Walmart’s Out of Chicken: The Leader and the Culture People Experience

A few months ago, I found myself sitting in a physical therapy clinic—a little banged up, a little discouraged, and honestly not especially excited to be there.

The room was full of people in various stages of rebuilding. Braces. Slings. Bad backs. Limps. Protective helmets. All visible reminders that life sometimes leaves marks.

Physical therapy is important work, but few people wake up excited to go.

Then a therapist walked into the room and dramatically announced:

“Walmart’s out of chicken!”

Apparently, there was a potluck planned. Buffalo chicken dip was in jeopardy. Publixf (with which they shared a parking lot) was deemed too expensive. Crockpot dreams were suddenly uncertain.

And just like that, the entire room came alive.

Patients stopped mid-exercise to weigh in (slight pun intended). The receptionist joined the conversation with twinkling eyes and playful banter. A more senior therapist joked that he couldn’t quite get things straight that morning because “the gerbils in my brain haven’t lined up and gotten on their wheels yet.”

One longtime patient quietly told me about the chicken dip guy, “He’s always the entertainment around here. Everybody listens to his stories. Sometimes people get so caught up talking they almost forget to do their therapy.”

The whole place sparkled.

What struck me wasn’t the conversation about chicken (or gerbils).

It was the culture.

I have worked in many organizations over the years. I’ve seen outstanding teams and deeply unhealthy ones. I’ve become convinced that culture rarely happens accidentally.

Someone creates it.

Someone chooses the tone.

Someone decides whether people will feel seen or managed, welcomed or tolerated, safe or guarded.

And eventually, everyone else experiences the consequences of those choices.

Leadership works the same way.

Teams do not just experience our strategies, goals, or performance metrics. They experience us.

They experience our unresolved fears, our assumptions, our insecurities, our humility, our healing, and our character.

An anxious leader often creates an anxious culture.

A cynical leader often creates a cynical culture.

A defensive leader often creates a defensive culture.

But leaders who have done (are doing) their own internal work frequently create something different. They create environments where people can ask questions, admit mistakes, laugh, grow, and recover.

This is one reason I believe leaders owe their teams their own healing work.

Unhealed pain has a way of spreading.

So does health.

The most trusted leaders I have known were rarely the most polished or impressive. They were usually the people who had walked through difficulty, learned from it, and allowed it to make them wiser, humbler, and more compassionate.

They had a limp.

But they had also done the work to turn that limp into wisdom rather than bitterness.

Too often, organizations search endlessly for the perfect team, the perfect circumstances, or the perfect employees. In reality, healthy cultures are usually built by ordinary people making extraordinary choices day after day.

Choices to take ownership.

Choices to continue growing.

Choices to examine biases and assumptions.

Choices to remain playful, hopeful, and human, even when life is hard.

The therapists in that clinic could not remove every patient’s pain. They could not instantly restore damaged bodies. They could not guarantee easy recoveries.

But they had created a place where people felt lighter carrying their burdens.

That is leadership.

People may not remember every presentation we give, every metric we improve, or every strategic initiative we launch.

But they will remember how it felt to be around us.

Because the leader we are becoming eventually becomes the culture other people experience.

And sometimes, culture is built one conversation, one choice, and one “Walmart’s out of chicken” moment at a time.

As you think about your own leadership this week, consider this question: What do people consistently experience when they experience you?