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Perpetuating a Problem-Solving Culture 77

Characteristics of a Toxic Culture

Warning! Danger! Beware! The following explanation presents
attitudes and behaviors that are dangerous to the problem-solving
culture. If anything in the following section sounds like you or
your current environment, you can be sure you are working in or
fostering a toxic culture.
How do potentially good managers create such a bad culture?
Obviously, it’s not intentional. No manager we know starts the
morning saying, “I wonder what I can do today to create a toxic
department.” Nor does any manager we know say, “What can I
do to cause my employees to be afraid of me and of each other?”
Nevertheless, their words and actions do both.
The dominant and pervasive attitude of employees in a toxic
culture is paralyzing fear: fear of expressing opinions, taking risks,
being adversely judged, being misunderstood, being wrongly
penalized, and doing or saying anything they feel might threaten
their position or image. Because employees are fearful, their num-
ber one objective is to protect themselves from getting emotionally
hurt and from tarnishing their image.
Sometimes, to make themselves look good, employees will
undermine and fi nd fault with others. Worse, they harbor varia-
tions of such attitudes as “Every man for himself,” “It’s a dog-
eat-dog world,” and “I do what’s best for me.” The result of these
negative mind-sets is that “I” takes precedence over “we.” Since
a department is by defi nition a collective group of individuals,
this negative mind-set does nothing to maintain or advance the
productivity of the group and is inevitably detrimental to your
department.

Many of the conversations in defensive office cultures are per-
sonal and tainted with accusatory language such as “You are . . . ,”