287 | Culture Busters: What Every Leader Needs to Know to Protect a Healthy Team

We’re throwing it back to an oldie but a goodie on the LeadCulture Podcast—an episode that laid the foundation for Jenni Catron’s USA Today Bestselling book Culture Matters.

This is the first of a two-part series where Jenni dives into the everyday realities of leadership and the forces that build or bust a healthy culture.

In this episode, we’re talking Culture Busters—those subtle, often unintentional habits and behaviors that quietly erode trust, misalign your team, and weaken your influence as a leader. Jenni shares real-life stories and practical insights to help you spot what’s undermining your team culture before it spirals out of control.

If you've ever found yourself thinking:

• “Why does our culture feel off?”
• “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something’s broken.”
• “Why aren't our values showing up in our behavior?”

…this episode will give you the clarity and tools to name the problem and start shifting the culture in the right direction.

🎧 Tune in now and get a behind-the-scenes look at the early conversations that shaped Culture Matters. It’s honest, practical, and a perfect companion to the book.

And don’t miss part two next week—where we’ll explore what it actually takes to be a Culture Builder.

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Transcript

Jenni Catron (00:10.094)
Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenny Catron, CEO of the 4Sight Group. We're a company dedicated to helping leaders develop thriving teams. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity, confidence, and build unstoppable momentum in your organization. 

My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well so you can lead others better. Each week we take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's dive in and keep learning on this leadership journey together. Okay, friends, today I'm gonna start a two episode series on culture busters and culture builders. Now I share this with a little enthusiasm because I just turned in the manuscript for my next book and guys, I am pretty excited about it. I can't wait to share more. In fact, actually our culture busters and culture builders that we're gonna talk about this week and next week actually give you a little insight.

I'm giving a little sneak peek of some of the things we're going to talk about in the new book. But I am just kind of giddy because I finally turned in this manuscript that I've been working on for a good while and I cannot wait to get it into your hands. Lots of things to do, all the editing process, all the lead up, all the craziness that goes into the book process. But I'm excited that over the next several months.

we'll have a chance to just talk more about some of what you can expect to find in the book and just start equipping you with how to lead culture well. So today, let's talk about culture busters. I'm going to talk about culture busters in today's episode. And then next week, we'll talk about the culture builders. There is no question that you will encounter trouble spots in your culture, right? You've already seen it. You've seen it. You've had this great team, a great culture.

Jenni Catron (02:33.238)
and all of a sudden you've hit trouble spots and they kind of come out of nowhere. It's really not a matter of if you'll have some trouble spots in your culture. It's just when. There's no perfect culture. There's no perfect team. Every day there are myriad of forces pushing on your culture. There are internal things, there are external things. Every person on your team is contributing to your culture, positively or negatively. Outside forces test your culture, crises.

external impacts, just different things are pushing on your culture all the time. So your job as the culture leader is to anticipate these trouble spots and be prepared to respond to them, right? Be prepared to respond to them. I think what I find for most leaders is when our culture seems to be doing well, we kind of put it on autopilot. And then when something disrupts it, it really throws us off culture.

Right? Like it really throws us. I remember a particular season in my leadership kind of early on where I just kept getting frustrated because of the people problems. I put that in air quotes, the people problems in our organization. And I remember just coming to the realization that that's just a part of the nature of leadership. That's a part of the nature of the work that we do is that there's always going to be something. Now we're trying to minimize the chaos. You know, like if you let too much chaos occur in your culture, that's not a good thing.

But the expectation that you'll completely eliminate it is rather fruitless. It's just defeating. And so what I want you to think about as we think about these culture busters and the culture builders is that this is just this is maintenance work. This is the work that you do on a consistent basis to protect the health of your culture. You're going to find culture busters. They're going to crop up from time to time. You just need to anticipate them.

and react and respond to them as quickly as you can, redirect them as quickly as you can. So today I want to talk about 10 common culture busters, the things that can inhibit you from having a healthy culture. And if you let them go on, they become toxic in your culture. And so they're not in any particular order. This is just a list of 10 that I've created. I'm sure there are many more. In fact, if I sat down and did it longer, I'd probably come up with 100. But I've listed 10 culture busters.

