Culture Under Pressure: What Holds When Everything Else Moves
Every organisation talks about culture. But few can sustain it when pressure hits.
Economic volatility, rapid technological change and rising employee expectations are exposing the difference between what companies say they value and what actually shows up in behaviour. When stress builds, strategy alone isn’t enough - culture decides whether you adapt or fracture.
In this article, Helen Kewell, psychotherapist, leadership coach and Client Partner, explores what happens when culture is tested in real time. Drawing on insights from her work and a recent discussion with leadership consultant Justin Featherstone, she examines how organisations can build cultures that don’t just survive pressure but grow stronger through it.
Helen highlights three human principles that underpin resilient culture:
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Trust – creates the safety for truth to surface early and decisions to flow across boundaries.
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Humility – gives leaders the courage to hear uncomfortable feedback and adapt their own behaviour.
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Kindness – often mistaken for softness, but in practice the glue of resilience and performance.
The article also explores practical ways to make culture tangible, from symbolic acts and embedded systems to small, consistent leadership behaviours that build collective confidence.
Because when times get tough, culture isn’t a slogan or a campaign. It’s what really holds the organisation together.
Read the article now to explore how trust, humility and kindness can turn culture into your organisation’s strongest form of resilience.
About the Author
Helen Kewell is a Client Partner at Muuto, with over 25 years' experience in managing transformation across diverse industries and always through the human lens, driving behaviour and culture change as well as enabling new capabilities and mindsets. She is also a qualified and practising psychotherapist with a specialisation in the psychology of life transitions, and a published author on the same topic.