Culture and The Quick Toxic Turn
by Pamela Coleman
July 2025
Culture is an organizing framework. The framework establishes guidelines to help all employees understand how to interact, behave, and make decisions. All employees. Including the executive and leadership team.
If leaders believe they are somehow separate from the cultural dictates they claim to value, they will behave in ways that contradict the culture. Culture will take a quick toxic turn in the following situations:
There is a murky definition of cultural standards and behaviors
The CEO fails to hold their team accountable to the standards and behaviors
Leaders allow their egos to interfere with the broader cultural good
Employees observe leaders act in needlessly competitive or conflict-driven ways…and these actions go unchecked
Consider the very public Twitter takeover spearheaded by Elon Musk. In the flash of an eye, operating standards were replaced by the energetic impulses of one person. Main cultural drivers were ignored. Employees sought help from one another as the leadership team became increasingly unrecognizable and unavailable. Every employee struggled to maintain control and survive. Twitter’s culture took a quick toxic turn.
From my personal experience, culture-building is a slow build. It requires a clear and consistent north star and an internal operating code to stay the course. Toxic cultures can happen quickly, like a fast-moving storm on the sea. The wrong leadership hire, a series of incoherent decisions, and a lack of accountability for bad behaviors can alienate enthusiastic employees. If you have executive equity, where your team has taken time to foster trust and transparency, these storms cause less damage. But if your team is riddled with conflict, finger-pointing, back-channeling, sabotage, or any of the myriad other problematic leadership behaviors, your culture will nose-dive.
Redirecting a toxic culture is a significant change initiative. So, do not let your culture turn toxic. Define what you desire to create. Measure it. Hold others accountable to it, especially the leadership team.
Need a model? Please reach out.