The 4 types of corporate cultures

When HR executives tell me that they want to improve their corporate culture, they often imagine a workplace where employees are socially connected, people collaborate, leaders are empathic, and there’s a friendly atmosphere.

While that corporate culture sounds lovely, here’s a shocking statistic: Only 31% of employees actually want to work in that sort of environment. Meanwhile, 69% would prefer a very different kind of culture.

4 types of corporate cultures

More than 20,000 leaders have taken Leadership IQ’s online test, “What’s Your Organizational Culture?” The data from the test reveals that there are four major corporate cultures:

No perfect culture

The Social Culture is the one that, a priori, most people think of as ideal. But again, only about  a third of people actually want to work in that environment. By contrast, 28% idealize the Dependable Culture, 24% want an Enterprising Culture, and 16% would choose the Hierarchical Culture.