When we talk about toxic workplace cultures, the conversation often centres on the behaviour of one difficult individual; an aggressive manager or the high performer who gets results but leaves a trail of damaged relationships behind them.
It is tempting to treat this as a personality problem. Yet toxic behaviour rarely survives on its own. It needs an environment that accommodates it, explains it away or quietly reorganises itself around it. Over time, the organisation begins to absorb the behaviour and people learn what can be said, who can be challenged and which conversations are best avoided. They become more careful, more political and less honest.
At that point, what started as an individual behavioural problem has become a cultural one.
People quickly learn where the real power sits
Every organisation has a formal structure with reporting lines, position descriptions and delegated authorities. Alongside that structure sits another one; the informal system people use to understand how the organisation actually operates.
Employees pay close attention to what happens around powerful people. They notice whose behaviour is challenged and whose is excused and they see whether a senior person’s status or performance protects them from consequences. These observations teach people where the organisation’s real boundaries sit. A company may talk about respect, openness and accountability, but employees will place far more weight on what they observe.
The organisation starts adapting to the person
One of the more interesting consequences of toxic behaviour is that, over time, the difficult person may change very little. Instead, everyone around them changes.
People begin rehearsing conversations before approaching them. They take another colleague into a meeting because that person acts as a buffer. They might soften bad news, avoid raising unfinished ideas or decide not to challenge something because they can predict the reaction. New employees are quietly given advice about how to handle them: “Don’t take it personally”, “Pick your moment” or “That’s just what they’re like.”
Each individual adjustment may seem sensible but collectively, however, they can become enormously expensive. Think about how much organisational energy can be consumed managing one person’s temperament, ego or unpredictability. Decisions take longer and information becomes filtered. When people spend time discussing how someone might react rather than concentrating on the issue itself, there is a culture problem.
Eventually this behaviour can become so normalised that people stop seeing it for what it is. I think this is an important warning sign for leaders. When a team begins designing its behaviour around one individual, that individual has acquired a form of power that may extend far beyond their formal role.
Why do leaders allow it to continue?
This is perhaps the more uncomfortable part of the conversation, because in many organisations the behaviour is not actually a secret.
Leaders often know that someone is difficult. They know that people avoid them or that complaints surface periodically, yet the situation may continue for years.
One reason is that addressing toxic behaviour usually creates an immediate cost, while tolerating it creates a delayed one. Challenging a powerful executive is uncomfortable and managing a formal performance issue is difficult. Losing a high performer may create a problem right now.
By contrast, the consequences of tolerating poor behaviour tend to appear slowly. People begin to lose trust and become more cautious and eventually may begin to disengage. Good employees can quietly begin considering other opportunities. Because these costs are gradual and dispersed across a team, they can be much easier to ignore.
We also become very good at rationalising behaviour that is inconvenient to address. “They’re under a lot of pressure.” “They don’t mean it personally.” “They’ve always been like that.” “They’re difficult, but they get results.”
There may even be some truth in those statements but often explanations can slowly turn into permission.
Culture remembers what leaders do
Organisations also have a longer memory than leaders sometimes realise.
People remember what happened when someone challenged a powerful colleague. They remember the manager with the terrible reputation who continued to be promoted and who continues to receive protection and who is expected to adapt.
Over time these stories become part of the organisation’s informal understanding of itself. They tell employees where the boundaries really are.
This is why a new set of values, an engagement program or a commitment to psychological safety can only ever do so much. People will inevitably compare what the organisation says with what they have experienced.
Are asking the wrong question?
Every organisation will experience difficult personalities, ego, disagreement and occasional poor behaviour. No leader can remove all interpersonal friction, nor should they try. Healthy workplaces are not places where everyone agrees or where difficult conversations disappear.
The important distinction is what happens when behaviour repeatedly falls below the standard.
Does the organisation move towards the problem or quietly organise itself around it? Can someone with status be challenged? Are strong performers expected to meet the same behavioural standards as everyone else? Do people feel able to say what they see without worrying about the consequences?
Those questions probably tell us more about an organisation’s culture than the words written in its values statement.
Perhaps, then, the most useful question for a leader is not simply, “Do we have any toxic people in our organisation?” It “Who has everyone else learned to adapt themselves around and why have we allowed that to happen?”
How is the culture in your workplace?
Rod Matthews