Avoiding Toxic Cultures — Obvious Traits (Or Not So Much?)

The Theranos debacle as described in John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood offers some great lessons about leadership by providing examples of terrible leadership. Let’s take two common problems with toxic workplaces and narcissistic leaders: controlling information and refusing to accept criticism. At Theranos, teams were given little information about what other teams were doing, and therefore couldn’t evaluate their own work realistically. And any criticism of the company’s actions by an employee made his or her life at the company nasty, brutish, and short.

Before we write this off as leadership problems of the rich and famous, consider that these exact traits show up in ministries or other businesses that have abusive or toxic environments. And it makes sense. Workplaces where information is so tightly controlled that people don’t have what they need to do their jobs are going to be inefficient and probably toxic. Leaders who turn on people who offer constructive criticism are not going to hear much feedback. So why is that a problem?

Criticizing the Boss’s Ideas

To stay out of trouble — legal trouble, personal trouble, or financial trouble — we need good analysis. The boss, whether a CEO or senior pastor, is probably good at coming up with ideas … lots of ideas. Some brilliant ideas, some mediocre ideas, some bad ideas. But no one person can come up with all the ideas in an organization. And who evaluates all these ideas?

Good leaders try to hire people smarter than they are, listen to their ideas, and adopt many of them. Good leaders also listen to concerns raised by their employees. Is this legal? Will it work? What is the downside? Excellent analysis of problems may come from junior staff, especially people with a good practical outlook on life. The boss can’t think of everything. Others on the team can challenge and analyze legal theories, business decisions, and practical solutions.

The catch is that employees are naturally afraid of the boss. They won’t give this kind of input unless they are encouraged to do so and experience at least an emotional reward. It takes intentionality and some humility for a leader to foster an environment where everyone speaks up. But solutions to problems that have been thoroughly hashed out tend to be better in the long run. Plus, this is how employees grow and take more responsibility (and make the boss’s life easier).

If there is a senior pastor or CEO who turns on people who challenge him or her, that’s a red flag of a deeper problem. It doesn’t take much of that to create a toxic culture.

But what about young employees who don’t know much yet, or employees who take the opportunity to be combative and controlling? It may take some work to help people understand how to have discussions in a respectful way within their areas of competence. Shutting them up completely isn’t the answer.

Controlling Information

A related problem is control of information. In a ministry or company, there will always be confidential information that not everyone is privy to, and personal information should not be shared inappropriately. But toxic leaders may control information well beyond that. They may prevent people from accessing information that they need for their jobs, stifle communication, or have elaborately controlled chains of communication. This makes it impossible to have healthy discussion about issues, as discussed above, but also creates an environment where bad behavior gets hidden and power games are endemic.

How do we evaluate if we handle information in a healthy way? Leader must ask themselves: Do people working on projects have full information about what is going on with the project so they can tailor their work to project goals? Does the culture allow problems and concerns to be discussed openly? Do employees have a clear sense of the company’s overall goals and direction? Are there a lot of secrets that seem to exist only to maintain power in select circles?

Employees should feel that they live in a culture of truth, where they don’t need to fear that information they don’t know will jump out and bite them. Even employee problems should be discussed candidly with the employees, so they have a clear idea how they are doing and where they stand.

Will people misuse information for toxic gossip and to campaign against others? Again, this is a separate issue that should be dealt with. It’s actually less likely to arise in a culture with open systems of information, because information silos give opportunities for information politics.

So how obvious are these two principles of open information and open discussion? In a healthy culture, they likely are already built in. But resistance to criticism and controlling information are very common in unhealthy cultures. They both create and support unhealthy cultures and serve as an early warning sign that all may not be well. They are also common traits in both ministry scandals and failing businesses. The organization that has a boss who can’t take criticism and won’t share needed information is in peril.

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Featured Image by Rebecca Sidebotham.