Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
186. Toxic Workplace Stories
We trade two true stories about toxic leadership: a public shutdown that delayed a release and a “smile less” mandate that drained talent. We break down what went wrong, how healthy leaders respond, and simple habits that turn conflict into momentum.
• crunch-time bug and a proposed shim to hold the date
• public rejection of cross-team work and power signaling
• costs of social debt versus technical debt
• curiosity-led review of risk and alternatives
• how to coach tone without policing personality
• talent loss, brand damage and culture decay
• leaders make the weather and set norms
• practical tools for safe shortcuts and dissent
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Yeah, you are. You're recording, Craig. Get to it. Do your job. He already is. You're so bad at everything you do.
SPEAKER_01:Just do your job. He's great. What are you talking about? You're being a terrible boss. You're gonna demotivate him. You're gonna make him look for a job elsewhere that pays a salary. Don't defend the slacker. I need you to get to work. The the s the slacker, without without little Cregerson, nothing we do would ever get recorded in any way, shape, or form. I would do a lot more work.
SPEAKER_00:That's for dang sure. I'm not asking for excuses. I'm asking you to get Craig in line. This is just toxic the way you're being right now.
SPEAKER_01:Just toxic. Welcome back to Toxic Strategy. It it we knew it could have been an email. F that. We don't care. We made it a podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Screw you. I'm Bruce. And I'm Clark. And you better listen to this on normal speed or slower. I want you to really ingest what we're saying. Ingest it. Listen to it slow. Take it in.
SPEAKER_01:Take it right in. You know, you're micromanaging the listener. You're being mean to Craig. You're just being a real toxic person right now. Is there a reason why you're being so toxic, Clark?
SPEAKER_00:This is a nice lead-in. Thank you, Bruce. It's such a cringy lead. It's a great lead-in to our topic today. Your toxicity is out of control. It is bringing back toxicity in the city.
SPEAKER_02:Why do they always reasonable levels?
SPEAKER_00:Why do they always send the poor? You know what I'm saying? Toxicity. Why do they always send the send the poor aerials?
SPEAKER_01:Is it the same song?
SPEAKER_00:No, it's all three different songs. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say I don't think those are the same song. I'm glad I asked. I'm glad I asked. BYOB, you know what I'm saying? BYOB, such a good song. But yeah, leads to the B-Y O B L O L L M F A O, even B Y O B.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What better, what better to lead into our top today of toxicity than to lead in with the Armenian suffering put into song by a metal band? SOAD LMF. Yes. It's hitting you. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe different at the end there, but close. Close. I'm I'm picking up what you're placing down, you toxic son of a gun.
SPEAKER_00:So we thought, since we're limited on time this week, let's talk about toxicity. Maybe a little story time of a really toxic situation that we've been around, because you guys will probably enjoy that. But it will allow us to commiserate more importantly together on the toxicity. And hopefully at the end, we can share a good outcome from that toxicity that eventually was corrected or fixed, or maybe you're still doomed and the toxicity actually made it much worse in your corporate environment and you happen to hate it all. But fingers crossed, there's a happy ending. Because I don't know what story you're gonna tell, and you don't know what story I'm gonna tell. Yes, correct. Correct. So it's gonna be fun. Well, who should start?
SPEAKER_01:Uh to quote the uh system of a down. You're toxic, I'm slipping under. You should start. Is that actually a lyric?
SPEAKER_02:It's not from a system of a down song.
SPEAKER_01:I think is that Katy Perry? I don't know who that is. That is the the real goat, Brittany.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Brittany. I was I was getting there. Would have gotten there.
