We’ve all been there: waiting on a project that crawls from one manager’s desk to another. Each person adds their approval, and what should have taken days drags on for weeks. Deadlines slip, frustration builds, and momentum dies.

The culprit isn’t laziness or lack of effort, it’s the hierarchy. Projects bottleneck when only a select few hold the authority to make decisions.

That’s why the strongest companies are shifting to interdependent leadership, a model where leadership is shared across the team. It’s not about one heroic manager. It’s about creating a workplace culture where everyone has the chance to lead in their area of expertise.

In this article, I’ll break down:

• What a culture of leadership looks like inside an organization’s culture
• Why startups can’t scale without interdependent leadership
• Three steps to build it across your entire organization

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When you develop leaders at every level, you boost employee engagement, strengthen retention, and create the kind of healthy culture where people thrive.

Table of Contents:

What kind of leadership culture do you have?

Why startups need interdependent leadership

Three steps to build interdependent leadership

‍The impact on retention and the bottom line

FAQs: Building a Culture of Leadership

Final Words

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What culture of leadership does your organization have?

Every company says they care about leadership, but not every company builds the right kind of workplace culture to back it up. The truth is, your organization’s culture falls into one of three categories. And knowing where you sit is the first step to changing it.

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1. Dependent Leadership

This is the old-school model of organizational culture: rigid, top-down, and built on hierarchy. Managers hold the power, employees wait their turn.

At first glance, dependent leadership looks “safe.” There’s structure, clear reporting lines, and accountability flows upward. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find the cracks:

• Decision-making slows to a crawl because every choice needs approval.
• Employee engagement drops as team members realize their input doesn’t matter.
• Burnout spreads because managers carry all the responsibility while employees are reduced to order-takers.
• Employee development stalls, since no one is encouraged to stretch beyond their job description.

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It’s the most common model in large companies — but also the most damaging to long-term employee retention and the bottom line.

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2. Independent Leadership

At the other end of the spectrum is the “hero model.” This work culture celebrates independence, where leadership happens only when someone rises to the occasion. Think of it as leadership by exception.

Here’s the problem: by only rewarding big, dramatic wins, you end up punishing consistency. Employees quickly learn that their everyday contributions go unnoticed, while the spotlight moments are the only ones that count. That creates a culture where:

• Team members compete for attention instead of collaborating.
• The organization depends on a handful of “stars,” which undermines the employee experience for everyone else.
• New ideas and incremental progress get ignored because they’re not flashy enough.

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Independent leadership feels exciting in the short term, but it’s unsustainable. It doesn’t create a healthy culture, and over time it erodes trust, motivation, and well-being across the entire organization.

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3. Interdependent Leadership

This is the model of the future, and the one high-growth startups need to master. In an interdependent leadership culture, leadership is fluid. It’s not tied to a job title. Instead, the person with the right expertise leads in the moment.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

• Psychological safety ensures employees can step up without fear of being shut down.
• Open communication creates alignment and eliminates silos.
• Empowerment means decisions are made at the right level, by the people closest to the problem.
• Mentoring and development programs encourage everyone to grow their leadership skills, not just those with “manager” in their title.
• Core values and shared values guide behaviour, ensuring a strong culture where employees feel a sense of belonging.

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The payoff? Teams become truly high-performing. They innovate faster, make better decisions, and create a work environment that supports both employee well-being and work-life balance. Interdependence doesn’t just drive long-term success — it also creates a strong leadership pipeline, where employees see themselves as leaders-in-the-making, not just followers.

In short, interdependence is the only model that scales. It develops leaders at every level, fuels employee development, and builds the kind of company culture that drives retention, engagement, and results for the entire organization.

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Why startups need interdependent leadership

Startups face unique challenges: rapid growth, high expectations, and limited resources. Without a strong leadership culture, they risk high turnover and burnout.

When leadership is fluid:

• Team members feel empowered to act without waiting for approval.
• Decision-making speeds up because the right people are trusted to decide.
• Employees gain a stronger sense of belonging, tied to the company’s core values.
• The employee experience improves, which fuels retention and reduces hiring costs.

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Take planning an offsite retreat. Finance leads on budget. HR leads on learning. Marketing leads on communications. Each expert owns their lane, and leadership shifts seamlessly. No bottlenecks. No delays. Just progress.

Startups that create a people-first work culture see stronger employee retention, reduced burnout, and a safe environment where new ideas actually take root.

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Three steps to build interdependent leadership

Here’s how you turn theory into practice:

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1. Make leadership fluid

Effective leaders don’t hoard authority, they spread it. That means separating leadership from titles. In an interdependent culture, leadership is about initiative, not position.

When you empower employees to lead in their areas of expertise, you unlock new ideas and faster results. The workplace culture shifts from “waiting for approval” to “taking responsibility.”

This flexibility builds strong leadership and cuts through hierarchy. Leadership becomes dynamic, changing as the team’s needs change.

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2. Build a growth mindset

Leadership development isn’t about perfecting what you already know, it’s about stretching. A growth mindset helps employees see challenges as opportunities. Pair this with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and suddenly your team isn’t just doing tasks, they’re pursuing ambitious goals and learning along the way.

Growth mindset cultures:

• Improve employee engagement by focusing on progress, not perfection.
• Strengthen company culture by rewarding learning and experimentation.
• Encourage employee development and mentorship, where employees coach each other and share core values.

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Combined, this creates a work-life balance where personal growth and company growth align. People stay longer, and retention improves.

