The Leader-Culture Connection Part 6

Toxic Cultures are characterized as follows:


• Leaders create a “closed system,” so any advice and creative ideas from the outside are suspect from the start. These systems breed bad ideas, bad behaviors, and bad values in the organization over and over again.

• Individual rights and dignity of staff members are surrendered to the powerfully elite. People are expected to do as they're told-nothing less and nothing else. The organization's leaders believe they “own” every employee. They have exceptionally high expectations of workers, but the offer them little or no autonomy to make decisions.

• Fear becomes the dominating motivational factor of the organization, and those who choose to stay meekly comply. Many, though, are too afraid to leave. They've noticed that when people even think about leaving, they're severely criticized for being disloyal. Turf battles are the accepted sport of the organization, and open warfare becomes normal. Suspicion and resentment poison lines of communication, so even the simplest directive becomes a weapon area

• Leaders delegate responsibility but fail to give authority to people to fulfill their roles.

• Creativity and risk-taking have long vanished because these traits threaten the status of the bosses as the only ones who know anything. In this environment, pathology is rewarded and health is punished.

• Ethical, financial, or sexual lapses may occur, but staff members are expected to turn a blind eye. The leaders constantly look over their shoulders to see if they've been caught

• These organizations run off good people, and they attract only the naïve or truly desperate.

Source: Chand, S. (2011) Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.