SPEAKER_01:You're close. I mean, not really. Katy Perry's terrible and Britney's great, but you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, kick us off. Tell us your toxic story. I'm gonna take you back. And I'm not gonna incriminate myself. I'm not going to give a lot of specificity. Not that any of our listeners know anything about me except for a core few, but I want you to get into my setting here, okay? I want you to get into my setting. All right. So quit quit telling me what to do with my life. Uh you listen to me and you shut your yap when I'm talking. All right. So tall. So tall. All right. It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon. It was in the summer. And you know, project deadlines were all over the place. Projects were late, issues were arising. We were getting closer and closer to launch. You know the feel. You've been there. You know how it goes in these crush times. You've got a launch plan for the next week, and an issue comes up, and you're like, oh shoot, this could derail our whole release. So what do you do? You start trying to get creative. You start, you really go through like kind of stages of grief and rationalizing things. You're like, eh, it's not that bad. It can't be that bad, right? So you like deny it, you deny it, you rationalize it, you say, okay, how bad would it really be if we launch with this issue? Is it going to cause a major disruption to the company, to our customer base? It can't be that bad, right? So those are all things as the product manager that are going through my head. And naturally, I also start to think about, since I have an engineering background, what if there's a way to solve this problem? Like, what if we could do like a short little, I know it's not the permanent solution, but let's do a shim. Let's figure out how to get this, get this out next week, maybe hard code a value. I said it. Hard code a value in, and just we'll fast follow up, we'll fix it after, but it'll be fine. It'll be fine. We'll hard code the value. Make a comment. Exactly. So I start solutioning these things with my my engineering teams. I say, okay, you know, let's get a couple really smart folks together. Let's start planning out what could be happening. I reach out to a few folks. It's very last minute. So like everybody's calendar, they just have to start shifting things. The engineering leader isn't able to make the meeting. So I said, okay, well, since this is so high priority, I'll just meet with this team and we'll talk things out. Like we'll meet with this person's team, we'll work things out together and just come up with some possible solutions. So I get into the the meeting. I have a person from my team, a couple people from their team. We come up with a solution. We're like, okay, this is ugly. No one likes this, but the risk is low and we think it's gonna keep everything on track. Okay, great. Awesome. Sounds good. Let's do a little more research, let's verify some of our assumptions, let's just make sure that this is actually gonna be okay, and then we'll bring it to a team meeting this afternoon just to make sure the whole entire group is on board. So we do that work, step into the next meeting in the afternoon. I think everything's gonna be fine. I'm like, the team was there, we talked about it, we verify the assumptions, everything's good. So we get in this meeting, and the engineering leader walks in, and they start listening to our options. And immediately they go, No, we're not doing that. I don't need product management telling me how to do things in engineering. This is how it started. In front of like 30 people, their team, my team, and I'm just sitting there, like, in those moments, you you know how it gets. You start getting a little heated, you feel the sides of your head burning.
SPEAKER_02:Adrenaline starts to go.
SPEAKER_00:And then because you're you're just like breathing heavy, you're like, I'm about to fight. Like, this is gonna be a fight. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's so jarring when that never happens for it to happen in a meeting. And you've been there, I've been there many times. But as a leader, like you have to set an example for your team. So, like, okay, let's stay calm and collected for a minute. So I try to compose myself and I'm like, okay, well, your team was involved in this. Like, do you mind if we just like hear out what their input is? Of course, that's their leader. They say, uh, you know, I think this could be a viable option. I I think I think we could do this, but at this point, they're like, This is my leader. Like, if I say something that they're against, this puts me in a real hard position. And so, of course, yeah, toxic. Exactly. It tastes bad, it's soiled, it's toxic. Nobody wants to touch the pickle.