Jenni Catron (04:56.568)
that I want you to think about. And so as I share them, I want you to be thinking about, do you see these in your culture? How critical is this? Is this something that's new or is this then an ongoing issue? And then at the end, I want you to rank these culture busters. want you, I'd love for you to rank them one to 10, like most critical to least critical, but at a minimum, I want you to identify the top three that are inhibiting you from having the healthy culture, the healthy team that you want to have.

So be thinking about that as I share these 10. And then next week we'll dive into the culture builders and you'll do the same thing. So here's our 10. Number one, Culture Busters, a team member who routinely violates a value. Now there's some things kind of implied there. It's implied that you have values. I hope you do. If you don't, we've got work we can send you to to get that work done. But a team member who routinely violates a value. You know what this looks like.

You have somebody on the team, they're probably a really good contributor as far as they are very competent. They're really good at their particular role or function, but they frequently violate a value. Maybe you have a value of responsiveness or punctuality and they never turn anything in on time, right? They get it done and it's really good work, but it's never on time. So it creates havoc for the rest of the team. So it's usually not somebody that is just maliciously violating a value.

but they're violating a value that's really important to your organization. So maybe it's a value of believing the best of each other, but this person's always skeptical and that just shows up. Like they just don't have a lot of trust for the team. So you'll know what this looks like in your organization, but it's rarely a very malicious violation. It's a subtle violation. Like they're not completely in alignment with one of your core values. And the rest of the team feels that.

That's a culture buster. Like if you let that go on too long, that's going to become a problem in your organization. Number two, not executing on your culture plan. Now again, it's implied here that you have a culture plan. I hope you do. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how we have plans for our mission and vision and our strategy, but rarely do we have a plan for our culture. If you don't have a plan for your culture, you need to call us. We need to help you build your culture plan. But...

Jenni Catron (07:14.89)
it can be equally critical to your culture if you're not actually executing on that plan. So if you build the plan, you write the values, you build your employee journey grid, like you do all the things that are part of the lead culture process, but then you don't actually execute on that, like you did the plan and then it sits on the shelf, that's gonna be a culture buster because your team saw you do the work and then they've not experienced you to take action on it. And so that's actually really discouraging. So number two is not executing on your culture plan.

Number three, unresolved conflict between team members. So this makes sense, right? Unresolved conflict between team members. What I see happen in a lot of organizations is they may have two team members who just do not get along. And then what they do is they kind of do gymnastics to keep them separated from each other, right? They might, I had this happen with an organization. One of these individuals should report to the other individual just by the nature of their job function, like,

they should report to each other. But because they didn't get along, the more senior leader was actually managing the person like lower in the organization because they had this conflict that was happening between these two team members. And instead of resolving the conflict, they were just creating workarounds, which were actually creating more dysfunction, more unhealth. So if there's unresolved conflict between team members, even if you try to put some boundaries around it and keep them separated,

It is impacting the team. You are creating workarounds that are creating confusion and dysfunction, and you've got to correct that. Number four, gossip or unproductive negative talk. Now we know gossip, so incredibly toxic to cultures, but it is amazing to me how many organizations let toxic or let gossip just continue. The gossip is just, it's toxic to your culture. It is just incredibly unhealthy.

