My experience has been in entrepreneurial organizations that have been on the leading edge of the particular field they are serving. In these cases, the personal characteristics of the leader highly impact the culture of the organization. Often, it has been the personal vision and charisma of these individuals that brought the organization into existence and attracts the talent necessary to continue to grow and progress. A common problem can surface after the initial launch if leadership holds on to too much control and gets addicted to the excitement of creating on the wings of enthusiasm without paying attention to the crucial need to build solid financial and procedural systems that are grounded in tangible business practices. If this part of the business is trivialized the creative and innovative nature of the venture can devolve into an organization that pays lip service to long-term sustainability and resorts to systems that simply 'rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.'
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Excellent question! In order to answer with what I believe is a useful perspective, I'm assuming that when you say "personal characteristics," you mean their "leadership" and "communication" styles, not their gender, height, body type, etc. In my 20+ years of experience serving leadership in both industry and government, my sense is that most cultures are direct extensions of the leader's characteristics. For example, I've served many CEO's (many are retired military) who favor the "command and control" leadership style; you know, "do as I say because I'm the boss." They are direct communicators who take charge, give orders, are my-way-or-the-highway communicators and occasionally step on toes (to say the least) in order to get things done. They're not likely to have high emotional intelligence. And I've usually found that the culture of their organization is also "command and control." People do as the leader does; they follow the path of least resistance. It's very rare, in my experience, to find an organizational culture that is significantly and measurably different from the leadership and communication styles of the leadership.

Leadership plays very important role in building organizational culture and a well-built and managed organizational culture can create a significant competitive advantage for an organization. Leadership differences had a more pronounced effect on organizational behaviors and subsequent performance and top management leaders’ behavior can have a significant influence on emergent organizational cultures and performance. As Richard Hendrickson in 1989 based on his research works in the field of culture and leadership, has concluded:

• A) The nature of leadership is related to the nature of culture.
• B) Leadership is essentially a form of cultural expression.
• C) The overall leadership can only be defined in terms of process.
• D) Can only lead to a multi-studied phenomenon.

Since culture play very crucial role in the success of an organization in the competitive business world, many organizations take very different approaches to build quality work culture. These approaches termed as symmetric and asymmetric leadership and organizational cultures. If an organization competes both strategically and managerially by emphasizing planning and work systems to mitigate the impact of any turbulence in the external environment, where stability is a key is known as symmetric leadership and organization culture, whereas if an organization competes by accepting environmental uncertainty and risk as a part of normal daily operations, where flexibility of the organization is the key then it is known as asymmetric leadership and organization culture. 

In my experience over fifty years, the most successful leaders at any level exhibited the following traits:

• Inquisitive
• Intuitive
• Inspirational
• Instructional

Those personas with the above stated characteristic traits could adapt, and adjust, far better than those with rigid experiences, and were better able to lead.

Leadership is the art of influencing people in order to achieve a result. The most essential element for success of a business is confident and competent leadership. Leaders often face difficult problems to which there are no simple, clear cut, by-the-book solutions. In these situations, leaders must use their knowledge, skill, experience, education, values, and judgment to make decisions and to take or direct action—in short, to provide leadership. No book can provide black-and-white answers to the unlimited volume and variety of situations a leader will face. Instead, leadership training simply outlines the broad concepts of leadership and the fundamental concepts by which expectations of leaders may be established and performance of leaders may be judged. This training is intended to make better leaders of all of us. For these reasons, leadership training courses and books written on the subject are structured around our leadership values and principles as a means of communicating what right looks like and illustrating effective leadership in action.

The Authority to Lead versus the Decision to Lead
The authority to lead is established by law. Whether this authority is based on federal, state, or local law, we are legal agents exercising authority on behalf of our organizations. The ability to lead is a different matter; it is something that cannot be legislated. To be effective, leaders must earn the trust and respect of others. A leader’s journey is a perpetual cycle of acquiring, shaping, and honing
the knowledge and skills of leadership. The leadership journey is never finished.
Once we commit to becoming leaders, our focus is no longer ourselves. Fire leaders assume the serious responsibility of putting others into harm’s way and for making decisions that profoundly affect citizens, communities, and natural resources. Leadership is a tough choice. Leaders choose to sacrifice their own needs for those of their teams and organizations. They routinely face situations and make decisions that others criticize and second-guess. Leaders take risks and face challenges every day. So why do we choose to lead? We lead because leading is where we make a difference.
Fire leaders bring order to chaos, improve our people’s lives, and strengthen our organizations. Leading enables us to leave a legacy for the leaders of the future so that they can take our places well prepared for the road ahead. These are the rewards of leadership. Their effects will be seen and felt long after our careers end.

