In brief
- When a culture turns toxic, everyone looks for someone to blame. Leadership looks at HR, HR looks at leadership, and employees look at both.
- The real culprit usually isn’t a person. It’s a culture that was never defined, or was defined as values instead of as a personality.
- A culture defined as a personality can be managed. One that isn’t tends to go unmanaged, even at companies that look healthy.
Most of what gets written about toxic culture is about behavior. How to spot a toxic manager. The warning signs of a toxic workplace. What to do about the coworker everyone avoids.
That advice isn’t wrong. Behavior matters, and people should be held to how they treat each other. But it starts in the middle of the story. It tells you what’s happening without asking what’s allowing it to happen, and who, or what, is actually responsible.
The blame circle
Watch what happens when a company realizes its culture has a problem.
Leadership looks at HR. Isn’t this what HR is for? Why didn’t they catch it?
HR looks at leadership. We raised it. Nobody wanted to act, and the person involved was too important to touch.
Employees look at both. Leadership doesn’t care, HR protects the company, and nobody’s going to do anything.
Each of them has a point. And each of them is looking at the wrong thing. The circle keeps turning because everyone is looking for a person to hold responsible, and the real cause isn’t a person at all.
The culprit nobody names
In most of the companies I’ve worked with, the problem traced back to something simpler: the company had never clearly said who it is.
Without that, there’s no shared standard for how people should treat each other. Leadership doesn’t have one to lead from. HR doesn’t have one to hold people to. Employees don’t have one to point to when something feels wrong. So everyone fills the gap with their own judgment, and the culture becomes whatever the person in charge happens to allow.
That’s not a failure of leadership, or of HR, or of employees. It’s a gap that none of them was ever asked to own.
Defined isn’t the same as managed
Here’s where I’d push the conversation further than most. Plenty of companies have defined their culture. They have a mission, a vision and a list of values on the wall. And many of them still have pockets of behavior that go against everything on that list.
That’s because values describe what a company believes, not how it behaves. “Integrity” and “respect” sound clear until two managers apply them differently. Each one is honoring the value. They just mean different things by it. So the company is back to whoever is in the room deciding what the words mean. I explain the difference in Culture vs. Values.
Defining your culture as a personality is the method I use, and it works differently. A personality describes how the company actually acts: how it makes decisions, what it rewards, how it treats people under pressure. It also has a shadow, the place where its greatest strength tips into something harmful. When you know your company’s personality, you know what on-standard behavior looks like, and you can see when someone has moved away from it. That’s what makes a culture manageable.
“A really good culture wouldn’t tolerate it”
That’s the most common pushback I hear, and it’s true. A good culture doesn’t tolerate bad behavior.
But not tolerating it is managing it. The behavior still shows up, because every person brings habits from somewhere else. What a strong culture does is catch it and correct it, the same way, every time. The behavior doesn’t get to stay. I make that case in There’s No Such Thing as a Non-Toxic Culture.
So the question isn’t whether your company has toxic behavior. It’s whether that behavior is managed or unmanaged.
Why pockets form
When a culture isn’t defined as a personality, it doesn’t stay one culture. It splits into pockets. One team where the manager won’t tolerate disrespect. Another where it’s just how people talk. A strong leader with a loyal team that works by its own rules, and takes those rules with them when they leave.
Those pockets aren’t signs of a healthy, diverse culture. They’re signs the company’s own personality isn’t strong enough, or clear enough, to be the standard everyone works from. When it is, the pockets close.
The verdict
We get toxic culture wrong when we treat it as a people problem to be solved one person at a time. Behavior matters. But behavior keeps happening when there’s no clear standard to measure it against, and that standard has to come from the company.
So the better question isn’t “who’s to blame?” It’s “what standard is this company running on?” Every company runs on one. When it hasn’t named its own, the law or whoever is in the room supplies it by default. I map out those three standards in the Toxic Culture Pyramid™.
Questions worth asking
- The last time your company had a culture problem, where did the conversation look first: at leadership, at HR or at a person?
- If two managers read your company values, would they apply them the same way?
- Are there teams in your company that seem to have a culture of their own?
Read next: What Is the Toxic Culture Pyramid™?
Frequently asked questions
What causes a toxic culture?
Usually not one person. It’s most often a company that hasn’t clearly defined who it is, so there’s no shared standard for behavior and each leader fills the gap with their own.
Who is responsible for a toxic culture, leadership or HR?
Neither one alone. Leadership is responsible for naming who the company is. HR is responsible for building the system that keeps that standard in use. When neither has happened, the blame tends to bounce between them.
If we have company values, isn’t our culture defined?
Partly. Values say what a company believes, but they rarely describe how it behaves. Defining your culture as a personality gives people a picture of what on-standard behavior looks like.
Can a good culture still have toxic behavior?
Yes. Every company does. A good culture doesn’t let it stay. It catches the behavior and corrects it the same way every time.