SPEAKER_01:Soiled pickle, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So they get very hesitant. I'm like, oh no, no, please, like, talk about what we talked about. Like, we're gonna hard code the value, it's gonna be ugly, but it's okay because we're gonna do a fast fall release, we're gonna fix it. And they're like, we're not doing that. Like, I don't need you telling me how to do this. Like, my team was barely involved. I'm like, okay, hold on a second. Your team was involved. Mind of raising hands, and sheepishly, I get like a raise of hands. Yeah, I was there, and they're like, he didn't ask them, or were you okay with this? He just looks back at me and he goes, I'm not okay with this, and you can't tell engineering what to do. I get to guide this team on what to do next. And I'm like, Okay. Take a deep breath. I can feel the gray hair growing on the side of my head and the anger, the bubbling anger happening because I'm like, we need this release to go live next week. And so I'm like, okay, let's try to lead a horse to water here. Say, okay, fine. If you don't want to do it that way, come up with a solution of how we keep everything on track for next week, and I'm happy to support however I can. And that's kind of where we left it. It's like, okay, he's gonna go off, they're gonna work the team, they're gonna figure this out without product management, and they're gonna figure out how to keep this release on track. And did they? Yeah. No, no, we met the next day, and they're like, that's not what we're doing. We have to do a whole fix. We've got to push the release by two weeks. And I'm like, but we have a but we we found a solution. We tested it, we verified that the assumptions. It works. We're gonna be just fine. Like, really? We have to delay two weeks because of this? And yeah, that's where we left it. We ended up doing that because that is not my jurisdiction to make a call there. But it did have implications, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01:I'm I'm trying to put myself in their shoes. And you know I hate product management, so like pretty easy for me. I just I hate those people so much. They're the worst. They're always, you know, butting their heads in, getting involved in things they shouldn't be, telling people what to do that that, you know, not your job, stay in your lane, right? But in this case, putting myself in their shoes, if I get called into a meeting and someone's like, Bruce, hey, FYI, uh, on your paper that you wrote, you have this written. That's not entirely true. I would suggest you change it to this. Like that would be a real, hey, you know, thanks for telling me that. So I don't look bad and embarrass myself. Is there anything I could do in the future to catch this before it happens? But like, thank you. I you know, I appreciate this. Uh, you know, is it a me problem? Like, how how did this br like get to a root cause, be thankful, you know? Yeah, not their job. They're how they're you know, they're helping me. And I wouldn't that in in in any case, and I mean I get it marketing's a little bit different than like development, but in any case, if someone was trying to stop me from looking bad by giving me a quick fix for something, I'd take it. I take it every time. I I don't care what lane you're coming from, stay out of, get out of your lane, help me out, right? If it's gonna stop me from if me or my team or my department from looking bad, please by all means take me aside and tell me. Or tell me in the room. I don't care. If it's like, hey, real quick, just caught this. Like, let's talk about this. Like, that's fine. I don't think that reaction was warranted. Um, I do, I understand the reaction because, like I said, product management sucks. Those people are the worst. And like, I just when I'm in the room with them, my stomach starts gurgling a little bit because I just want to punch them. Just want to punch them, just get punchy, punchy with PMs. But in this case, completely unreasonable response. Now, if you had just showed up and you're like, hey, here's the roadmap, then I think you had every reason to raise fists and come after you. But uh, you were just trying to help, you know?
SPEAKER_00:So you just did the best you could. You you answered it the right way. It's like the first thing you did was put yourself in like the other person's shoe. Okay, they're they're coming from a place of trying to help.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Like that that's the first thing you did, isn't it? Literally trying to help you were thinking. Yeah. And like, even though this is not their jurisdiction, this is not their lane, I appreciate them attempting. But you, as the owner, and I played this scenario many, many times in my head at this point, so I can I can kind of retroactively look at it and think about it. It's like come from a place of curiosity that, okay, show me the issue. Like, I want to know more. Okay, show me the solve. Okay, that's interesting. And like then, you're respecting the other person's effort and the people in the room, you're showing a good culture of being like, we appreciate when people try to help. We then vet the ideas together, and then we understand, like, from an engineering's perspective, it's like, what level of risk, what level of technical debt is this introducing that I may have to be on calls to support? And like then, like if we did all that, and then at the end he was like, Listen, I love the creativity. It was great. Like, I love that you guys came up with something, but this imposes a couple levels of risk. You know, here's risk one, risk two, risk three. I can't have my team supporting on a weekend if this risk happens. And we need to go through the right solution. I know it's two weeks, but this will ensure that we don't accept that type of risk and will keep me and my team protected. And like that would have been, I would have been like, okay, yeah, absolutely. Like, you're the expert. You know, I appreciate that you tried, you understood, and then you gave me a reasonable explanation as to what went on here. And like that was very good. And I under I I learned something, which is even better.
