Inspired by Sofia Boudmaghe’s Comments: When Culture Meets the Soul of a Company- By Amal Kooheji
After my recent article, “Culture is not a Tick-box, but it is the Air your Employees Breathe,” I received a heartfelt message that lingered with me for days. It began, “Back then, what we used to call the philosophy of a company; in fact its spirit, its ethics- somehow, its soul.”
Sofia Boudmaghe’s comments from Algeria, even though across oceans from my small island of Bahrain, were a reminder that conversations on workplace culture are not academic and not even region-specific; but they are deeply human. This beautiful reflection captured what many leaders sense but rarely articulate: culture is not only the air employees breathe; it is also the pulse that keeps the corporate heart alive.
Beyond Culture: The Question of Soul
Sofia’s insight struck me most when she said, “Not having a culture is already a culture. The real question is: what kind of culture is it?”
How true. Every company, whether it admits it or not, carries a cultural imprint. It may be the culture of fear or the culture of fairness. It may prize numbers over meaning or relationships over rank. But culture exists nonetheless; shaped by choices, silences, and daily behaviour.
What she called “the absence of ethics and moral sense” is, in fact, the silent virus that erodes many modern workplaces. Companies that lose their ethical compass often compensate with slogans; like values written on walls, mission statements repeated in townhalls, however, the lived experience doesn’t align. And employees, far from naïve, can sense the gap instantly.
Rehumanising the Company
The most profound sentence in her message was this:
“Perhaps a good leader’s role is to rehumanise the company; not through paternalism or slogans about being a ‘family’, but by building a group that respects values and works with integrity, responsibility, and purpose.”
Re-humanising an organisation means restoring the connection between doing and being. It’s about ensuring that performance never tramples dignity, and that leadership is not reduced to management of metrics.
The modern workplace often exhausts people intellectually and emotionally because it forgets one simple truth: we are human beings, not human resources. When work loses meaning, even the best incentives cannot revive motivation. When meaning returns, energy follows.
Culture as Moral Compass
Culture, at its best, acts as the moral compass of an organisation. It guides decision-making when policies are silent and rules are ambiguous. It gives people a sense of pride and belonging. But culture cannot exist without ethics. Ethics breathe life into culture just as oxygen sustains the body. Without them, what remains is procedure without passion; organisations that function efficiently but feel hollow.
The real test for leaders, then, is not how well their culture is branded but how well it is believed; by the people who live it every day.
From Philosophy to Practice
We often talk about “company culture” as a management concept. But the truth, as my reader so elegantly put it, is that culture used to be called philosophy. It was the invisible thread connecting vision, values, and virtue. It was the why behind every what.
Today, perhaps it is time to return to that essence. To rebuild our workplaces not as systems of control but as communities of conscience. To measure success not only by profit margins but by pride, purpose, and the humanity we protect along the way.
In Gratitude
To the thoughtful reader , Sofia; who reminded me that culture and soul are inseparable’ thank you. Your words turned this topic from a leadership issue into a human one.
And to every leader reading this: may we never forget that culture is not a corporate construct, but it is a reflection of our collective soul.
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