256. What is a Toxic Culture?
At The Table with Patrick Lencioni
Patrick Lencioni
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
How does working in a “toxic” culture affect your ability to perform and trust others? Also, if your organization has an unhealthy work environment, how can leaders begin the process of internal correction?
In episode 256 of At The Table, Pat Lencioni and Cody Thompson unpack what “toxic culture” really means—and what it doesn’t. They explore how toxicity rarely starts at the bottom but usually traces back to the executive team’s dysfunction, lack of clarity, or tolerance for poor behavior. They also share the signs, causes, and antidotes of toxic workplaces, encouraging leaders to create environments rooted in honesty and accountability.
Topics explored in this episode:
(00:20) Defining “Toxic Culture”
* The importance of defining “toxic” and challenging the assumption that perks equal health.
(04:00) The Source of Toxicity
* Toxic cultures almost always originate at the executive level, not among lower-level employees.
(08:00) How to Diagnose Toxicity
* Cody compares toxic environments to poor sleep—you can feel it without needing a metric.
(13:00) What Toxic Cultures Look Like
* Key signs: political behavior, tolerated poor performance, and confusion from unclear goals.
* How even good leaders can accidentally create toxicity.
(17:00) Healing and Hope for Teams
* Every organization experiences some level of dysfunction—but honesty and ownership can fix it.
* The idea of replacing the word “toxic” with “dysfunctional” or “political,” emphasizing that healing begins with truth.
In this episode, Pat and Cody discussed the following study by the employment website, Monster: “Toxic Workplaces Are Worsening: 80% of U.S. Workers Now Say Their Job Hurts Their Mental Health”; https://www.monster.com/career-advice/job-search/news-and-insights/mental-health-in-the-workplace-poll-2025
This episode of At The Table with Patrick Lencioni is brought to you by The Table Group: https://www.tablegroup.com. We teach leaders how to make work more effective and less dysfunctional. We also help their employees be more fulfilled and less miserable.
At The Table is a podcast that lives at the connection between work life, leadership, organizational health, and culture. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4hJKKSL), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6NWAZzkzl4ljxX7S2xkHvu), and YouTube (https://bit.ly/At-The-Table-YouTube).
Follow Pat Lencioni on https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-lencioni-orghealth, http://www.youtube.com/@PatrickLencioniOfficial, and https://x.com/patricklencioni.
Be sure to check out our other podcast, The Working Genius Podcast with Patrick Lencioni, on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4iNz6Yn), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3raC053GF5mtkq6Y1klpRU), and YouTube (https://bit.ly/Working-Genius-YouTube).
Let us know your feedback via [email protected].
This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nobody is immune to this. |
| 0:01.9 | The best leader out there, if they're feeling bad thinking, gosh, I think we might have some toxicity to my company, the answer is, yeah, you probably do. When you hear about toxicity in an organization, don't say, well, we probably would never be like that, say there may be some that's creeping up. I want to go find that, and'm the leader of the organization and I'm going to |
| 0:21.4 | figure it out and own it. I can't believe that when an executive team gets a survey back that says |
| 0:26.0 | we have a dysfunctional or toxic culture that they're really surprised. Welcome to At the Table, |
| 0:32.3 | the podcast that lives at the intersection of teamwork, leadership, culture, and organizational health. I'm your host, Pat Lanchone, joined by my regular trustee, wonderful co-host Cody Thompson. How's it going today, Cody? Flew all the way to Nashville just to podcast virtually in a different room than you are. Yeah, that's right. You're around the corner and down the hall. It's great to have you here. It always is. We have a big group here today. Hey, what are we going to talk about today, Cody? |
| 0:57.2 | This will be a fun one. It's called What is a toxic culture? That's right. That's right. Recently, Monster, not the energy drink, but the recruiting company. I'm pretty sure. It might have been the energy drink. |
| 1:09.4 | Did a survey of employees, over a thousand |
| 1:12.2 | employees in different industries and asked them about their work experience. And 80% of them |
| 1:18.3 | reported having a toxic work environment. And I thought this was really interesting. And so we |
| 1:23.6 | want to talk about today. This is going to be really fun because this really goes back to the |
| 1:26.5 | very beginning of why we started this company 24 years ago. No, 28 years ago. The first thing, though, |
| 1:31.9 | I want to talk about, Cody, is they didn't define toxic in this. Right. And so that's okay. We're going to |
| 1:38.8 | talk about that today. But the other thing is they also, the question we have to ask ourselves is, who did they survey? |
| 1:47.1 | Because if you were to survey in a company and you had an equal number of employees that were |
| 1:53.3 | great and a bunch of employees that were not great who did not fit there or were not really great |
| 1:57.7 | workers, if the ones who are not great workers call it toxic, that's not |
| 2:01.6 | such a bad thing. So it really depends on who they asked. And if they said of our top performers at |
| 2:09.3 | our company, they called it toxic, I'm super scared. If they asked a bunch of people at a really big, |
| 2:16.2 | mediocre organization, I don't want to say the DMV or |
| 2:19.2 | something because some DMVs are better than others, but you know what I mean? I don't know that I |
| 2:23.4 | would give it as much credence. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. I mean, you're right. If there's |
| 2:29.6 | a bunch of low performers in an environment that doesn't value low performance and they're getting |
... |
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