SPEAKER_01:I recently published uh a paper, and I had uh a sales engineer reach out to me and say, Hey, Bruce, you got a mistake on your paper. This should be this, and that should be that. I'm like, oh. Maybe you're right. Like, I didn't catch that. I you know, I usually get my information from this team. Let me go double check with them. Thank you. So I go and double check, and it turns out, no, I was right. It's just a little bit confusing. Um, a decision that was made. It it would make sense if it was the other way, and it would also make sense if it was this way, right? So, like, you can kind of see it working either way, but I think people would logically expect it to be the opposite of what it was. So I told him, I was like, hey, thank you for reaching out. It turns out this is correct, but I really appreciate your attention to detail and reaching out to me to make sure that, you know, if there was an incident like this, we could catch it and turn around real quick. So don't feel bad. This is just one of those weird um kind of one-offs where it's a little bit backwards from how it should be, but really great eye, right? And like I did that because one, I did appreciate them reaching out and trying to help me. It caught me off guard, right? I was like, oh yeah, that does make sense. Maybe I'm wrong. Let me go investigate and find out. And turns out I was right, which is totally fine. But like my response was not, please stay in your lane. Uh, I know what I'm doing. You don't need to do my job for me. No, it was like, I do make mistakes, these things do happen. Thank you. Uh, please reach out in the future if you find anything like this again. I think it's always worth us doing a double click and investigating. Like, it took me five minutes, right? Like, big deal. Um, just an example of, you know, I'm not Jesus, but at the same time, uh, I would never do what that individual did. Uh just wild. Wow, what a wild reaction.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and like immediately pointing fingers, like these are all the things that you gotta watch out for in a toxic culture. Immediately pointing fingers, making it an us versus them conversation, shutting down the idea at all instead of acknowledging that people thought about this. They work together, come up with a solution, respect what they're putting together, but then own your domain and understand it and tell them why that's not the approach and give a reasonable response. Help everyone, like you said. You help that person learn, but you encourage the behavior because the behavior is right. They care, they obviously want to put passion into it, and just immediately sh shutting someone down will basically turn them off from ever doing that again. They're like, I'm not gonna be proactive again. Why would I be proactive?
SPEAKER_01:I'll give you I'll give you one more thing and one more reason to not do this. Um, do you know where that person is now?
SPEAKER_02:I don't. I do. I know where they are. Where are they, Bruce? No wonder with the company. Ask me the question. I know where they are. They're dead. Oh. Died a cringe. Died a just hardcore cringe. Got him.
SPEAKER_01:Don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah, don't be that person. Don't be that person. So, you know, in the interest of making this a quickie, mine, mine's pretty short anyway. I don't have the the illustrious details you have for yours. Uh, you I've talked about this before, but I figured I'd I'd give it more color and given a result of an outcome more important than the incident itself. So obviously I'm a little bit of a character. Uh, at Big Corp, I would get called in. Just a little bit of a character, a little bit of a guy. Just a little bit. I would get called in to help present at events and do sales kickoffs and things like that because of my gestures about wildly-ishness, right? So they wanted some personality, they wanted a little bit of the the weird and wacky that Bruce brings. So I would do sales kickoffs and things like that. Well, when Big Corp, rest in peace, no longer exists, got their their new chief marketing officer, um, she was just a menace to everybody and everything at all times. I I think I think I think she came in with an idea of what could be done to make marketing better without ever considering what actually worked well in the culture. And every single thing she tried to do ended up backfiring in some way against her, right? Like it's like, oh, you you ruined everything you touch because you refuse to spend any time actually learning about the people, the processes, the technology. And all of this really came to a head when I was doing uh a sales kickoff. I I've talked about this before, but like here now you have all the detail. She literally reached out to my boss and told my boss, hey, you need to talk to Bruce. He's always smiling on calls, on presentations. It looks like he's very disingenuous. And it looks like, you know, he's he's just joking around not being serious here. And I like when my my boss, he's like, I don't want to tell you this. He's like, I don't want to tell you this, but I have to because I've been asked to by my boss to give you this feedback. And he's like, I don't even know what you can do with this information because your smile is the reason you get invited to do these kind of things. But like she doesn't like that you're smiling on on camera at all. And I have to tell you that. And I I truly can't imagine a more toxic thing to tell an employee than please smile less. Uh it it's it's funny because I don't want to make this about politics or gender politics or anything like that, but like, you know, it's a it is a is a well-known misogynistic phrase when men tell women, oh, come on, honey, smile. Right? Like, yeah, you know, it's it's that's a no-no, you never say that. That is a very old school, inappropriate thing to say. But for her to say that to my boss to tell me, not even be able to tell me myself, but for her to tell my boss tell me, I'm just like, what the heck is happening here? Like, this this bucks every norm and trend and thing that I've ever known. It's like, if you're happy and you look happy, people are more interested in what you have to say, and they're, you know, you just come across as easier to talk to. Now, what this caused, and it not just this, but that incident in particular really made me start looking for a