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· 5 min read

Leaders don't just respect the culture, they carry it

An end-of-quarter performance committee, a senior engineer without ambition, and what Bernardinho and Benchimol taught me about bringing out the best in people.

The end-of-quarter committee

At the end of every quarter, my team's leadership meets in a committee to review the individual performance of every developer: back-end, front-end, QA, data and SRE. One by one.

It's a hard meeting. Talking about people you work with every day, with candor and care at the same time, is draining. But it's one of the most important meetings we have. It's where we calibrate what we expect at each level, both technically and, above all, culturally.

And the culture we aim for has a name. It has seven points: autonomy, collaboration, accountability, proactivity, resilience, ownership and ambition.

Today, one case from that committee made me think more than the others. That's why I decided to write about it.

The case

We reviewed a senior engineer. Technically, they deliver well. The team listens to them, they teach, and they influence decisions. In practice, they already lead, even without a management title.

When we talked about this person's next steps, the answer was clear: they're happy where they are. They aren't looking to grow and have no next step in mind. They like executing and want to keep executing.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying what you do. What bothered me was something else.

Ambition isn't about titles

When I talk about ambition, I don't mean becoming a manager. There are many ways to grow: going deeper technically, taking on bigger problems, developing other people, shaping the architecture of an entire area.

Ambition, to me, is not settling for where you are. It's wanting your next delivery to be better than the last, and wanting the team to be better because of you.

And here's the point I couldn't shake: if someone has no ambition even for their own career, it's hard to believe they'll have ambition for the business. Without it, ownership stays in the speech. Owning something means caring about the outcome as if it were yours. It's hard to do that for something bigger when you don't even do it for yourself.

Not destroying the culture isn't the same as living it

Guilherme Benchimol published a post about the four types of people in a company (in Portuguese). He crosses two axes, results and culture, and describes what to do in each case: those who deliver and live the culture need to be recognized; those who don't deliver and destroy the culture need to go; those who deliver but destroy the culture are the hardest call; and those who live the culture but don't deliver deserve a frank conversation and a deadline.

The case we discussed doesn't fit neatly into any of the four. This person delivers. And they're not a detractor of the culture: they don't badmouth it, don't get in the way, don't contaminate the team.

But they're not a champion of it either. They don't believe in it enough to carry it forward. And in a role people look up to, that matters. Senior people teach by example, whether they want to or not. The team looks at them to understand what being good looks like here. If the example is "deliver well and stop there", that's what the team learns.

So, to me, not being against the culture isn't enough for someone in a leadership role. The question that remains is whether this person has truly bought into what we're building.

The dilemma: force or accept

We left the committee with a dilemma. We could try to force the change: demand ambition, set growth goals, push them to the next level.

But I don't believe ambition can be imposed. Someone can hit a growth goal without wanting to grow. And make-believe ambition doesn't build ownership.

At the same time, accepting it without trying would also be a failure. And this is where I come to what I believe a leader's role is.

Sweat before gold

Thinking about this case, I went back to a book that stayed with me: Transformando suor em ouro ("Turning sweat into gold"), by Bernardinho, the Brazilian volleyball coach. In it, he tells how he went from backup player to Olympic champion coach, and what he learned building winning teams.

One of the book's central ideas is the Wheel of Excellence: fundamentals like teamwork, leadership, motivation, perseverance, commitment, discipline and ethics, which have to turn together for a team to reach the top. None of them works alone. Technical talent without commitment to the group doesn't close the wheel.

Another idea I never forgot is that the will to prepare has to be greater than the will to win. To me, that's ambition in its healthiest form. It's not about the podium, it's about the willingness to keep improving every day.

Bernardinho also talks about the trap of success: when a team has already come far, the risk is settling into what it has achieved. I think that applies to careers too. Being senior is an achievement, but it can't become the finish line.

And above all, the book shows a leader who scouts talent and polishes it. He doesn't wait for the finished athlete. He sees potential, pushes, trains and believes before the athlete does.

The leader's role

A leader's role isn't to force anyone to change. It's to help people see the best in themselves, including what they can't see yet. It's turning potential into gold, as Bernardinho did with so many athletes.

Often, a lack of ambition isn't a lack of will. It might be a lack of perspective: the person doesn't know which paths exist. It might be a bad past experience, a personal moment, or simply that nobody ever asked them what they want to build. Before concluding anything, leadership has the obligation to open that conversation, show possibilities, and give real context and opportunities.

Once that's done, the decision is theirs. And if they look at all of it and decide they don't want to change, that's okay. Truly. It's not a judgment of who the person is. Maybe they just don't fit the culture we chose to build, and maybe there's another place where what they're looking for is exactly what's expected.

Culture isn't negotiated case by case. But it isn't a weapon either. It exists to make clear what we expect, so that each person can decide, honestly, whether they want to be part of it.

Closing

The end-of-quarter committee is hard because it forces us to look at people, not just at deliveries. This case reminded me that evaluating performance isn't only measuring what someone did, but understanding where that person wants to go, and whether that path runs alongside ours.

As a leader, I want to be the one who sees the gold before the person does, and who stands beside them through the sweat that comes first. But I also want the courage to accept when someone, knowing all of it, chooses a different path.

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