations build the capacity to keep performing as circumstances change.
Good leaders can navigate the environment. Great leaders also ask whether the environment itself needs to change.
These are some of the questions at the heart of The Sage Centre for Leadership Excellence’s upcoming Transformational Leadership Masterclass, From Good to Great: The Leadership Imperative, where experienced leaders will explore the leadership, governance and institutional capabilities required to build organisations that can adapt, endure and create lasting value.
Ultimately, the question is not only whether we are developing good leaders. It is whether we are creating environments that make great leadership possible. Because every leader is being taught by their environment. What is yours teaching you?
Oyinlola, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos
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