📺 If Your Job Feels Like a Reality Show, Read This

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Welcome to The Thinker, a twice-monthly newsletter where I provide thought-provoking questions to help you cultivate a fulfilling and high-performing career.

Hi there!

One thing I’ve learned as a career and executive coach is that no matter how smart you are, or how shiny your education section is on LinkedIn, or how much of an emotional fortress you’ve built around yourself, bad culture will always, eventually, bring out the worst in you. 

Toxic work culture can take on a lot of flavors. Sometimes it can make you feel small and like you need to take up less space. Sometimes it can make you feel like you’re the crazy one and that you should just stop calling out the problems when you see them. Sometimes it can make you feel like you should just coast because no matter how hard you try, you’re just not seeing any career progression.

Whatever type you’re experiencing, bad work culture can really damage your sense of self because, if you stay there long enough, you’ll start to believe the toxic lore, and you’ll find yourself making yourself small, quiet, or mediocre. 

And you’re better than that.

To that end, I’ve curated some questions to ask yourself if your current environment is dragging you down. Let’s get you back to living up to your truest potential. 

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See for yourself

1. Are you missing something?

→ How are you contributing to the problem? (“It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me”)

→ What are your self-awareness blind spots?

I’ll be honest: Sometimes, work feels toxic because of something that we’re doing. At certain points in my career, I found myself complaining a lot about how toxic my environment was, only to exit that space and realize that I was actually the problem. 

At one point, I contributed to the gossip that drove me crazy. In another job, I assumed my boss was always at fault, and I missed an opportunity to actually hear helpful feedback. I’ve learned the hard way that you’ve got to start by giving everyone around you the benefit of the doubt and assuming good intentions. Only after you reflect and assess how you may be contributing to your own misery can you start pointing fingers at others. 

2. What company-level dynamics are contributing to the culture?  

→ Is this just a rough patch?

→ Or, is this just how it is? 

Culture can be dynamic, especially for startups. As a company grows and evolves, expectations change and the type of people attracted to that environment also shifts. If you’re at a startup and you’re going through a growth phase, the bad culture that you’re experiencing might just be a phase as the culture of the OGs meshes with the vibe of the new hires. 

On the other hand, if things have been tough for more than 6 months, it’s unlikely to change any time soon. I’ve wasted months of my career waiting for leaders to address the toxicity (“We’ve noticed the team’s bad engagement scores…we hear you!”). The reality is that change management is really tough, and your leaders have driven the culture to the ground, it’s unlikely that those same individuals will be able to repair it. 

3. What do you want to do about it?  

→ Do you want to stay and ride it out?

→ Do you want to go and find a new adventure?

So, if you’ve clarified why the culture is what it is and how you and others might be able to change it, the next step is to decide what to do next. First, tackle any steps you can take to improve the culture for yourself and contribute to the environment in a more positive way. Then, give yourself a deadline for things to get better. 

If things haven’t gotten better in 1-2 quarters, then, my friend, it’s time to GTFO. Make a game plan for how you want to move on so that you can continue to grow in your career and not get trapped in the quagmire of a toxic culture.

Acknowledge the bravery it takes to move on and leave behind what no longer serves you - and find the support you need to make that change happen! 

Cheering for you, 

McKay