One-on-One with Eve Remillard-Larose: Culture Isn’t a Value. It’s a Leadership Decision.

Former CEO, TBWA/Omnicom Canada & Managing Partner, Sid Lee

What actually makes a high-performing team?

It’s a question leaders across every industry are trying to answer, especially in fast-moving, creative, and agency environments where culture can shape everything from retention to performance.

In a recent conversation with our Founder Ari Aronson, Eve Remillard-Larose shared insights from her experience building and transforming teams throughout her career, from helping grow creative agencies from the ground up to leading large-scale organizational change.

One thing became clear quickly: exceptional teams don’t happen by accident.

Culture Is Built Intentionally

For Eve, culture is more than values written on a website. It’s built through behaviours, expectations, and leadership consistency.

“The standard is the standard,” she shared, emphasizing that strong cultures are shaped by what leaders consistently accept, reinforce, and model themselves.

But culture transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Whether joining an established organization or scaling a new one, building alignment across leadership teams takes time, communication, and trust.

It also requires leaders to have difficult conversations early instead of avoiding them.

Hiring Beyond the Resume

One of the strongest takeaways from the conversation was the importance of hiring for shared ambition, not just experience.

According to Eve, the best hires are often the people who genuinely align with the organization’s direction, energy, and standards, not simply the most impressive resume on paper.

She also reflected on the importance of recognizing hiring bias, particularly in leadership environments where referrals and familiarity can unintentionally create teams with similar backgrounds and perspectives.

The strongest teams, she explained, balance different ways of thinking, lived experiences, and working styles.

That diversity becomes essential for innovation, creativity, and long-term growth.

Why Onboarding Matters More Than Companies Think

Even great hires can struggle without proper onboarding.

Eve emphasized that many organizations invest heavily in recruiting senior talent but fail to clearly communicate how the culture actually operates once the talent joins.

Long-standing teams often work within unwritten rules and expectations that existing employees instinctively understand, while new hires are left trying to figure it out on their own.

Her advice? Make the implicit explicit.

Clear expectations around communication, collaboration, decision-making, and leadership style can dramatically improve how new team members integrate and succeed.

Empathy Is Becoming a Leadership Advantage

When discussing leadership style, Eve repeatedly returned to the importance of empathy.

In creative industries, especially, leaders are responsible for creating environments where people feel safe contributing ideas, taking risks, and occasionally failing.

That means staying accessible, listening actively, and creating space for open dialogue across every level of the organization.

As AI continues to reshape the future of work, Eve believes that empathy will become an even more valuable differentiator, both internally within teams and externally with clients and consumers.

Final Thoughts

Building a high-performance team isn’t about finding one perfect hire.

It’s about creating an environment where the right people can thrive together.

From intentional hiring and thoughtful onboarding to leadership alignment and empathy, organizations that build strong cultures are often those willing to slow down, invest in people, and evolve deliberately over time.

Because great teams aren’t built by chance. They’re built with purpose.