The opinions expressed by entrepreneur contributors are their own.
key takeaways
- When performance stagnates, leaders blame cultural problems because it is broad enough to describe everything and not specific enough to implicate anyone.
- Leaders who have stopped spending time with their people often don't know what stands in their way. Ask how they feel about the work, the pace, and the environment.
- Ask those above you, your peers, and your direct reports what they see as your strengths and weaknesses.
- Reward people who raise problems before solving them. Otherwise, issues remain hidden until they become difficult to detect and resolve.
according to iHire's 2026 Toxic Workplace Trends Report79% of employees reported experiencing a toxic workplace bad leadership And management cited leaders who were unethical, irresponsible or unsupportive as the reason. Officials rarely see it the same way. When performance drops, the first diagnosis reached is almost always the word "culture."
I've spent nearly 20 years inside companies and have seen how leaders reach the same explanations. It is safe to blame culture because it points everywhere at once. Naming your own decisions points to exactly the same person.
fixing Display Start with a tough question: "What specifically am I doing that is causing this?" Start your search here:
1. Pay attention to distance before diagnosing culture
Officials rarely consider themselves the cause of demonstrations stalls - He has usually stopped getting so close to the work that he can see his fingerprints on it. In an interview, Jana Boon, SVP of growth enablement at full-funnel digital marketing agency Interro Digital, told me that the behavior that executives overlook in themselves is almost always the same: "Poor performance is labeled a cultural problem, when it's often just happening at a distance."
Boone said the more common issue is not culture, but a leader who hasn't spent hands on Spend time once in a while with people who are more inclined to solve rather than listen. The work has changed since that leader last did it themselves, he said, and they often don't know exactly what's standing in someone's way.
Boone's point goes against the instinct that made most of these leaders successful in the first place: solving fast. Before assuming an ability difference, he recommended asking a person directly how they felt about the work, pace, and environment. “And then stay quiet long enough to hear the real answer,” she said.
2. Trace labels back to a decision
boeingHad to say the quiet part at the end of the regulator out loud while everyone else was reaching for the same word. After a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max mid-flight in January 2024, an FAA audit found that Boeing's culture had placed more emphasis on mass production than safety standards, Administrator Michael Whitaker said. told NBC News.
But the peculiarities he pointed out were not cultural in any vague sense. Boeing's own protocols, he said, "are not what you would expect" if safety is the first priority. Failures are traced to a specific, correctable set of leadership decisions: what was rewarded, what was left out and what was signed without a safety briefing.
This lesson is far below aircraft construction. Before filing a team's output under "culture," name the actual decisions behind it, including what was accepted, what was ignored, and what was rewarded that shouldn't have been. It's hard to pin down a culture because it's everywhere and nowhere. There is a name associated with any decision.
3. Ask the question you don't want the answer to
Most Leaders Who Really Want to Audit Their Own habits Don't know where to start, and this uncertainty is often reason enough to give up before even trying. Boon said the self-examination that most leaders skip starts with a simple, uncomfortable request: Ask the people above you, your peers and your direct reports what they see as your strengths and your weaknesses.
“You'll get three different answers, and the gap between them is the point,” he said. The instructions that follow are the hard part. “Don't interpret, don't contextualize, don't to protect - Just take it, and pay attention to where the three groups disagree and where they agree,' she explained.
He suggested writing an individual study on what is going well and what needs work and then basing it on what you found from the three groups. The distance between those two lists is the real audit, Boone said. Most leaders skip this step for the reason stated simply: “A culture diagnosis builds a workshop an honest look Your own habits create a list of conversations you have to have now.”
4. Reward the problem before seeking the solution
A University of Iowa Study According to researcher Daniel Newton, it was found that management teams respond more readily to employees who state a problem, than to those who come up with a proposed solution. Newton said that the tendency to demand a solution with every problem is backward. When people realize that they need some resolution before speaking, they often tend to keep quiet Instead, problems go unreported and remain unresolved.
The same filter works at the top of an organization, not just on the front lines. If a leader takes a concern seriously only when someone comes up with a solution, the leader is training people to withhold accurate information that will trace the performance problem back to a specific decision rather than to a vague mood.
Loosen that filter - Ask what's wrong Before asking what to do about it - and the earlier the problems are named, the easier it is to trace something closer to the source and controlled by a leader rather than in a culture that affects no one.
You don't need a workshop, survey, or new deck to get it right. You have to pay attention at a distance, name the decision, ask people who actually see you, and reward the person who tells you something is wrong before they learn to fix it.
Pick one of those four things and do it this week. Your team already knows what you're avoiding.
key takeaways
- When performance stagnates, leaders blame cultural problems because it is broad enough to describe everything and not specific enough to implicate anyone.
- Leaders who have stopped spending time with their people often don't know what stands in their way. Ask how they feel about the work, the pace, and the environment.
- Ask those above you, your peers, and your direct reports what they see as your strengths and weaknesses.
- Reward people who raise problems before solving them. Otherwise, issues remain hidden until they become difficult to detect and resolve.
according to iHire's 2026 Toxic Workplace Trends Report79% of employees reported experiencing a toxic workplace bad leadership And management cited leaders who were unethical, irresponsible or unsupportive as the reason. Officials rarely see it the same way. When performance drops, the first diagnosis reached is almost always the word "culture."
I've spent nearly 20 years inside companies and have seen how leaders reach the same explanations. It is safe to blame culture because it points everywhere at once. Naming your own decisions points to exactly the same person.
fixing Display Start with a tough question: "What specifically am I doing that is causing this?" Start your search here:
