We are all familiar with quiet quitting, where employees psychologically disengage from work, doing only the minimum required to receive their paycheck. But have you heard about soft signaling, where organizations psychologically disengage by talking about culture without any intention to change it?

Two cultural terms that illustrate soft signaling are “culture fit” and “culture of.”

“Culture fit” is often referenced during the hiring process, ensuring that the candidate not only has the skills to do the job but can also “fit in” with the culture. Culture fit rewards familiarity and sameness. It defaults to “Would I want to have lunch with this person?” (a question still being discussed in hiring panels today). Katherine Klein, a Wharton professor, shared in an article about culture fit that, “The biggest problem is that while we invoke cultural fit as a reason to hire someone, it is far more common to use it not to hire someone. People can’t tell you what aspect of the culture they are worried about.”

“Culture of” usually ends with a word like “innovation,” “learning,” or “feedback.” It’s confusing in two ways. The first is that it implies that nothing else matters. If we want a culture of innovation, does that mean we don’t value anything else? The second way it’s confusing is that it’s too generic. It needs more context. A culture of innovation can mean different things. I worked with two companies that both referred to their “culture of innovation.” Yet, when I asked what behaviors would be reinforced by employees if that were happening, one company wanted to speed up the rate of ideas, while the other company wanted to slow that rate down. Two different companies with the same tagline of “culture of innovation” had very different meanings and goals associated with them.

When leaders use jargon like “culture of excellence” or “culture of innovation,” they may think they sound credible, but vague language can have the opposite effect. A study from the Neuroleadership Institute found that, “Using vague nouns and verbs instead of specific ones can make people doubt you’re telling the truth. Participants rated statements having the same meaning as more likely to be true when written in definitive rather than abstract language.”

Language is never just language. It’s either lever or a liability. I learned how much damage vague culture language can do earlier in my career.

My first meeting with a hiring manager was with the Head of Engineering at a start-up where I was the Head of HR. He was not happy with our recruiting team, so my objective was to better understand what his concerns were, and to identify what each of our teams could do differently. His objective was to blame me for both the attrition on his team and for the lack of quality candidates he was seeing for his open roles. “We” (meaning me) were not quick enough to build a “culture of learning” and that’s why three engineers left his team over the last two months. And “we” (me) were not finding candidates that were a “cultural fit” for the company.

“This isn’t rocket science,” he said slowly, in a way that seemingly would make me believe him more if he emphasized each word. He went on to say that there were a lot of great engineers in Silicon Valley, we had a compelling product to attract them, but the issue was culture fit. I pushed him to clarify what he meant, and he said that he wanted his engineers to do their job, not cause tension and “stir things up” like the last three engineers on his team who ended up leaving the company.

There it was.

He wanted conformity. He wanted his engineers to do what he told them without question. As a Series A start-up, we were just beginning to discuss our cultural values. When I asked him what values were important to him, he replied without hesitation, “Respect.” To him, respect meant people doing what he wanted, with no questions asked and no debate.

He seemed to have forgotten the previous meeting we had on the themes that arose from all three engineers who left his team. They felt that they didn’t have a voice. Their opinion didn’t matter. They were concerned about the long-term viability of some of the features they were being asked to build. They weren’t longing for a “culture of learning.” Rather, they just wanted to work for a manager who respected their perspectives, who valued their ideas, and was open to discussing them. How ironic that the very thing this hiring manager valued was what the employees wanted from him as well.

As I dug further, I realized that in the interview process, he asked the candidates how much they were willing to “just execute” instead of questioning everything. No wonder we were losing candidates as quickly as we brought them in. It wasn’t because they lacked “cultural fit.” It was because they didn’t want to work for a company in which they didn’t have a voice.

That experience shifted how I thought about culture from being something you describe to something you design. It also helped me see that soft signaling isn’t accidental. It’s systemic. 

This is an extreme example of misusing these terms, but similar stories continue to occur today. Quiet quitting and soft signaling point to disengagement from both the employee and the organization.

Evolving Culture with Our Evolving Workplaces

While these cultural phrases seem innocuous, they communicate lazy and antiquated thinking. We can’t afford to continue using outdated terms and practices if we want to build modern workplaces.

Artificial intelligence requires a different approach to how we structure and design workflows. Hybrid work requires a different approach to assigning work and reinforcing priorities for teams across the globe. If we want to build cultures that meet the moment, we need to retire lazy language and demand more intentional design and communication of cultures.

This means we need to: 

• Replace “culture fit” with culture complement
  Culture fit often rewards sameness. We default to hiring people who feel familiar, easy, and likable. But that can lead to teams that look, think, and work alike. Culture complement flips the script. It asks: What does this person bring that our culture needs more of? Instead of hiring for chemistry, you're hiring for contribution. It values difference as additive, not disruptive. To understand what a complementary employee would be, you also need to define your values-based behaviors in specific statements and behavioral questions. For the behavior “We solve problems effectively,” you could ask a question like, “Describe a situation in which you recognized a potential problem as an opportunity. What did you do? What was the result? How did you bring others along to solve it?”
• Replace “culture of” with opportunities to reinforce your values-based behaviors
  Instead of talking about a culture of learning, reinforce the skills employees are learning through actual learning experiences. Share what was learned from a failed experiment. Be specific when communicating behaviors to reinforce what you want to see more of through practices and initiatives you are already doing. 
• Replace platitudes with practices
  Culture is made of behaviors, processes, and practices in an organizational system, as I defined in my book, ReCulturing. Practices like all-company meetings, 1:1s, and in-person team meetings can support the kinds of behaviors that are important to the culture. Make sure to review those practices and processes quarterly to identify how much you are reinforcing and integrating them into day-to-day work.

From Soft Signals to Strong Design

Words are signals. Systems are amplifiers.
If you want to build a culture that lasts, don’t just say it. You need to design for it, model it, practice it. Signal it through systems that clearly and consistently reinforce what matters most. When we’re willing to practice what we say is important, we move from cultural aspiration to cultural coherence.

That’s when culture stops being something we describe to being something we do. 

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