There’s an old corporate cliché that "shit flows downhill."
The idea is that if the board pressures the CEO, the CEO stresses out the VP, the VP yells at the manager, and eventually, the entry-level guy has a miserable Tuesday. We treat stress like a virus. We assume it's contagious.
But it’s a myth. Misery doesn't flow downhill, because misery doesn't actually exist in the room. It only exists in the mind of the person experiencing it.
If you threaten an employee with layoffs or offer them a massive bonus, it looks like the circumstance is dictating their behavior. But imagine you hired the Buddha. You could threaten him, bribe him, or yell at him about Q3 projections, and his heart rate wouldn't change. The circumstance is identical. The internal weather is just different.
When leaders realize that their stress isn't caused by lagging profits or impending layoffs, but by their own thinking about those things, the panic stops.
And when the panic stops at the top, there is no "shit" to flow downhill in the first place. You don't need to roll out a new culture initiative. You just need to stop infecting yourself.