Welcome to the Brilliance Brief. Every week, we break down leadership, mindset, and personal growth into something real and doable. Expect research-backed insights, a little storytelling, and practical ideas that actually fit into your life (even the messy parts).

I once worked for a CEO who made life miserable for everyone.

The room got tense when he walked in. Good people stopped speaking up. Decisions got made through fear instead of judgment. 

Before long, the company culture was unrecognizable.

I had a choice to make.

I could leave. Or I could stay and try to protect the team I cared about.

I chose to stay.

For a long stretch, my job had two halves. There was the day-to-day work, and the work of absorbing what came down so my team didn’t have to.

I’m not saying it was the right choice for everyone. Plenty of people leave situations like that, and they’re not wrong to.

But for me, leaving felt like leaving people behind.

Eventually the board stepped in and the CEO was fired. Everything changed overnight. 

We could all breathe again.

Toxic cultures rarely start with one big defining moment. They build slowly, through small things that get ignored.

A senior leader belittles someone in a meeting, and nobody pushes back. A top performer abuses people, but their results get celebrated. Over time, these patterns become normal. 

What gets ignored gets endorsed. 

MIT research from Donald Sull and his team found that a toxic culture is 10x more predictive of employees leaving than how much they’re paid. 

A separate study from the American Psychological Association found that nearly 1 in 5 workers describe their workplace as toxic.

People don’t leave companies. They leave cultures that asked them to ignore things they couldn’t.

You can usually feel a toxic culture before you can name it. 4 patterns to look for:

Behavior that would get anyone else corrected is overlooked because their results are good. “He doesn’t really mean it that way.” “She’s just direct.” “That’s just how feedback works around here.” 

Meetings get quieter. Half the room silently disagrees with the decision while nodding along to it. Anyone with a real concern feels afraid to share it. 

The exit interviews say “growth opportunity,” but the hallway conversations say something else entirely.

When something goes well, the most senior person takes the credit. When something goes wrong, someone three levels down gets blamed.

If three or four of these are showing up where you work, the culture is telling you something. The harder question is what you do next.

You can’t change what’s tolerated at the top, but you can change what’s tolerated under you. 

Be the buffer. When something rolls downhill, catch it before it lands. Push back on what shouldn’t reach them. (They may never know you did it, and that’s okay.)

Your team is learning culture from you, whether you mean to teach it or not. Every meeting you run, piece of feedback you give, and how you respond when someone disagrees with you teaches your team what to do.

Patterns are easier to act on than feelings. A calm record of what’s happening keeps you from wondering if you’re the crazy one.

Decide ahead of time what would make you leave. Lines you’ve already drawn are easier to hold than lines you’re trying to figure out in the moment.

This week, pick one behavior in your company culture that you think needs changing. 

Decide what you want the new standard to be, then make it visible in your next team meeting. 

For example, let’s say your director always interrupts your colleagues, and everyone moves on like it didn’t happen. Wait for a pause in the meeting and say, “I’d love to hear the rest of what Sarah was saying.”

The culture you build inside your team is the culture those people carry with them for the rest of their careers. 

Some of the best leaders I know held the line in companies that didn’t deserve them. Their people remember.

The board eventually did its job at my company and fired the CEO. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t.

Either way, what changes next is up to you.

Protect your people. Set your standard. Hold your line. 

That’s the leadership your team will remember.

Talk soon,
Justin

P.S. What’s the best business book you’ve read in the last year? Hit reply and let me know. I’m always adding more to my list.