A few bad apples is a toxic culture…

This Monday’s headlines shared the outcomes of a long awaited BBC review, which was commissioned in the wake of scandal surrounding news presenter Huw Edwards. In brief, the review concluded that the BBC “does not have a widespread toxic culture” but do have “a minority of people whose bad behaviour is not addressed”.

In his statement, BBC Chairman Samir Shah said he would ‘draw a line in the sand’:

“After today, let me state it clearly, if you think you’re too big a star or too important to live by the values of this organisation, not only are you wrong, but we will find you out.”

This report – and Samir Shah himself – are very keen to emphasise that the BBC absolutely contains ‘a few bad apples’, but that the wider culture is ‘not inherently toxic’…and I’m afraid I have to disagree!

As MD of ASK I like to think that I’ve learned a lot about Leadership, and about organisational culture. ASK have more than three decades of experience in L&D, and we specialise in supporting senior executives who want to overcome significant issues in their own organisational culture. We’ve worked with small teams, massive global organisations, public and private sector, and have gained a wealth of information into how those teams function, and how their leaders lead them.

One thing I can say for certain is this; if your organisation is made up of 99% excellent, respectful and well behaved employees, but 1% appear to get away with abusive, inappropriate or aggressive behaviours, that is a toxic culture.

Any good Leader should be aware that when 99% of your people know that the 1% who do abuse the power they hold, secure in the knowledge that they will never be held accountable or see consequence or repercussions – even when there are a lot of complaints – what you actually have is an organisation that’s 100% toxic.

In this kind of environment you can’t pretend that it’s a small problem, or one that only impacts a few people. Those ‘few bad apples’ don’t just harm the people on the receiving end of their behaviour; when that behaviour is hidden, covered up by your leaders, and when the people who do complain are dismissed or penalised for speaking up, the resulting rot spreads into every corner of the organisation. The message your people are getting from the very top is “your needs don’t matter, and we won’t protect you”.

The ‘few bad apples’ – those people abusing their power – will keep getting away with it. They have no reason to change, and this means that everyone else either keeps their head down to avoid being victimised, or joins in, becoming part of that rot. The toxicity spreads, impacting every single employee, and every single team.

A culture where even just a few people with power can abuse it, can wield that power as a shield against consequence, is a psychologically unsafe environment for every person in the organisation.

For this review – and the BBC’s Chairman – to point blame at a select few individuals, and wash their hands of the wider issue, shows that people working in the BBC are still not safe. Still not protected. That the most powerful person in the BBC – the Leader of all their Leaders – is not going to do anything. The culture is toxic because the line being drawn appears to be more about shutting people up than actually facing the issues. Shah may as well have said “we sacrificed a big name, and we went through the right motions to regain public trust, but nothing will actually change. We just wanted people to stop asking awkward questions.”

Let’s refer to Shah’s statement again:

“The report highlighted some deep-seated issues, and people who abuse power or punch down or behave badly have no place at the corporation. Those people make life not just difficult, but at times unbearable for colleagues. While most staff are respectful, there continues to be pockets in the organisation where this is not the case. There is a minority of people whose behaviour is simply not acceptable. There are still places where powerful individuals on and off screen can abuse that power to make lives for their colleagues unbearable.”

If your people don't trust that their well-being is important to your most senior Leaders and Managers, they cannot perform at their best

Until and unless the culture within your organisation is a safe working environment for 100% of your people, it can never be anything but toxic: a few bad apples will rot the entire workforce. Trust is hard to earn - but even harder to win back when it's been lost.

Psychological Safety is vital for every organisation's success

With so much experience in L&D, and in the more than three decades ASK have supported organisational change for so many clients, I know that widespread change in an organisation as large as the BBC – and one with such deep-rooted cultural norms – is a difficult undertaking.

Setting out to reshape attitudes and behaviours that have not only been accepted but apparently encouraged – because allowing such heinous behaviour to go unpunished is essentially no different to permission – will take a lot of investment.

That investment would also not impact the organisation financially, but more significantly in investment of the time, effort and commitment needed from every single one of the BBC’s senior executives, to change the way that they lead and support their people, and to embed those changes throughout their teams. It would be a significant and concerted effort, and it will be hard…but whilst there are still ‘pockets’ of people who abuse their power to harm their colleagues – who, in their own words, ‘make the lives of their colleagues unbearable’ – nobody within the BBC is protected.

Worst of all, I think that it’s very concerning to hear their most senior executive making statements like “the wider culture is not inherently toxic”, because it shows that he has an inherent disregard for the truth, for the evidence and independent feedback of thousands of his people, and for the many BBC employees who were hoping for sincere change.

I imagine that there are a great many BBC employees this week who feel hurt, and frustrated, by the conclusions announced. I also suspect that most of them aren’t particularly surprised…

This investigation – which heard from 2,500 BBC staff members and freelancers – did say that many felt the culture has improved in recent years, but that there are still a minority of people who behave unacceptably, and whose behaviour is not addressed. Commissioning this review brought people within the BBC the hope that real change would come. That their complaints would be heard, their safety and well-being would be prioritised by their Leaders and in every BBC team or workplace, and that steps would be taken to make the wider culture more protective of every person working within it.

Instead, they’ve been told “it isn’t a big problem, it’s just a few people”. That it doesn’t matter, because it’s ‘a few bad apples’ and the damage those few individuals do doesn’t matter. Therefore, that they don’t matter.

Shah’s statement went on to say “The report makes several recommendations that prioritise action over procedural change, and that is exactly right. It also addresses some deep-seated issues, for example, the need to make sure everyone can feel confident and not cowed about speaking up.”

In response to that, I’d like to draw particular attention to what I personally think is the most important line from the report: “Many employees have a degree of cynicism about the ability of BBC leaders and managers to enact the necessary change”.

I’m not surprised that they’ve voiced cynicism. This statement doesn’t seem to support the idea that everyone can feel confident about speaking up…I imagine there’s an awful lot more of that cynicism being voiced this week, and that BBC employees are having a lot of conversations behind closed doors about the depressing inevitability of this news.

If the head of the organisation they work in responds to such a damning review by dismissing what it says about the wider culture, and wants to brush it all of by pointing the finger at a few individuals without acknowledging that the wider culture is what allows them to behave so badly, what confidence can the 99% of good employees ever have that things will change?

Any organisation which does nothing to prevent “just 1%” of people abusing their power, and where they can continue to mistreat colleagues, driving them to burnout, or derailing their careers entirely, is toxic. One which ignores even a small number of powerful people causing harm to others and behaving in ways that negatively impact the environment so many others are working in, is toxic. The organisation only having a small number of overtly toxic people does not mean it is a small issue; it isn’t a 1% issue until it’s 100% not an issue.

Until Samir Shah, and the executive board he sits at the head of, accept that the BBC clearly has these huge problems in their culture, and take honest steps to make the BBC a place where every person is working in a psychologically safe environment, the rot will remain.

Accepting that your organisation has a toxic culture is challenging – and taking responsibility for fixing it even more so – but for every Leader, that responsibility falls on your shoulders.

Great Leaders prioritise their people, because your people are the secret to every success – and every single one of them deserves a working environment in which they can thrive, not just survive.

If you think that your own organisation has cultural issues, or that your Leaders and Managers need to develop their Leadership skills, to better support the people they lead, we can help. How?

Just ASK!

A few bad apples is a toxic culture…