How do you fix a toxic work culture?

A toxic culture is one that undermines psychological safety and erodes trust and motivation in the workforce. Root causes go beyond just a lack of trust, communication or feedback. To really understand where a toxic culture stems from organisations must identify the existing basic assumptions that are derived from behaviours and interactions in the workplace. Often, you will find that there is a misalignment between saying, e.g. valuing employee engagement, and doing, e.g. dismissiveness or marginalising employees who put forward opinions. You can begin to explore basic assumptions by engaging employees in discussions focusing on a mismatch between saying and doing, but senior leaders must be open to hearing what is said.

When you're dealing with a toxic work culture, spotting the early warning signs is key. Here are some: 1. Fear: If people are afraid to voice their thoughts, Houston, we've got a problem. A good place encourages folks to speak their minds. 2. Blame Game: When things go haywire, blame flies faster than a game of dodgeball. Accountability takes a backseat as fingers point in all directions. 3. Change Resistance: A toxic culture avoids change like the plague, squashing any hopes of progress. 4. Cutthroat Competition: Teammates become rivals, and collaboration takes a backseat to a dog-eat-dog race. 5. Undercover Hostility: Disrespect are served with a side of passive-aggressive charm. 6. High Turnover: People are leaving in droves.

Toxic work cultures in my experience emanate from deeply rooted collective angst and fears but which get fragmented and reside in individual as one's unique and special paranoia or fear. Toxicity starts building when one does not understand the 'other', and the collective anxiety - very often resorting to aggression, apathy, and cynicism for there is no other shared language in the fragmented system. Toxicity thus gets institutionalised as the only language / means of connecting with the Other and pushing all into the vicious cycle. Toxicity thus finally evolves as a defense against a shared dream or purpose for the very intimacy of discovering the purpose / dream becomes very scary for all.

First, it may be helpful to dispense with the term 'toxic'. That's a label, usually reflecting a subjective, often quite judgmental perspective. If a culture = how people think and behave, then I agree you can only start with understanding how people think and behave, but do so with an open mind and curiosity. Be open to the possibility that some people enjoy working in this culture. Beware a desire to fix a 'toxic culture' because you may straightaway find yourself unable to influence others if they think you have already decided what the culture could and should look like.

Facing into the fact that you're culture is toxic, or isn't working how you need it to is the first step. It's sounds obvious, but many bury their head in the sand. Data, combined with feedback offers the most powerful combination to tackle this stuff. Opinion alone just doesn't work. Some of those hard measurables are things like high turnover rates, especially in new starters, falling employee engagement numbers, high levels of sickness or absenteeism. Some of the more observational things to look out for are, fear or reluctance to speak up, a lack of trust often characterised by excessive micromanagement, blame-shifting and finer-pointing, favouritism. Explore all these things in an on-going dialogue with all employees, at all levels

I couldn't agree less. This smacks of traditional change models that talk about communication as a one way process. We, the leaders have decided what our culture needs to look like and now we will tell you how must behave. Please do vocalise your vision for a culture, but be curious as you speak as to what meaning others are making of your words, and be open to something rather different emerging from the ongoing collective dialogue. You can establish behavioural norms, but that is a piece of hierarchy that reflects your culture - it won't define your culture. It won't reflect how people actually think and behave in all the different contexts in which they operate.

It is rare that culture change can be achieved singlehandedly by one person, so revisiting the organisational vision and mission should involve all employees to ensure all teams and employees are aligned to a shared purpose. Aligning your teams further by considering acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and interactions in relation to your vision and mission will help you to establish an intentional culture that reflects your values and overall organisational objectives. Developing a communication strategy to deliver the refreshed vision, mission and norms is an essential process if the culture change is to be adopted, but beyond this, senior leaders should lead by example and continually communicate their commitment to agreed changes.

Culture is driven a lot by behaviour, and especially the behaviour that is shown to be important by the words and actions of leadership. It's really important that the values and behaviours that guide a culture are aligned and matched to the Purpose, Vision, Mission and Objectives of the business. If not, then it will never help you achieve those goals and be seen to add value to your employees. Articulating the desired values & behaviours should be led by leadership, but involve as many trusted people as possible. Being clear about what behaviours we value and those we need to develop is critical. Nothing is more powerful than consistent backing of these by leaders, and intolerance shown for poor behaviour.

Romantic idealism that often drives vision and purpose can get easily sabotaged by toxicity - for each member is scared of articulating a larger purpose for the system, given the past hurts and scars. it becomes important to give romantic idealism its place in defining purpose - it has to evoke and touch the heart to counter the entropy within. However there is a fine balance between evangelising a purpose and selling a 'fantasy' - and it is this balance that many leaders remain blind to. If purpose also means surviving today and growing tomorrow - let the messaging be equally pragmatic and not sweetened to soften the blow. Lastly the process of envisioning needs to be collective - it cannot be one person's dream.

It is not your people! It is the environment your leaders are creating for them. Humans adapt to their environment. We are focused on our own survival and safety. We adopt the behaviours that we think are socially acceptable. Focus in on your leaders, and how they behave, what they tolerate. Changing culture belongs to them. If they change their behaviour, their teams will too. Any disconnect between what you are asking your teams to do, and your leaders and you are sunk.

