Someone on your team is frustrated. Maybe they have already resigned, and somewhere in that conversation, the word arrives.
TOXIC.
“The culture here is toxic.”
It lands hard because it is built to land hard. The word has no defense. Once it is on the table, you have stopped discussing where we’re going and started defending yourself against claims that people are being harmed under your leadership.
So you take it seriously. You should. You replay the last six months, wondering who else feels this way and what you missed. Then you start sanding things down.
Toxic Is Real, And It Is Rarer Than You Think
Toxic cultures exist. I have consulted inside a few of them, and they have markers you can name:
- People fear retaliation for honesty.
- Information gets hoarded and used as leverage.
- Favoritism drives decisions more than performance does.
- Leaders punish the messenger, then wonder why nobody brings problems anymore.
- Expectations quietly cost people their marriages.
If that describes your staff, stop reading and go fix it. That is a health problem, and health problems do not respond to better documentation.
Most of the time, something else is going on.
To the person claiming “toxic,” perhaps decisions get made faster than they prefer. Or feedback comes more directly than they are used to. Maybe meetings run looser or tighter than at their last church, and the pace does not match their wiring. That situation calls for clarity, and it is likely the one you are actually standing in.
A Quick Illustration: Every House Has a Pace
Think about how this works at home. Your kids’ friends walk into your house and immediately sense the temperature. Some houses are loud, and some are quiet; some eat dinner at six, and some eat whenever; some have shoes on or shoes off; some interrupt freely, and some wait their turn.
None of that gets announced anywhere. The parents set it, and everyone else adjusts.
Your staff culture works the same way. You set the speed of decisions, the tolerance for ambiguity, the preparation expected before someone speaks, and how directly people are allowed to disagree. You are setting it whether you name it or not.
Strong Cultures Are Specific, and That’s Good
A culture built to fit everyone fits no one in particular. Specific cultures produce alignment, and they also produce misfits. That trade is worth making.
Here is the danger in the moment right after someone says toxic. You start accommodating. You slow the pace to keep one person comfortable, soften a standard that was working, and add a process nobody asked for except the person who just walked out the door.
The entire team absorbs the cost of a single misalignment, and clarity grows quieter every time it happens. That is how a healthy culture becomes a vague one.
You Might Just Have a Documentation Problem
Your culture is real. It is operating right now, enforced every single week through what gets praised, what gets tolerated, and what gets quietly punished. It has just never been written anywhere.
An undefined culture punishes people for breaking rules they were never given.
Every person on your staff has a job description. Almost none of them have a cultural description. So they learn how you work by violating how you work, and then they reach for the only word anybody has handed them. Sometimes that word is wrong, and sometimes it is fair because the rule really was invisible. We will keep that second part between you and me.
The Solution: Write Down How You Work
Your values list describes what you believe, and it is probably fine where it sits. This is a different document with a different job, one that captures behavior instead of conviction.
Run this sequence:
- Name four to six statements that describe how your team actually operates, behavioral rather than aspirational. “We decide fast and adjust.” “We bring problems with a proposed solution attached.” “We overcommunicate before we execute.”
- Under each statement, write the behavior it produces and the behavior it rules out. That second half is where the clarity lives.
- Read the list to your team and ask one question. Where do we claim this and not do it?
- Assign each statement to a different interviewer in your hiring process, and compare notes on fit before you compare notes on skill.
- Hand the finished document to every person currently on staff, not only the next hire.
Start smaller than all of that. Bring four statements to your next staff meeting and ask which one you personally break most often, then answer it out loud in front of them. That single move will tell you more about your culture than the other four steps combined.
Who Pays While It Stays Unwritten
You will be fine in the ambiguity. You have the context, the history, and the authority to interpret your own culture in real time. Everybody else is guessing.
Your strongest staff member absorbs it first. She keeps calibrating to a standard nobody has stated, occasionally gets it wrong, and reads your correction as a verdict on her competence. Your newest hire absorbs it next, learning the rules through six months of small collisions that never had to happen.
Your volunteers pay after that because confusion among staff above them shows up as inconsistent expectations for them. Every one of those people is spending energy decoding you that they could be spending on the mission.
Give them a more accurate word than the one they have been handed.
Quotes to Share
- “Undefined culture punishes people for breaking rules they were never given.”
- “A culture built to fit everyone fits no one in particular.”
- “Your staff learns how you work by violating how you work.”
Helping You Add More Intention To Your Mission,
Dr. Gavin Adams
