This Year, Resolve to Purge Toxicity From Your Culture

This is the third of four articles that I'm publishing this month on goal-setting. But instead of the traditional "revenue and sales numbers" types of goals, I have been focusing on goals to address culture-related topics like resilience and accountability. This week I'm writing about another topic of great concern, but one that is seldom brought up directly. It's the idea of putting forth the effort to purge toxicity from your culture.

I say that it is seldom brought up directly. Why is that? I believe it's because most business owners fail to recognize toxicity in their own organizations. And, more importantly, if they do, they know that they are likely the source of the problem (but won't admit it). Secondly, they may recognize that dealing with toxicity means dealing with difficult people and/or difficult situations. And most of us would just assume to avoid those altogether.

What is Toxicity?

Toxicity is a word from the world of chemistry that has made its way into the business lexicon. It is defined as " the quality of being toxic or poisonous". But how does this apply to business? Another definition is " The degree to which a substance (a toxin or poison) can harm humans or animals."

When we are talking about toxicity, we are talking about your culture. And, when there are elements in your corporate culture that can harm your employees (I assume you don't have any animals impacted by your culture, but I guess there are some situations where that would apply).

Here are some examples from my own personal experience as an employee in toxic cultures:

• A culture that promoted competition to the point that it pitted managers and directors against each other.
• The business owner that cussed out employees on a regular basis and constantly degraded them on a personal level.
• A manager that micro-managed his employees to such a degree that he would call them on their cell phone if they were not at their desk (even if they were using the restroom). Yep, that happened to me.

Sadly, my list could go on and on. With 30 years working in businesses from small startups to Fortune 500 organizations, I have seen a lot of things.

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