How to Create a Toxic Work Culture

7 Key Lessons from Failures at The Ellen DeGeneres Show

“There is no magic formula for company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated,” advised Richard Branson. As David Cummings described culture as “the only sustainable advantage” that’s completely in our control, and Brian Chesky describes culture as a “shared way of doing something with a passion,” a great culture is both a tremendous asset and fully within the control of every company.

A toxic culture, on the other hand, is a serious liability. People can’t be honest. New ideas don’t have the chance to develop. And high performers are more likely to leave for better working environments at a competitor.

While a great culture leads to innovation and high performance, toxic cultures create stagnation and mediocrity.

The interesting part is that every company gets to choose which culture they want to create. It’s completely up to them. They can create a culture driven by infighting and favoritism. Or they can choose to create one fueled by inclusion and creativity.

It just comes down to how you treat people. It comes down to the choices you make each day. It’s that simple.

Yet, many companies still find themselves with a toxic culture. BuzzFeed’s recent expose of The Ellen DeGeneres Show describes a company with a number of serious issues. It’s almost as if their management decided to put out a playbook on how to create a toxic work culture of racism, harassment, and fear.

Which gives the rest of us a clear framework of behaviors to avoid.

Divide People Into Different Classes.

When Jane Elliott tried to explain discrimination to a classroom of all-white third-graders, she knew that simply talking about it wasn’t going to be enough. So she divided her students into two groups: brown-eyed kids and blue-eyed kids and made the shocking announcement that brown-eyed kids were better than blue-eyed kids.

Blue-eyed kids needed to sit at the back of the class. They were told that they’re inferior and not as smart as their brown-eyed classmates. And they had to wear special collars so that everyone would know their eye color from a distance. Elliot was shocked at the transformation,

“I watched those kids turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating third graders…it was ghastly.”

The next day, when Elliot announced that she’d made a mistake, and in fact the blue-eyed kids were superior, the kids embraced the reversal immediately. She describes shouts of glee from the blue-eyed kids as they ran around placing their collars on their inferior brown-eyed counterparts. In each situation, simply dividing the class and defining one group as inferior was enough to bring out discriminatory behaviors.

Toxic companies create divisions within their employees and emphasize the difference in value. This rationalizes treating some people worse than others. Reports from The Ellen DeGeneres Show tell of a clear division between staff members and the behind-the-scenes production group, with the former group treated well and the latter treated as second-class citizens. The more producers and managers saw the production group as less valuable, the easier it was to rationalize treating them poorly.

It’s common to separate people based on expertise. And people will naturally create their own groups as they’re drawn to others with like people. But leadership needs to recognize that regardless of someone’s job, everyone on the team fills an important role. And while different people will inevitably deliver different value, everyone deserves the same level of respect.

Create a Sense of Helplessness.

Toxic work environments persist not because they’re enjoyable, but because everyone has a sense of futility. Line workers think, “I can’t speak up or I’ll lose my job.” First-level managers think, “What can I do? I just manage a small part of the company.” Even senior management thinks, “I don’t want to lose my position. What’s the point of speaking up? The CEO doesn’t really want to hear the truth.”

It’s this sense of helplessness that keeps people from speaking out against actions that they know are wrong. It creates a feeling of inevitability, as though this is how things are supposed to be. Anyone who speaks out needs to do it on their own. And be subject to the consequences of going against the group.

A black woman who used to work on The Ellen DeGeneres Show told BuzzFeed that she was the victim of racist comments and harassment throughout her year and a half employment. Yet no one ever stood up to help her. When one of the main writers said, “I’m sorry, I only know the names of white people who work here,” her coworkers awkwardly laughed it off instead of speaking up in her defense.

Toxic bosses want people to believe their behavior is normal. When they promote the idea that everyone else is okay with it, those who feel like speaking up hesitate to do so. Everyone feels alone. So no one says anything.

Yet once someone does, the spell is quickly broken. We’ve seen this happen at all levels of an organization. The moment someone speaks up, the façade of the status quo begins to shatter. And others will follow.

Eliminate Two-Way Communication.

A key sign of a toxic work culture is that communication only flows one way. This further isolates management from employees. It sends the message that the company isn’t interested in any feedback that questions the status quo.

In April, Variety reported that employees were upset over a lack of communication regarding the status of their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. When people were worried about losing wages and health insurance, management wasn’t available to answer their questions or offer support.

More troubling are the bizarre stories of people not being allowed to look Ellen in the eye or speak to her in the hallways. Whatever her motivation for this practice, it reinforces the stigma that employees don’t have value. If people aren’t worth looking in the eye, it’s easier to rationalize treating them without respect.

All of this continues to widen the divide between employees and management. It strips away peoples’ individuality. It makes them interchangeable. And then quickly disposable.

Non-toxic companies embrace two-way communication. They realize that great ideas and solutions can, and do, come from anywhere. And when people feel valued, they’re more likely to embrace the accountability of solving problems and developing new ideas.