And it's the little murmurs in the side conversations. It's people being talking about issues that they don't have agency to solve. And so they're just talking about it and frustrated about it, and particularly talking about people that they're frustrated with. So gossip or unproductive negative talk. if they're just, if you have team members that are just consistently negative about things that you're doing as an organization, maybe they're negative about others, maybe they're negative about your mission, whatever that is, whatever that negativity is. Now that's different from them having

Jenni Catron (09:38.808)
questions, concerns, and giving you appropriate feedback about something or even someone. Like if somebody's bringing feedback about how somebody maybe is not in alignment or not responding or following through on stuff and they're bringing it to you and you have leadership and agency to help solve that, that's appropriate if they're doing it in the right spirit. But if they're doing it to one another or they're just being negative about things to be negative but not actually trying to help solve it, that's a different issue.

you get the distinction. Number five, managers who don't model the values or don't align with your desired culture. Guys, this is big because you will have people who are people managers on your team who aren't actually modeling the values or they don't actually align with the culture that you've defined. And that is going to breed dysfunction in your organization. So you want to make sure your managers are aligned, that they are aligned with your values.

They are aligned with that culture plan that you've built. You've got to ensure that your managers are modeling what you want repeated in your culture. Number six, not addressing team members who are out of alignment. So goes hand in hand, but this is beyond just managers, the team members who are not in alignment. So you have a team member who again, might be a great performer, might be really competent at their role.

but they're never quite in alignment. They're kind of always rogue. They're kind of always renegade, doing their own thing in their own way and not fully aligned with how we do things here. Remember culture, the definition of culture is who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission. So that definition of who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission, if you have team members who are just kind of, just a little out of alignment, right? And that's the thing. Sometimes they just feel a little off, but we're like, but you know, they contribute in this way or.

You know, it's so-and-so's friend or it's so-and-so's son or daughter, right? That can sometimes be true. And so we let it go, but you know how it is. If something's out of alignment, just a couple of degrees over time, they're way out of alignment and they are impacting the culture. Okay? They are a culture buster. Number seven, poor communication, especially from leadership. So as your organization grows, as your team gets larger, as things expand,

Jenni Catron (12:01.43)
We don't necessarily want them to get more complex, but over time things do drift to complexity. We want to make sure we are communicating well. Communication is so essential for healthy teams. And so if you have don't have good systems for communication, if you don't have good understanding of how you communicate, what tools you use for communication, if you don't have good skills to be good communicators, and then especially as leaders like

If leaders don't have good process for communication and cascading information to their team, I see that a lot. I see senior leadership teams that have conversations at the executive table. They make decisions and then they are inconsistent in how they cascade that information. Some of them are really good at cascading it to the rest of the team. Some of them are not. And then that inconsistency creates confusion throughout the organization.

So poor communication is a culture buster. We've got to really work and fight for our communication processes, our communication tools, and our communication skills, especially as leaders. Number eight, haphazard change management, especially when it involves employees' roles or responsibilities. So change management, you guys, this is a skill we all need. But when we don't handle change management well,

Whether it be a strategy that needs to be changed, maybe it's a structure that needs to be changed, maybe we need to make some order changes, which involves impacts, roles and responsibilities for employees. If we don't do those things with a healthy concerted effort, it is frustrating. It is a culture buster. So I've seen this a lot over the last few years. A lot of organizations had to change strategy on the heels of COVID impact.

And so they changed strategy, then they changed structure, like organizational structure and roles and responsibilities changed or shifted for team members. But they didn't necessarily communicate that well. They thought that everybody just kind of got it and understood it when in fact, there was a lot of confusion. And so what it left was a frustration, some quiet quitting, some just absolute quitting and moving and going on to different opportunities.

Jenni Catron (14:22.828)
So HAP Hazard Change Management is a culture buster. Number nine, inconsistency in following defined systems. Inconsistency in following defined systems. So as your organization grows, you create more systems to just help streamline what you're doing. You can't scale without systems. But if we're inconsistent with those systems, so...

One team follows the system, but another team doesn't. And we just let that be. That inconsistency is a culture buster. And then number 10 goes hand in hand with that. Managers are leaders who violate systems. Now, this one is a big one because a lot of times, and I've been guilty of this myself, we've implemented a new system organizationally. And I, as a leader, don't have to be in that system that often.