new job. And eventually I did, I did leave that company and that company died. Rest in peace, big corp. But it it it's it was what a massive catalyst event for me. So many other people, including previous guests on this pod, left that department because of that individual. That's how toxic they were. And all the talent got drained. Uh, the the department was never the same after me and many others left. It never recovered. The company did die. I don't, I'm not gonna say, oh, it's because she was in marketing that died. I think there were lots of reasons that it happened. But she certainly escalated the death of that company and catalyzed it by losing someone like me. And that just goes to show you how toxic behavior in general can actually hurt a company at a business level. So, you know, you know, you're in your instance, it was specifically a release. You took longer to get it out. You know, you might have lost goodwill with customers who were expecting it early. In my case, it ended up causing people to leave, talented people to leave the company to seek employment at competitors and elsewhere. And I think the long or the short of it is it's just like if you're gonna be toxic, don't just it's a really bad idea. Yeah, think about what you're gonna say to someone before you say it. And if it has any whiff of toxicity, you can you can not only damage the relationship, but you're gonna end up damaging the culture. It is 100%. I I love the word, right? Because like if something is toxic and it gets in the water, right? Now the body of water is toxic. It's not just that little segment, it spreads, right? So it like it's such a good word from you know, just a linguistic perspective to define how bad it is for an organization and culture. A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, somebody I I either read the somewhere or heard this somewhere, but like leaders make the weather. Yeah, and so if you set the weather if it's toxic rain, if it's toxic rain, that will inseminate down into everyone on the team and people will start acting that same way, which is so unfortunate. Because to your point, that's how you build a failing culture, you lose the good, talented people, and usually those companies don't succeed with that level of leadership, which is so unfortunate. Like the only thing I could say for that situation, it'd be like if you during one of these presentations, in a really serious moment, like you were talking about something and you were just smiling and you're like, Man, that Holocaust, right, guys? Like, like if you were to do something like that, I could see them coming to you and being like, Hey, during this topic, it's a serious topic. Like, I need you to kind of show the sincerity, you know, in your mannerisms and the way that you're talking about the subject, because I think that will be better received by our customers and viewers of this content. But in your case, it's just like you're just talking about the product, and she's just basically said, you're not being serious enough.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that's like that doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_01:It really came down to like, you know, we we've talked about this, we've had capitalist course Bonnet Al Shrep on the pod before, you know, he was part of this department, he experienced this. Like, this individual was threatened by us, which is such a weird thing. Like, to be threatened by people like two levels lower than you because you're not willing to take the time to get to know people and like get to know the culture and the product and the company. Like, it just that is not a leader. That does not make a leader. You know what it makes?
SPEAKER_00:What does it make?
SPEAKER_01:Toxic rain. Some stay dry and others feel the pain. Toxic rain.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know how we turned this into a great like musical synergy that's happening with the words we have and the topic of the day, but I love it. We should do this more often. Toxic rain. We should close them out and say, Arials in the sky.
SPEAKER_01:No, not that one. No, you don't like that. I'm I'm I'm immediately uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00:I'm scared.
SPEAKER_01:That was funny. I'm as a colleague.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was a fun topic. It's always good to remember where we came from and to remind people if you get into a terrible situation, everyone's been there, everyone's felt how you're feeling in the moment. And it is your duty, if you want to create a good culture, to do something about it. To let them know this is not okay behavior.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And I would love uh for our listeners, if you're not in the Discord, get in there, go to the link tree, join the Discord. Um, we have a channel called Is It Me or Is It Corporate? And you can go into that channel and type forward slash confess, and your whatever you type will be anonymized. Not even the admins of the server know what is said. It's it's that good at like removing any trace of data. If you have a toxic story you'd like for us to share on the pod, go in there and leave it. Toxic Tuesdays, you know, like forget tacos. Let's get let's get toxic Tuesdays up in here. Uh, go leave your toxic workplace environment story in the hashtag is it me or is a corporate. You don't have to do the forward slash confess. If you would want to leave it in there, if you're comfortable. I don't know who you are, you Discord user, do it. Uh, but you have we have that way to anonymize the data if you'd like. I would love for y'all to share that in there. Other than that, you can you can use that link tree to uh go to our website, get a baby onesie, uh, support the show with buy us a coffee. This is a completely self-funded uh endeavor, except for the ads, which suck, but they're there because I want to make a little bit of money. I'm losing so much, might as well make a quarter, pay 20, make 25 cents back. Uh, and that I think that wraps it up for another episode of the show. It's a it's a shorty, but it's a goodie. We appreciate your listenership. Please share the pod with everyone you know. Leave us a nice review if you can, and until next time, stay toxic. I'm Bruce.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm Clark. What do they always send the board? I don't think you trust.
