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Key Takeaways A toxic company culture often develops quietly, so leaders need to pay attention to small behavioral changes before they become major problems.
When employees stop speaking up, volunteering, collaborating or caring about customers, it’s often a sign that something deeper is wrong with the culture.
Rebuilding culture starts with leadership making expectations clear, measuring what’s happening and consistently modeling the behaviors they want from employees.
Company culture has been entrenched in the business community for years and has been dissected in countless books, articles and keynote speeches. The concept is so ubiquitous in today’s workplace lexicon that you would think that every organization would have it figured out by now.
But unhealthy cultures remain shockingly common today in every industry. This is not because business leaders don’t care about their employees or are unrelenting tyrants, it’s just that symptoms of a struggling culture can be notoriously hard to recognize, particularly when you are in the thick of it.
There are often no blazing red flags, or big public meltdowns or other glaringly obvious signs that a culture is flailing. Instead, cultural erosion is often the cumulative effect of a million seemingly inconsequential circumstances that leadership let slide. Each small blip might carry little relevance on its own, but collectively these missteps can snowball into a culture of inattention, unfairness, and just plain toxicity.
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