When Ed Catmull finished production of Toy Story at Pixar, he realized that while it was a great project to work on, people were putting up with parts of the job that they resented. The positives were hiding the negatives. So he made it his mission to talk with people throughout the company, exploring their views on how Pixar was and wasn’t working. Slowly, conversation by conversation, he began to better understand the problems within the Pixar culture so that he could address them. As he wrote in Creativity, Inc.,

“If there is fear in an organization, there is a reason for it — our job is (a) to find what’s causing it, (b) to understand it, and (c) to try to root it out.”

In order for people to be engaged and contributing, they need to be heard. And this can’t happen if communication only goes one way.

Punish People for Speaking Out. Reward Those That Don’t.

You create culture by rewarding the behaviors you want to encourage. And punishing those behaviors you want to cut. Toxic companies make it a practice to punish anyone who speaks out or threatens the status quo.

When a former Ellen Show employee suggested employees receive diversity and inclusion training, she was reprimanded by an executive producer. Others say that if they questioned the show’s management on an issue, their contract wouldn’t be renewed. Similarly, the show tended to play favorites and reward employees that ignored the poor treatment with on-hand swag from sponsors.

The message seems to be that employees are judged not their by performance, but on their loyalty to the existing culture. By discouraging behaviors that challenge the toxic culture and rewarding those that support it, the company perpetuates the problem. They remove those who could be part of a solution. And encourage those who support it.

There will always be some level of preferential treatment in any organization. Compensation and recognition should vary with performance, after all. But great companies base this on actual performance and objective standards. They use it as a tool to move the company forward according to its values. Anything else is a recipe for infighting and toxicity.

Neglect Peoples’ Personal Lives.

Toxic companies promote the idea that employees are lucky to work there. This rationalizes some amount of sacrifice to support the opportunity to work there. And this sacrifice often comes at the expense of peoples’ personal lives.

When one employee of The Ellen DeGeneres Show took medical leave to receive help after a suicide attempt, they were told their position no longer available to them. Another employee said they were fired after they needed to take time off for medical leave and family funerals.

Toxic companies love to say, “We’re a family here.” They’re not. No company is.

In fact, any time you hear a company claim to be a family, raise your level of skepticism a notch. By invoking this image, they’re able to call on employees to sacrifice for the greater good. Not to further some CEO’s bonus, but for the good of their family. Meanwhile peoples’ real families — and their lives outside of work — suffer as a result.

Companies that say you can only gain success at the price of a personal life usually want to deny you both.

Great companies don’t use their reputation to bully their employees into unnecessary sacrifices. While employees may feel lucky to work within a great culture, great companies also know that they’re just as fortunate to have those employees. And they show that appreciation by encouraging people to have balanced, productive lives both at work and outside of it.

Censure External Communications.

“If the main pillar of the system is living a lie,” wrote Vaclav Havel, “then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.” Toxic companies recognize that transparency is their enemy. And as such, they’ll try to manage any external communications to make sure the message doesn’t harm their image.

One former Ellen employee was told to take down their GoFundMe campaign over concerns that it would hurt Ellen’s image. The post was to raise money for medical costs that weren’t covered by the company’s health insurance. Instead of choosing to help an employee in need, the company was more concerned about maintaining its false façade.

Every company wants to manage its image. And no one’s ever thrilled to read a bad review of themselves on GlassDoor. But while toxic companies will try to control this information, great companies see it as an opportunity.

What if The Ellen DeGeneres Show had used that moment to recognize a potential gap in their health insurance and take action? Or what if they recognized that they had an employee with a problem and focused on helping her?

Great companies know that you can’t improve a culture by managing the external messaging. You can only improve by recognizing the problems, and fixing them.

Publicize Your Values. Then Ignore Them.

One sign of a toxic company isn’t the lack of published values, but the overwhelming abundance of them. It’s almost as if they’re trying to compensate for their behavior with a deluge of reminders and propaganda.

While Ellen’s value of “be kind” is a frequent focus on her show and acts of charity, it also runs counter to the allegations of racism, fear, and intimidation. Toxic companies tend to promote their values when it’s in their best interest. But they’re quickly forgotten when they run counter to the bottom line.

Great companies don’t need to plaster every wall with their values. They live them. Every day.

Great Leaders Create Great Cultures.

The role of a leader is to elevate the people around them. This doesn’t need to be the boss — leadership can, and does, come from every level of an organization. But management also carries the responsibility to address toxicity and set the right example.

Waiting for things to change on their own, sending people to training, or restructuring the organization won’t fix a toxic culture. These actions tend to only make things worse. Instead, leaders need to focus on how people treat each other every day.

It’s not complicated. But it does take focus and commitment.

1. Create a sense of unity. Help people see that you need everyone’s contribution for the organization to be a success.
2. Empower people to stand up and speak out when they see something wrong. A great culture is everyone’s responsibility.
3. Encourage two-way transparent communication. Every organization has some levels of dissent. It’s a leader’s job to find it.
4. Recognize performance. The behaviors you reinforce will be the ones that people repeat.
5. Respect that people have personal lives outside of work. Balance and sacrifice needs to go both ways.
6. Value the negative feedback. When you see an external communication that you don’t agree with, use it as an opportunity to understand the problem.
7. Worry less about promoting your values. And more about living them.

And when in doubt, think about The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Then try to do the opposite.