The metaphor “toxic” to describe work culture came about in the late 1980s in a leadership guide characterising toxic workplaces as ridden with conflict, “obscure goals and values, aggressive communication and scenarios in which staff are used like material resources.” (Christian, 2023)
Since then, the term has gained currency and is used frequently to describe the workplace and, sometimes, even people.
It’s not very difficult to see what you might call a toxic culture: the weight of ego and testosterone is childishly heavy, agendas are personal; there’s usually a general cynicism about the mission, mainly through some form of blaming others for not living up to it; exchanges are accusatory; people are palpably afraid; there is no trust and back-biting is a major hobby. There are, in fact, elements of a so-called toxic culture that are superficially pleasing to our sense of schadenfreude and drama: spreading rumors, gossip, and scapegoating brings with it a rush of mischievous dopamine. This draws on the base instincts that fuel human passions and can be —forgive the pun—intoxicating. In his 2011 bestseller Sapiens, Yuval Harari ventures that humans love rumours and gossip because this goes back to an archaic and tribal need to categorise people and guess their potential threat quotient: perhaps unconsciously we are drawn to create narratives around others so as to surmise their inner motivations, to “read” and second guess them as it were. The point is that it’s easy to drift into this type of behaviour.
Email gives a distinctly post 1980s twist to toxicity, especially if there is a norm of ganging up on people or humiliating them with all on copy. As we still live in a logocentric world, where the written word has some gravity, this can be weaponised. I’ve written about this previously, pointing out that one is far less likely to see this level of virulence in face to face conversations. It’s no doubt easier to write something nasty to someone than to say it to their face! This is why rituals of face to face meetings to deal with problems are always better than protracted email battles.
If these unsavoury habits become anchored and are given oxygen, they can influence others’ behaviour, and therefore the culture of the group or workplace, strongly. It is not uncommon in such scenarios to see moderates stand on the sidelines while the negativity intensifies. William Butler Yeats wrote in his apocalyptic 100-year old poem “The Second Coming” that “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Indeed, without a concerted leadership effort (for it is usually leaders who are seen as responsible for the culture), the diffusion of behaviour might well be dragged down by the energy of resentment, which is bullish enough to silence those not looking for conflict.
So the question must be, how do we shift a culture from toxic to healthy? How do we break away from something that is powerful and seated in our collective survival instinct and seems to spread like wildfire in communities?
Trying to reform a culture of this sort is obviously very difficult; it requires a type of spiritual conversion on the part of several individuals collectively, or some sort of watershed moment or even crisis to end the negativity and start anew. The work must be intentional and sincere, far reaching and systematic.
The great (but also contradictory) German philosopher Nietzsche wrote at length about the mundane yet inexorable force of resentment; its surprising potency and ubiquity. For him, one needs to rise above it in an act of self overcoming (Selbstüberwindung – what a splendid word!).
In the world of life coaching, as the brilliant, if not quixotic, American psychologist Milton Erickson, arguably the father of neurolinguistic programming, once said, “People are okay, People have real resources, Every person has a positive intention, People do their best, and change is inevitable.” (Atkinson, 2019). These are Erickson’s five principles.
I would venture that these five principles or assumptions make up the obligatory philosophical premise needed to heal a culture: not to judge other people or revel in blame, not to become defensive, and certainly not to stoop to the level of whatever is being said against you. To wipe the slate clean, you must imagine that the person in front of you – or behind your back – actually has good intentions and is, ontologically, a good person and they need to know that you think that. Behaviours are often expressions of hurt or need from individuals, resentment is simply the voice of frustration, and if we manage to look at these expressions magnanimously, even if they are directed against us, it will help us offer solutions instead of erect barriers.
The question of perspective is by no means trivial: if the leader sees toxicity everywhere, is there a chance that she/he/them is actually contributing to the toxicity? Are the people who complain about a culture being toxic completely free of toxicity themselves? The Pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras took this idea quite far when he said that”Man is the measure of all things”, meaning that we tend to see the world for what we are. So looking at things with a positive spirit, especially as a leader,is particularly important as we might actually be creating the reality we think we see by projecting our own issues onto it. Better to see the glass half full.
At this point it’s worth noting that “toxic” is not actually a very helpful term, it’s a type of blanket description and lacks nuance. More granular descriptions of work culture outline strong or weak cultures in the first instance (strong meaning that there are ingrained rituals in behavior, weak meaning that there are few or none). From there, we have mission-aligned cultures and those that are misaligned, meaning that there are cultures where behaviours echo the mission of the establishment and others where we say one thing but do another.
Contemporary analyses of leadership understand that culture is hugely important, for it is the culture that determines the behaviour and behaviour that determines what actually happens on the ground. To use an overquoted trope by Peter Drucker, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” (it’s the breakfast part I like the most in that quote!). It is not the words that count but the behaviours, and in particular those behaviours that take place when no one is looking, for that is when we are at our most vulnerable and truthful, away from the oftentimes sanitised veneer of public discourse. Creating a mission-aligned, strong culture requires a real effort: community members have to commit to contributing to the common good and have to have established a moral code where respect, kindness, open listening, understanding, and assuming good intentions are venerated, respected and practiced.
Influencing a mission-aligned culture is one thing, the other is creating a strong culture. This usually means creating a set of rituals to strengthen the culture and create habits that are mission-aligned and change behaviours.
To give a simple example from the Harvard Business School, in 2006, CEO Alan Mulally joined Ford with a “$12.7 billion loss” and “a culture of distrust and secrecy. Fearing blame or punishment, executives hid problems in their divisions until they turned into crises.”
In his weekly leadership meetings, Mulally publicly encouraged those reports who presented problems they were having. Rather than create a culture of fear and accusation, he modelled appreciation for transparency and sharing. Ford’s stock price rose massively because of this. (Coleman, 2025). It was by changing the ritual of the weekly meetings and creating new habits of transparency and vulnerability that Mulally shifted the culture and, eventually, the business result.
To give a personal example, I always start my leadership meetings with a thinking routine on leadership, and make sure that it’s someone different from the team leading it each time, to remind ourselves why we are here, and to model distributed leadership. The result has been the whole team owning the strategic plan and the organisation’s challenges, rather than a culture where the CEO thinks he or she or they are doing it all by themselves (and wants to take all the credit). The result has been a strategic plan that is spread across the whole organisation and is owned collectively. That comes from rituals to strengthen the culture. One other thing I always do is when I see someone presenting to the group and people are on their emails, I stop the presentation and tell them to fold their laptops, to reinforce a culture of respect and listening. The result? More engagement and recall of what is being said and better discussions. If you are in meetings where no one is listening to presentations, please, do something about it, it’s important!
If you are caught up in a strongly mission- misaligned culture, or a weak institutional culture, step away from simply branding it as “toxic”; exercise the power you have to stay focused on the higher values of the organisation and look for rituals that undo negativity and fear to create a more fluid, regenerative force. This is particularly important in places of learning where the focus should always be on self-actualisation and growth. By giving people the benefit of the doubt, forgiving acts of resentment and not partaking in undesirable behaviours while, on the contrary, focussing on and bringing attention to those behaviours we wish to see flourish, the culture will be more mission-aligned, and once rituals have been put in place to do this systematically, it will also be stronger.
(image from Freepik)
