At TestBash Autumn we had the pleasure of welcoming three very talented community members to answer questions on how to drive a culture of quality. They were: @fullsnacktester , @parveen (@parveenkhan) and @c32hedge .
The questions didn’t stop coming in and unfortunately we didn’t get to all of them live.
One of those questions was from @lalitha.ramachandran:
How does leadership play into quality culture?
What do you think? 
Leadership plays the role of the driver, influencer, and enforcer of quality culture.
A culture of quality has to be nurtured and fostered and will not be successful or effective if you don’t have the buy in of senior leaders and management. Leaders have to be part of driving that culture. However driving culture can not be heavy handed, it’s more like playing a steady drum beat that keeps everyone focused on the pace and patterns that make up the system.
Same with influencing, we can’t tell people what to do and just expect them to follow the directions without question. We instead have to influence and coach them to solutions that contribute to a culture of quality. This is where quality coaches make their biggest impact, but for organizations that don’t have quality coaches, leaders need to fill that void.
And finally my least favorite job as a leader, but a critical one nonetheless, leaders need to occasionally be enforcers. Systems (culture is a soft system) need checks and balances and leaders are often times the one’s responsible for those checks and balances. When system starts to break down leaders need to be engaged enough to see it first or have the right people in place to help them see it early so the leader can step in and get things back on track.