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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
According to iHire\u2019s 2026 Toxic Workplace Trends Report<\/a>, 79% of employees who experienced a toxic workplace pointed to poor leadership and management as the cause, citing leaders who were unethical, unaccountable or unsupportive. Executives rarely see it the same way. When performance dips, the diagnosis that gets reached for first is almost always \u201cculture,\u201d a word<\/p>\n I have spent close to 20 years inside companies watching leaders reach for that same explanation. Culture is safe to blame because it points everywhere at once. Naming your own decisions points back at exactly one person.<\/p>\n Fixing performance starts with a tougher question: \u201cWhat have I been doing, specifically, that\u2019s producing this?\u201d Here\u2019s where to start looking:<\/p>\n Executives rarely think of themselves as the reason performance stalls \u2014 they\u2019ve usually stopped being close enough to the work to see their own fingerprints on it. In an interview, Jana Boone, SVP of growth enablement at full-funnel digital marketing agency Intero Digital, told me the behavior executives overlook in themselves is almost always the same one: \u201cPoor performance gets labeled a culture problem when it\u2019s often just distance.\u201d<\/p>\n Boone said the more common issue isn\u2019t culture at all, but a leader who hasn\u2019t spent hands-on time with their people in a while and whose instinct is to solve rather than listen. The job has changed since that leader last did it themselves, she said, and they often don\u2019t know what\u2019s actually standing in someone\u2019s way.<\/p>\n Boone\u2019s point cuts against the instinct that made most of these leaders successful in the first place: solving fast. Before assuming a capability gap, she recommended asking a person directly how they\u2019re feeling about the work, the pace and the environment. \u201cAnd then be quiet long enough to hear the real answer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Boeing\u2018s regulator ended up saying the quiet part out loud, even while reaching for the same word everyone else does. After a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max mid-flight in January 2024, an FAA audit found that Boeing\u2019s culture had placed more emphasis on mass production than safety standards, Administrator Michael Whitaker told NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the specifics he pointed to weren\u2019t cultural in any vague sense. Boeing\u2019s own protocols, he said, weren\u2019t what you\u2019d expect \u201cif safety is the first priority.\u201d The failures traced back to a specific, correctable set of leadership decisions: what got rewarded, what got skipped and what got signed off without a safety briefing.<\/p>\n The lesson scales down well below aircraft manufacturing. Before a team\u2019s output gets filed under \u201cculture,\u201d name the actual decision behind it, including what got approved, what got ignored and what got rewarded that shouldn\u2019t have been. A culture is hard to fix because it\u2019s everywhere and nowhere. A decision has a name attached to it.<\/p>\n Most leaders who genuinely want to audit their own habits don\u2019t know where to start, and that uncertainty is often reason enough to quit before trying. Boone said the self-examination most leaders skip starts with a simple, uncomfortable request: Ask people above you, your peers and your direct reports what they see as your strengths and your weaknesses.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll get three different answers, and the gaps between them are the point,\u201d she said. The instruction that follows is the hard part. \u201cDon\u2019t explain, don\u2019t contextualize, don\u2019t defend<\/a> \u2014 just take it, and pay attention to where the three groups disagree as much as where they agree,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n She recommended writing down a personal read on what\u2019s going well and what needs work, and then holding it against what came back from the three groups. The distance between those two lists, Boone said, is the actual audit. Most leaders skip this step for the reason she named directly: \u201cA culture diagnosis produces a workshop, while an honest look at your own habits produces a list of conversations you now have to have.\u201d<\/p>\n A University of Iowa study<\/a> found that management teams respond with more urgency to employees who point out a problem than to those who show up with a proposed fix for it, according to researcher Daniel Newton. Newton said the instinct to demand a solution alongside every problem is backward. When people learn they need a fix in hand before they can speak up, they often stay quiet instead, so problems go unreported and unresolved.<\/p>\n That same filter operates at the top of an organization, not just on the front line. If a leader only takes a concern seriously once someone arrives with a solution attached, the leader is training people to withhold the exact information that would trace a performance problem back to a specific decision instead of a vague mood.<\/p>\n Loosen that filter \u2014 ask what\u2019s going wrong before asking what to do about it \u2014 and problems get named earlier, closer to the source and easier to trace back to something a leader controls instead of a culture that implicates no one.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t need a workshop, a survey or a new deck to fix this. You need to notice the distance, name the decision, ask the people who actually see you and reward the person who tells you something\u2019s wrong before they know how to fix it.<\/p>\n Pick one of those four things and do it this week. Your team already knows which one you\u2019ve been avoiding.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n1. Notice the distance before diagnosing culture<\/h2>\n
2. Trace the label back to a decision<\/h2>\n
3. Ask the question you don\u2019t want answered<\/h2>\n
4. Reward the problem before demanding a fix<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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