We like tapping into the collective wisdom of the entire organisation to create the vision of the desired culture and understand how it needs to evolve. Storytelling plays a big role in this process - we look at stories from the past, present and future. A simple exercise to carry out to get employees' input around what needs to change is the START, STOP, KEEP. Ask people - what mindsets, attitudes, behaviours and beliefs do we need to leave behind (STOP), embrace (START) and maintain and nurture (KEEP) to bring our desired culture to life?

This is the first step, not the third step. if it is a third step, then you all by yourself have decided what the culture needs to look like without engaging any of the people whose thinking and behaviour you are seeking to influence. This is quite an old fashioned approach to change management and doesn't reflect more contemporary thinking on change as a social process.

To see sustainable behavioural and cultural change, you have to transfer understanding and ownership for the desired behaviours. A big part of this comes from involving the whole organisation in making sense of them, and how they apply to them every day. The minute someone thinks that doesn't apply to me, and they're allowed to get away with that, your desired culture is being undermined and doomed to opt out and failure. Culture change isn't a one-off thing. The environment has to be kept alive and be consistently role-modelled and talked about constantly. But also the behaviours and cultural dynamics must be treated and measured with the same rigour as you would financial performance. What's shown to be important, will be important.

Empowering begins by inviting and involving the employees to co-create a new culture and institutionalise change. It is through co-creating that one creates ownership and one fights resistance. This process is dialogue based, intensive, and takes time - however i think it is worth the effort. I do not see a top down messaging working in organisations today - it has to be through forums of dialogue that one co-creates culture. It is also important to hear the dissatisfaction of the Other - for in that lies the Other's dreams and aspirations of an idealistic work-space. Much of the work falls into individual and collective behaviours with ramifications for policy, organisation design, and structural norms. This process never really ends.

It is important for any Organisation to identify what makes the Organisation exists. The very purpose for its existence is clearly articulated or not…the toxicity of a culture in nothing but it is a perception of employees as well as the stake holders about the behaviour exhibited in an organisation … to develop a culture in an organisation there need to be commitment by the Management at leadership level…the culture should display the ethos and the purpose that should be seen in form of artifacts all across the organisation. A diagnostic and an assessment to be carried to identify the cultural gaps.These gaps should be bridged by training the employees, making it as a part of competency evaluation workshop and linking it with rewards

This part is all about positive reinforcement. Leaders should lead by example to instil new behaviours, beliefs and habits to the environment. When the ′new′, positive behaviour is shown by the teams, this should be rewarded and shared as an example. If toxic behaviours is being shown by individuals, there should be immediate action from leadership. Toxicity can be very contagious.

In my experience having strong company values really helps to deal with addressing toxic behaviour. Real values, not just words, that you can map to expected behaviours. So if you value working together compassionately, then you can say ‘hey that thing that just happened isn’t in alignment with our values. Let’s talk about how to make this better’ and it’s not a personal attack. It also empowers people to take action as the company has provided a framework for what is expected. It makes role modelling and signalling what good looks like much easier. Lived values encoded into your day to day and processes including performance reviews and hiring etc make an enormous difference to culture.

I see 'narratives' and stories as the key reinforcer of values, behaviours and culture within systems. Narratives built on individual and team choice making on difficult problems and more so on dilemmas are key. I think technology allows us to create and share new narratives where the essence of shared values and choice-making can be offered to all in the system. Narratives on failures allow for better 'fail-fast' strategies especially if participating managers can speak of their blindspots, dilemmas, anxieties and vulnerabilities without feeling evaluated or judged. A good narrative connects both the heart and the cognitive mind of the individual or within the collective.

An important point here is to keep an eye on your onboarding process. Make sure that newcomers are selected on the ′right′ values and made well aware what is valued in the company. This way, it is easier to maintain the new positive culture.

How we design systemic spaces for 'listening & reflecting' within and around the organisation becomes the first step in adapting and evolving. Spaces and forums to listen can leverage technology today. Secondly how we design systemic spaces and forums for 'experimenting' become equally significant - these spaces and forums need to be insulated from the stresses of execution. Lastly how we close the continual loop from 'listening / reflecting' to 'experimenting' to finally 'initiate systemic change' becomes crucial. This is where the leadership has to stress on the cycle and not look at adaptability as one-time cycle.

I agree with Gagandeep. It is vital to provide safe reflective and collaborative spaces in which feedback and valuable workplace learning are demonstrated and announced.

In my experience, when just the top leader is replaced, the second layer of leaders influenced the new leader to adjust to the organisation culture. One way truly organisational culture can be changed is through Mergers & Accusation. Once again there, the culture of the organization from which majority of the management are given authority, that organizations culture prevails.

You can follow all the steps above, but if you do not take away the root-cause, nothing will change. In my experience leadership demands for culture change when things go wrong, and hire external consultants to do it for them. In many cases, bad leadership or company decisions are the root cause for toxicity and unhappy employees. Focus first on changing what is causing it, and then follow the steps written in the article.

In my experience I have seen and led two ways to change culture. The first is gentle and slow (results measured in years) that involves implementing new company values and embedding them via performance objectives, visual marketing, meeting intro moments and rewarding on-the-job demonstration by staff. The second way (this may seem blunt and contentious) is to immediately remove senior leadership staff whom are not able to pivot. Then put in place those with innate ability to drive home new expected behaviors (results measured in months).