So then I don't do the work to learn the system so that I can engage the system when I need to. Because it's a lot of work. New systems, especially like software systems and things can be a little overwhelming. And so we sometimes will dig in our heels and not want to learn the new system. Let me give you an example. There's a client that I work with that uses a different communication system than I use with my teams. Well, because of the nature of my involvement with that organization, I have to be in the know in that system.

Well, it's not a system I'm familiar with. And so it's taking me like some time to learn it. Like I'm, I feel like the new kid having to learn the system that they use. And in some ways it's really frustrating. And I find myself wanting to work around it and kind of like, if I'm honest, I maybe think I'm like, like, I don't really need to do it. Like other people just need to figure it out for me. That's a terrible attitude. And it's absolutely a culture buster when managers or leaders.

violate the systems that we've built to help serve the team, it's a massive culture buster. And so I want you to be considering that when there are new systems or new technologies that we want the entire team to embrace, as managers, we've got to commit to also learning it and be devoted to help leading through it. So those are the 10 common culture busters that I want you to think through. I'll list them again really quickly for you. Number one is a team member who

Jenni Catron (16:45.034)
routinely violates a value. Number two, not executing your culture plan. Number three, unresolved conflict between team members. Number four, gossip or unproductive negative talk. Number five, managers who don't model the values or don't align with your desired culture. Number six, not addressing team members who are out of alignment. Number seven, poor communication.

especially from leadership. Number eight, have hazard change management, especially when it involves employees' roles or responsibilities. Number nine, inconsistency in following defined systems. And number 10, managers or leaders who violate those systems. Okay, sorry that we stand on the negative side of it today.

But I really love for you to just do some good awareness, some good self-awareness around the culture busters that might be cropping up in your organization. First of all, no shame in this. Honesty is really important. Like the willingness to just honestly assess where are we now is one of the most healthy things you can do to lead culture. So I want you to do an honest assessment. We'll put those 10 in the show notes so you can go look at them listed out.

And then I want you to rank them from one to 10, highest to lowest. Which one is the most impacting our culture and which one's having the least impact on our culture? But at a minimum, pick the top three, the top three culture busters in your organization. And I want you to begin to think what might we need to do to address those culture busters? In fact, take that to your executive team this week. Do the list, maybe have them rank them so that you can see if there's

You have different opinions about which ones are having the biggest impact in your organization. And then as a team go, OK, what are the top three, the top three that we need to focus on and what do we need to do to address them? Guys, this is such critical work. Protecting your culture is one of the most valuable things you can do for the health of your organization. So I want to invite you to schedule a free 30 minute call with one of our lead culture certified coaches to help you assess your culture.

Jenni Catron (19:03.414)
and coach you how to take action on how to make it even better. So after you've done the list, you reviewed the list, you identified your top three, reach out to us to schedule a call so that we can help you process that, give you some feedback, give you some coaching on how to address those culture busters that you've identified. You'll find the link to schedule that free call in the show notes, or just drop me an email at jennie, J-E-N-N-I at getforsight.com. And then next week, I'll come back.

and give you those culture builders. Friends, I absolutely believe that healthy teams are the differentiator in the best organization. There's no perfect culture, but there are definitely extraordinary cultures. So let's help you develop a thriving team so you can accelerate growth and build unstoppable momentum. All right, friends, I hope this was helpful to you. If you would.

Leave us a review. Let us know what was helpful. What stood out to you? Which culture busters are you wrestling with? You can connect with us on social media at get foresight at G E T the number four S I G H T or I'm at Jenny, Catherine J E N and I C A T R O N. I always love connecting with you there. And if you would share this, share this with your executive team, have them write those culture busters and get together and talk about it. Be so valuable for your team to keep learning and growing.

together and then leave us that review. Let us know how we're doing and how we can continue to better serve you. Keep reading well and we'll see you next week.