The answers to these questions tell about what the organization truly values. If the informal systems support the stated philosophy, that philosophy is reinforced. If the informal systems contradict or ignore the philosophy then most people feel safe disregarding it too. Informal norms and leadership behavior shape employee behavior more effectively than stated philosophy, training or formal systems and structures. Leadership behaviors communicate organizational expectations when they are congruent with the stated philosophy and with the understood norms or informal rules for success within the organization.
Leaders communicate individual requirements.
Norms, the way things are understood to really work, do likewise. The concern is that they do not agree until and unless leadership has established a coherent pattern of behavior and the organization itself has established a history of integrity, demonstrating through its actions that its dered, so that observers can see the ways values were applied to the decision making process. These are the questions that seek to identify top management's real agenda. People want to know that agenda because they believe that success in what matters to the people at the top counts more than success in what nobody in senior management cares about. If the message is ambiguous, people will presume that senior management has a hidden agenda and will speculate about it throughout the organization's grapevine.