What define the culture of an organization are:

• Vision. Live in the future but put this in practice now.
• Emphaty. We deal with humans, not with machines. Ok not even with machines but still with human as well.
• Passion. Show that you love and trust in what you are doing, people will follow you.
• Ethic. Treat people as you want they will do with you.
• Lead people. Indeed you can develop this skill but is something innate too. Not everyone is able to do it.

To me all these elements will then define the culture of your organization.

This also has a lot to do with the kind of organization. In an organization that is innovation focussed, the image of the visionary leader will have a lot of influence on the company culture. Tesla is Elon Musk, Apple still is to some extent Steve Jobs.

In more mundane fields, management will hardly be known other than perhaps the names. Their personalities will undoubtedly still influence company culture, but at a much smaller scale. You might even say that the company culture will attract a certain leader in that case rather than vice versa.

Hi All,

I favor the concept of a servant leader. A leader who directs through a clear vision of objectives, but with humility, a willingness to listen, empathic, and committed to the growth/advancement of his/her direct reports. The servant leader is that individual who is able and willing to provide resources and encouragement so that workers have the best chance at success.

Personal character of course influences leadership. But leaders are not born as such, leadership can and has to be learnt.

Leadership is a privilege and not a right. Leadership is about vision, it is about hope. It is about challenging status quo. It is about bringing the right minds together and working towards a common cause with purpose. 'Yes, we can!'

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/high-reliability-organizations-leadership-david/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leadership-training-isnt-only-firefighters-david/

If you have an established company and management, how do you select a leader for an internal new innovative business unit? What criteria are important to consider?

Leader is manger when his ideology activities and relationship efficiency working style will make followers motivated to discharge duties automatically without pressure and compulson.

Organisational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization. Let's explore what elements make up an organization's culture.
Organizational culture is composed of seven characteristics that range in priority from high to low. Every organization has a distinct value for each of these characteristics, which, when combined, defines the organization's unique culture

Culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin. When organizations start or when groups start there is always a leader who has a preferred way of doing things, and those preferences by definition are going to be imposed on the group members. If you don’t like the way I run this group, I’ll replace you. The leader’s values and preferences are the first ways that a group or organization does things and if that works it becomes eventually the culture of that group. So in a very real sense, founders and leaders create culture.

In every organization all employees as well as leaders or top managers should follow the culture of company for complete development of company.

My experience has created a view that the leader should aim to develop leaders, the style of leadership approach in my opinion works to establish a developmental approach to "task" through partnered leadership. The clarity and position of each person with a role to develop a culture and motivation that can carry personal and collective action and create scope for effective utilisation of individuals strengths and a reflective open learning environment.

To be reasonable, this model and view has progressively been eroded due to the enormous pressures and job role increases and targeted result and outcome requirements that determine that a role is mainly about task as oppose to person centred, which has impacted upon workforce motivation.

I consider trait leadership style and democracy in the workplace to be an active part of development and movement. The leader should in my view be part of a team with a specific role that should be invested in and this lead is about people and task becomes secondary, this in turn creates collegiate motivation to achieve based upon secure values in relation to the culture developed and organisational future-proofing and improvement.

How things are done in the workplace,depends on factors affecting people interaction within the organization and policies as well as processes in place.
The leadership style and traits dictates the behavior in the workplace.

More so than the individuals characteristics setting the culture for the organization is the leaders level of inclusiveness and acceptance of diversity.

While a leader may not be expecting everyone to have his/her same values, it is key to see whether the leader will accept values that are different or strive to use his/her values as the footprint for the company or organization.