The Iowa Department of Corrections Joint Leadership Team (JLT) represents leadership across the full state system, including prison institutions, community based supervision, and central office. This cross-system body plays a critical role in shaping culture, not only through strategic direction, but through how leaders show up together to navigate change. By engaging in their own growth, surfacing challenges, and practicing new ways of leading, the JLT models the essential way of doing the work rather than delegating it. Organizational culture is not transformed through policy alone. It is shaped through daily interactions, reinforced through relationships, and sustained through consistent leadership behavior. When psychological safety is built at this level, it creates the conditions for trust, accountability, and adaptability to take hold across the entire system.

Over the past year, the JLT shifted from a climate described as skeptical, uncomfortable, and uncertain to one that is now cautiously optimistic, better, and increasingly comfortable. This evolution reflects intentional efforts to build trust, increase openness, and foster shared ownership of culture.

Key indicators of progress include:

• Greater willingness among leaders to speak up, admit uncertainty, and challenge habits constructively
• Increased dialogue, help seeking, and reinforcement of one another’s courage
• Breakdown of silos across institutions, districts, and central office
• Stronger relationships, systems thinking, and collaborative problem solving

Initiatives such as the ACJI Implementation Leadership Academy and focused psychological safety efforts supported this shift by creating shared language, building capability, and reinforcing aligned leadership practices.

Importantly, the JLT is not only strengthening its own dynamics. Members are modeling behaviors that are beginning to influence local cultures, including improved handoffs, stronger regional collaboration, and increased transparency. This modeling remains critical as frontline culture is shaped by what leaders consistently do than by what is formally expected.

Looking ahead, the focus is on sustaining momentum and expanding this work into institutions and districts. Continued emphasis on leadership vulnerability, consistency, and shared responsibility will be critical to embedding a culture of commitment across the IDOC system.

As organizations across the field work to strengthen culture, Iowa’s experience raises an important consideration. If culture reflects leadership behavior, then the most powerful place to begin may be at the top.

• What would it look like to invest first in psychological safety among your senior leaders?
• How might culture shift if leaders consistently modeled openness, learning, and shared accountability?
• Where might upstream work accelerate or strengthen your current culture efforts?

These are the kinds of shifts that move culture from intention to sustained practice.