Banish the Culture Ghosts Sabotaging Your Bank’s Performance

Every bank has a culture. The question is—did you design it… or did you inherit it?

Most executives are unknowingly tolerating “culture ghosts”—toxic, normalized behaviors that silently destroy performance, accountability, and trust. And the longer they linger, the harder they are to remove.

In this video, Roxanne Emmerich exposes how these invisible forces take hold—and what it actually takes to eliminate them.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

• Why toxic behaviors persist long after leadership changes—and how they spread

• The hidden cost of tolerating gossip, low performance, and misalignment

• Why culture transformation requires systems—not speeches or good intentions

If you want a high-performing bank, you cannot allow low standards to masquerade as “just how things are.”

The strongest cultures are not accidental—they are engineered, reinforced, and protected.

It’s time to stop managing around dysfunction—and start eliminating it.

Watch now. 

I’m not big on the paranormal, but I do believe that there are ghosts within businesses.

Let me tell you a story. Years ago, I was working with an organization that supported the banking industry in a technological way. I won’t give you more detail than that. And I was working with them on their strategic plan, and I remember going into the CEO and I said, I gotta talk to you.

And I said to him, I am concerned that you’re gonna have a big HR issue here because the level of sexual references made as jokes between these team members is really beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I’m not a prude, but I’ve never seen anything like this, and I do think something’s wrong here. What’s going on, and where did this come from? And he said, hang on one second.

I gotta share with you a story. And he said, I purchased this company from a gentleman who was having an affair with his secretary, and they used to go to the back of the office, and there was a little room they went into, and they had a red light—you can’t make this stuff up—outside the door. And that was basically a sign for the rest of the group, don’t come in here now.

And he said, no matter what I do since I purchased this organization, I can’t seem to make the sexual references go away. It was such a normalized thing within the organization that even as new people come in, the ghost remains.

And I basically said, okay. That is it. We need to have an exorcism because this has got to stop. And many of you know what I’m talking about.

You need an exorcism for something else. Maybe it is an exorcism of, well, low performers, okay, get away with everything around here. They don’t really have to work, and nothing really ever happens to them, and they get the same bonus anyway, so why work? That might be your ghost.

Or, hey, when we disagree with things that the executives say, we just gossip about them in the break room, and therefore, we get to complain and feel better about ourselves. But they’re not making a difference. They’re making everybody feel worse and destroying the very fabric of your culture while they’re doing it. All of these kinds of things that are normal within your organization may not be the culture that you choose.

Your job as an executive is to define the culture that you choose.

You’re gonna have to get rid of the ghosts, and you’ll need to build the systems for improving the culture to tie everyone to the values and behaviors within this organization.

Now, as you’re doing this, I gotta say it is important to do it right and in the right order and with the right steps because if you make an attempt in that direction and you don’t get it done the first time correctly, each new initiative you will roll out will now be a “this too shall pass, let’s just slow walk them one more time” process because they don’t like giving up that control. And you know what I’m talking about if you’ve been on planet Earth for more than a decade.

So understand that you create the culture in the organization, which means you’re gonna have to grow backbone, decide what you stand for, and start to put systems in place to transform your culture.

And yes, I did say systems. It’s not a happy feeling. It’s a series of ongoing systems that keep everybody aligned to the values and the behaviors of the organization and also get people who are not aligned to understand—not around here. That’s not how we do things around here.

Enjoy growing your backbone and stick with me over the next few weeks as I give you more strategic ideas about how to land this because you shouldn’t have to live with ghosts. See you back next week.