Beware: the Culture Vulture

Out of 300 votes 143 of you voted for this article so lets get into it!!! A culture vulture is someone at a company who tries to ruin a good culture. In this article I will share my thoughts on them & why you should be weary.

Fun Fact: (real) Vultures are relatively silent as they lack a syrinx - so they can only hiss, growl, and snarl.

Not so Fun Fact: Culture Vultures are also relatively silent and because of that management normally doesn't see the damage they've done until it's too late.

Fun Fact: When threatened, (real) Vultures defend themselves by vomiting very potent stomach acids. This not only acts as a deterrent with predators, but also “lightens the load” so they can escape easily into flight.

Not so Fun Fact: When the Culture Vulture feels threatened by peers or managers who pick up on the fact they are toxic to the company - they start to blame everyone and everything around them as to why they are the way they are (zero accountability).

Culture Vultures are people who hav zero intention of being part of a team. They are people who complain a lot, they are people who are always against change, they are people who never want to contribute positively, they are people who want to find flaws in everyone, they are people who do not align with the core values of a company, they are people that might perform with numbers but the fall out of their negativity doesn't compensate for it...I could go on and on, but you have most likely seen them in your career. Some of them intentionally are trying to ruin the culture because they are miserable people. They have inner issues that need healing, frankly. It is not your responsibility to fix them, it is your responsibility as leadership to remove them.

Ways to detect culture vultures is to pin point where the negative energy in your company is coming from. Who is the person acting all the ways described above? Who is the person that the majority have been coming to you about or that you constantly hear about that are making things hard on the team. Who is the one that people avoid? Who is the one that laughs at policies, mission impact, & company values (when they are good)? Who is the one that picks on people in ways that can't get them in trouble with HR per say, but tear away at the teams morale? Have someone in mind yet from past or present? Probably.

Remedy or Remove. More than likely you will just need to remove them (unless in the rare case they became a vulture out of the blue when normally they are great) because they have already done enough damage to the team by ripping it apart with their tactics. Getting trust back is close to impossible and if you have someone who wants to ruin your work culture and you put up with it...the good people will leave, so choose wisely.

Preventative maintenance is all we can do and sometimes bad people will slip through the TA process, however a way to mitigate these vultures is asking them how their take on the values of the company and what it looks like to them & why they personally value those company values. Watch how they react. Use your intuition. Ask what they did or didn't like about previous companies values too.

^^ let's make something clear though: if you as a company do not have STRONG values to hold people accountable to as well as incentivize people by...none of this really means anything. You are also behind competitors who do have their ducks in a row if you don't have strong mission, vision, & values.

Need yours created or revamped to avoid your work culture from being picked apart by vultures? I show companies how by building cultures people run TO, not away FROM.

The bird facts are real and came from this source (which is from Arizona where I am from so I just love that hehe):