Why Leaders Are Shocked By Bad Culture
When trust is low, silence gets loud.
I’ve spent years looking at culture data from audits, engagement surveys, and company reviews. Today, I want to talk about silence. That teams stay quiet while toxic behaviour carries on, and leaders say they surprised every single time.
This story is just one lens on this topic. Many more to come.
The company (let’s call it GreyCloud) was thriving on paper. Profitable, growing fast, making bold leadership decisions. Hiring top revenue-generators from competitors. It should have been all systems go.
But the bi-annual engagement survey made one department stand out for all the wrong reasons. People were unhappy.
The People Leader asked me to do an independent cultural review. They’d tried getting people to talk directly but with limited success. They figured (rightly) the team would open up to someone outside the business. Someone with nothing to gain or lose.
The ask was simple
Leadership already had the numbers. That department looked worse than the rest of the business, especially for women and under-represented groups. Comments about behaviour, ethics, and inclusion didn’t sit right. It wasn’t just them, either.
They wanted to know three things:
What’s really going on here?
A few difficult people, or wider culture problem?
Clear recommendations, not some fluffy “culture deck”.
My non-negotiables: protect anonymity, focus on patterns not gossip. People needed to know I wouldn’t hand their names to the very people they were scared of.
How I found the truth
In a process like this, I run interviews and small group conversations across all levels; seniors, managers, juniors, EAs, central staff. Same questions every time: What’s it really like to work here? What helps? What hurts? What won’t you say out loud?
I looked for themes that kept coming up, no matter who I spoke to. Once you hear the same thing from very different people, you can stop calling it an “isolated incident”.
This wasn’t formal HR investigation territory, but it surfaced issues serious enough for proper follow-up.
What surfaced
The headlines came naturally:
“Boys’ club” came up a lot. Several people said they wished they’d checked the culture before joining. Some women were blunt: “If I was male, this would’ve been different.” The data backed them up; women scored ethics, career opportunities, and fair rewards much lower.
There were integrity questions too. Some senior and mid-level people delegated the hard work down, took the credit, kept the rewards. Others just weren’t pulling their weight. In a team that sells itself as high-performing and values-driven, that stung.
But there was good news: mid-juniors largely supported each other. Some managers were genuinely decent and trying hard. Most importantly, people wanted change. They just needed someone to lead it.
The leader who proved a point
Now there are many stories and action that came from this audit, but I’ve picked one.
One narrative that was coming through was that some senior members of the team weren’t pulling their weight. The team members were saying that some seniors bragged about their wealth and financial security, while junior members were concerned for their jobs if the department didn’t start performing like the rest of the organisation.
In 1-1 meetings, my goal is to make people feel comfortable so they trust me and want to share the truth. I can often get a quick read on people; how they carry themselves, how they steer conversations and even how their ego plays out. But feelings aren’t evidence. I have to wait for what they say and do.
After hearing a number of stories about one leader, the individual came into the room. I had been told he was charismatic but lazy and bragged a lot. And it didn’t take long for that to play out. He wanted to know how he had been hunted down and almost begged to join, he shared his hefty salary and went to on say: “I negotiated hard on my basic pay and so that’s guaranteed for me for a couple of years. The lag in revenue isn’t really a problem for me.”
His team, more junior, were nowhere near as well compensated and needed this individual to drive performance so they would stand a chance of get a bonus to make ends meet. That gap said everything. He was safe. They weren’t. He could coast. They couldn’t. And, rather than being sensitive to these facts, he was “lording it” in front of them.
No one had gone to senior leadership; who’d hired him. No tip offs. No direct conversations. Just survey comments and side-whispers. The kind of “employee silence” you get when speaking up feels like career suicide.
The “shocked” moment
When I shared the overall findings of the audit, the department leads were quick to talk commercial risk and reputation damage.
The broader culture issues? They said they were “Shocked.”
I said: “Honestly, I’m shocked you’re shocked.” The industry they operate in has a cultural legacy issue. Why did they assume they would be immune.
Here’s what “shocked” usually means from leaders:
“Yeah, the industry’s rough, but not on our watch.”
“It can’t be that bad; I’m nice to people and no one told me.”
If I say I’m shocked, I can’t be to blame for what’s going on under my watch
They miss the fact that being “nice” doesn’t mean approachable. Equally, you can have an “open door” but it doesn’t mean that everyone will walk through it. If people don’t feel safe being honest, your friendliness doesn’t matter.
Equally, saying you weren’t aware doesn’t mean you’re not part of the problem. We will talk about “Wilful Blindness” another time. Thank you, Margret Heffernan for writing the book of that title; the most significant book of my career.
Then the boastful individual came up. And they wanted me to tell them who it is.
But as it isn’t a formal investigation, it isn’t my place to say as I cannot protect anonymity of the people who have spoken up. And anyway…they already know.
Asking questions that you already know the answer to serves a few purposes, though its not necessarily conscious thought. It’s a chance to pin it on one “bad apple” that there is enough insight on. It overlooks the need to ask about all of the other issues and dig further. It also gives an opportunity to say “Well, Nic told us it was you”. It abdicates responsibility for tackling the issue when the people at the top need to own this.
They did know who it was. And he was gone soon after.
Some bigger problems they dodged
That one removal was progress. But he wasn’t alone. Others who had shown aggression and sexism stayed. They had longer tenure and were bringing in revenue. That was “too valuable” and investigating the issues was probably feeling like “opening a can of worms”.
All I can do at a moment in time like that is ask: “And how do you want to approach these other examples?” If a company just wants me to complete audit, my job ends at holding up the mirror. The leadership work starts there. It’s more effective if I am asked to stay by their side to undertake the actions, but for various reasons that is not always the case. So I see it as my job to influence as much as a I can for actions beyond my involvement.
But as long as profit protects bad behaviour, people think culture work is optional. One fix helps, but inconsistent standards tell everyone that some people matter more. And the worst bit is that the great people with morals and ethics leave.
What silence actually means
A senior leader said to me: “If it’s that bad, why didn’t anyone come to us?”
That’s what leaders get wrong every time.
Silence isn’t agreement. It’s people thinking:
“You won’t listen.”
“You won’t act.”
“I’ll pay the price.”
So they do the safe thing: answer anonymous surveys, whisper to peers, chat about it to mates down the pub, survive. The problem festers.
Toxic leaders don’t survive because they’re clever or “worth it.” The system protects them; the compensation structures, star-performer status, leadership looking away.
Everyone else goes quiet, “quiet-quits”, and then…quits.
The trust gap
If your teams trust speaking to an outsider like me more than you then there is a trust problem. It doesn’t mean the culture is disastrous nor does it mean your failing as a leader, but it doesn’t mean there is some work to do. You’re not alone in this; in fact, it’s the norm. There is a cost to poor cultural and behaviours and it works either way. A cost to letting it continue and a cost to fixing it. So, put your energy into sorting it out.
The first step to fixing it is to listen and act consistently on what you hear, even when it’s uncomfortable. There are more steps we’ll cover bit by bit through further articles like this.
Just remember that silence is data. It is not the case that “No news is good news.” Far from it. It’s your early warning.
What’s the silence telling you in your team? Reply and share.