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3. Lead as a coach

Managers who act as coaches drive higher employee experience and create high-performing teams. Coaching means you’re not just assigning tasks, you’re:

• Building trust by knowing your team’s strengths and aligning roles.
• Running weekly team meetings and one-on-ones to stay connected.
• Checking in monthly to track progress and prevent burnout.
• Holding structured reviews that celebrate growth and reinforce shared values.

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Coaching also ties directly to mental health and well-being. Employees who feel seen and supported are less likely to burn out and more likely to bring their best selves to work.

This is where development programs matter. Mentoring and structured employee development initiatives provide leaders with the tools to sustain this approach, ensuring a safe environment and a healthy culture across the entire organization.

I talk more about the coach approach in this video: Coaching Skills for Managers | Fahd Alhattab

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The impact on retention and the bottom line

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A culture of interdependent leadership does more than create happy employees. It saves money.

• Gallup research shows managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement.
• High engagement boosts employee retention, lowering the costly cycle of turnover and onboarding.
• When employees feel trusted, empowered, and supported, they’re less likely to leave — protecting your bottom line.

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Startups that invest in leadership skills, mentorship, and development programs create a strong culture where people actually want to stay. That’s the ultimate retention strategy.

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FAQs: Building a Culture of Leadership

Q: How do you build a culture of leadership in startups?

Startups don’t have the luxury of slow, top-heavy systems. To build a culture of leadership, focus on three pillars:

1. Psychological Safety: Encourage open communication where team members can ask questions, challenge assumptions, and share new ideas without fear. Create a safe environment by modelling vulnerability yourself (admitting mistakes, asking for feedback).
2. Empowerment: Push decisions down to the people closest to the work. Let engineers decide how to solve technical challenges; let marketers own campaign direction. When you empower employees, you accelerate decision-making and cut out bottlenecks. Give your team enough practice so that during game time, they can call the shots. Ultimately, it’s how they gain the experience of what it means to shoot a basket.
3. Coaching, Not Commanding: Replace one-off performance reviews with weekly check-ins. Use mentorship and development programs to help employees grow into leaders themselves. A better leader builds more leaders, not more followers.

Tip: Run monthly “leadership rotation” exercises where different team members facilitate team meetings. This normalizes leadership as a shared responsibility.

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Q: What role does company culture play in employee retention?

Company culture is retention. You can’t separate the two. When employees leave, they often cite “better pay” as the reason, but more often, the truth is they didn’t feel valued, engaged, or supported.

Here’s how company culture impacts retention:

• Shared values and core values give employees a sense of direction and belonging.
• A work environment that prioritizes well-being and work-life balance reduces turnover.
• Employee engagement skyrockets when people feel part of a strong culture that recognizes everyday contributions, not just heroic efforts.

Tip: Ask this in every exit interview, “What would have kept you here?” Then feed those answers back into your organizational culture initiatives.

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Q: How do leadership development programs help?

One-off workshops don’t create leaders. Ongoing leadership development programs do. They:

• Teach leadership skills like coaching, feedback, and building trust.
• Equip managers with frameworks like OKRs, feedback hot seats, or delegation models to strengthen the entire organization.
• Provide space for mentoring and mentorship, where managers practice skills in real-time and learn from peers.

Tip: Don’t limit development programs to managers. Give team members access, too. A frontline employee who learns how to coach peers becomes a force multiplier for the organization’s culture. It also helps them understand the work of their leaders.

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Q: Why does psychological safety matter for leadership?

Without psychological safety, everything else falls apart. Employees won’t speak up, new ideas die early, and teams operate in fear. With it, you get:

• A safe environment where mistakes are seen as learning moments.
• More innovation, because people are willing to challenge assumptions.
• Stronger employee experience and sense of belonging, which drive retention.

Tip: Start your next team meeting by sharing a small failure of your own, and what you learned from it. When leaders normalize vulnerability, employees follow.

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Q: How can leaders prevent burnout while still driving results?

Burnout is the silent killer of startups. You can’t hustle your way out of it. To prevent it while still hitting goals:

• Set realistic OKRs: Stretch goals are good, but impossible ones destroy morale.
• Build in recovery: Encourage employees to use vacation and protect evenings/weekends.
• Invest in well-being and mental health initiatives (e.g., access to counselling, mindfulness apps, or in-person wellness days).
• Use open communication to check workload: don’t assume silence means everything’s fine.

Tip: During 1:1s, ask: “On a scale of 1–10, how sustainable is your workload right now?” If the number is below 7, work with the employee to adjust priorities.

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Final Words

Here’s the truth: you already have a culture of leadership. The question is whether it’s serving you, or quietly sabotaging you.

If leadership is dependent, you’re bleeding time in bottlenecks. If it’s independent, you’re burning people out chasing heroics. And if you’re not actively shaping interdependence, you’re leaving your employee engagement, retention, and bottom line to chance.

Think about it: how many great people have quit your company not because of the work, but because of the work environment? How many team members with potential to lead are sitting silently because your organization’s culture doesn’t give them a voice?

Every day you delay building a strong culture of leadership, you’re paying for it: in lost ideas, stalled growth, and talent walking out the door.

So here’s the sting: if you don’t intentionally develop leaders, you will unintentionally develop disengagement. And disengagement is a debt that compounds fast.

The companies that win aren’t the ones with the best perks or the biggest budgets. They’re the ones that empower employees, build trust, and create the kind of high-performing culture people fight to be a part of.

The choice is simple. Shape your culture of leadership now, or let it shape you, and not in the way you want.

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