By: Carey Nieuwhof
Ever wonder if your organization’s culture is toxic?
Apparently, not enough leaders do.
According to a Gallup survey, only 15% of employees globally are engaged at work.
In America, 30% of employees are engaged, which at first sounds great.
Except that means that 70% of your workforce feels like their job is grinding the life of out of them. 70% of the people you’ve hired or who are part of your organization aren’t showing up with their best, productivity is low and your mission is suffering.
Underneath that is almost always some kind of unhealthy or toxic culture that demotivates your team.
As a result, every day, good people leave. People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses and cultures.
One of the most important roles you have as a leader is to create a healthy culture that attracts and keeps healthy team members.
One of the challenges in leadership is that the boss is often the last to know that their work culture is toxic.
Leaders consistently overestimate how healthy they are and how healthy their team is.
That’s why I developed a new resource for leaders called The 3 Step Guide to Developing Better Value Statements. It’s free. You can get instant access here.
So how would you know your organization’s culture is toxic?
Here are ten signs.
People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses and cultures.
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1. You talk ABOUT people, not to THEM
The golden rule of conflict is this: talk to the person you have an issue with, not about them.
In too many organizations, the opposite is true.
People talk about people rather than to them.
Companies are bad that this, but so our churches. Even in churches, conflict gets swept under the carpet, played out in a passive agressive way or spills out into social media.
The church should the BEST organization in the world in dealing with conflict. Often, we can be the worst.
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The next time you want to talk about someone (i.e. gossip), talk to them instead.
If you can’t or won’t, then it’s either not that big of an issue, so let it go. Or, you have a problem deeper than you realize. Get some help.
This also stops gossip dead in its tracks.
The next time you want to talk about someone (i.e. gossip), talk to them instead.
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2. You have to play politics to get anything done
One sure sign of a toxic culture is that you have to play politics to get anything done.
You know things have gotten political in your organization when:
Decisions rarely get made the way they’re supposed to be made.
Most decisions happen outside of meetings or any agreed-upon process.
You can’t get a yes without offering something in return.
You have to continually lobby to be heard.
If you’re always jockeying, lobbying and courting favor to get the right decision made, it’s a sign your organization is unhealthy.
In the local church in particular, having to play politics to win is a sure sign there’s sin.
When you do what you say you’re going to do the way you said you’re going to do it, you bring health to an organization.
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3. What gets said publicly is different from what’s happening privately
Another sign things are becoming toxic is when what gets said publicly is different than what happened privately.
When there’s spin on every issue and nothing can be said publicly without ‘agreeing’ on what gets said first, you’re in dangerous territory.
For sure, there are times where a situation is delicate and you will want to ‘agree’ on what gets said publicly to honour everyone involved, but in too many organizations few things that get done privately can be announced the same way publicly.
And to be sure…when you’re crafting any kind of a public statement, you want to pay attention to the words you use and perhaps even find agreement on them.
But the end product should never be the opposite or even different than what actually happened
I have good fortune of being part of several healthy organizations. I love it when people pull me aside and ask (in hushed tones), “So what’s the real story?” and I get to tell them “Actually, that is the real story.”
Living in that kind of culture really helps you sleep at night too.
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4. Conflict happens and is never addressed
Conflict is normal. You can’t have two people hang out for long without some differences arising.
Yet so many organizations are in perpetual fighting mode. Someone’s always at way with someone else.
Another reason churches fight regularly is because personal preferences have trumped organizational mission.
Left unattended, conflict can pit one selfish person or group against another.
A lot of bosses won’t address conflict or help resolve it in a healthy, direction and respectful way.
Unresolved or unhealthy conflict saps the strength out of most organizations.
If your organization is stagnant and in conflict, there should zero mystery as to why it isn’t growing.
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5. There’s an entrenched ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality
Every organization should be a ‘we,’ not an ‘us’ and ‘them.’
Whether the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality exists between factions in your organization or between you and the outside forces, it’s always fatal to health and growth.
The job of a leader is to raise vision high enough and urgently enough for all of us to become bigger than any of us.
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6. No one takes responsibility
So who’s taking responsibility for moving the mission forward?
In unhealthy cultures the answers sound like this:
No one.
Someone.
Anybody but me.
As long as things are someone else’s responsibility, things will never get better.
Unhealthy leaders assign blame. Healthy leaders assume responsibility.
Unhealthy leaders assign blame. Healthy leaders assume responsibility.
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7. You can’t tell the truth
One sure sign a culture has gone toxic is when you feel you can’t tell the truth at work, so you go home ‘dump’ all the truth out on your spouse or best friend instead.
There’s only one problem with that: someone who doesn’t work where you work can’t solve your workplace issues.
But your boss can.
One of the best things you can do as a boss is to encourage your team to speak freely, to tell you the truth…without fear of consequences.
You won’t love everything you hear.
But if you thank them for the feedback, never penalize them for telling you the truth, and take action, you’ll love hearing about the things that are bothering them far more than you’ll love hearing that one of your top team members is leaving.
And, once you know what the real issues are, you can start to solve them.
Someone who doesn’t work where you work can’t solve your workplace issues.
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8. Everyone seems fine with good enough
Toxicity isn’t just about the presence of bad things. It’s also about the absence of great things.
Far too often in workplaces, people settle for good enough when it’s really not, well, good at all.
Toxicity isn’t just about the presence of bad things. It’s also about the absence of great things.
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High capacity leaders are repulsed by mediocrity. The best team members actually crave high levels of challenge and want things to be better, if not great.
Too many organizations allow what is good to stand in the way of what could be great. The surest way to ensure a mediocre future is to resign yourself to a mediocre present.
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9. There’s very little gratitude
Most people want to know they’re making a difference. Very few bosses tell them they are.
Recognition and gratitude is a simple way to reduce employee turnover and absenteeism and raise employee engagement.
If your team doesn’t know whether they’re making a difference, they’ll be less motivated to make a difference.
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10. Only the boss’ opinion matters
It’s amazing that so many leaders hire a team and never really listen to them.
That’s also one more sign of an unhealthy culture.
It’s easy to think that once you’ve become a leader or boss, it gives you the right to call the shots and make the team and organization bend to your wishes. But as Patrick Lencioni argues, that’s the opposite of true leadership.
As Andy Stanley says, leaders who refuse to listen will eventually be surrounded by people with nothing to say.
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Get Your FREE Guide to Creating Better Cultural Value Statements
Want to improve your team culture?
Better team culture gets fueled by better value statements.
But how to do create them can be so complicated.
How:
Do you know which values to choose?
Do you avoid creating value statements people roll their eyes at or think are so obvious they mean nothing?
Can you be sure the values are accurate but still stretch you?
I spent years reading books and studying how to create value statements until I had a breakthrough on how to create cultural value statements that were both accurate and aspirational, and that the entire team embraced.
I’ve broken that process down into three simple steps that can get you improving your organization’s culture and values today.
You can get free instant access to The 3 Step Guide to Developing Better Value Statements here.
What Signs of Toxic Culture Would You Add?
This could have been a 41 point blog post, but I stopped at 10.
What signs of a toxic culture have you seen or experienced?
Scroll down and leave a comment.
The post 10 Signs Your Organization’s Culture is Toxic appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.