A cure for toxic work
- Main Story: Use of the phrase “toxic workplace” in books has increased remarkably since 2010.
- This crisis of toxicity isn’t just about bad managers. It’s about our very definition of progress.
- Also among this week’s stories: Why the market hates hubris and how the instincts that once kept us alive now push us towards panic and greed.
I’m going to take a quick digression from the usual Nightcrawler recaps this week to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately.
Everywhere I turn — podcasts, research calls, dinner conversations — people are talking about “toxic workplaces.” The phrase has become ubiquitous; almost unavoidable.
So I did what most researchers do when they’re curious (or procrastinating): I Googled it.
That led me to a chart showing the term’s meteoric rise beginning in the early 2010s. The curve shoots upward like a fever.
This is the chart:
Now, a few caveats before I get carried away.
Google’s Ngram Viewer isn’t a perfect mirror of reality. It measures the frequency of words in books — not the lived experience of people hunched under fluorescent lights in glass conference rooms.
Still, it tracks, at least anecdotally, with what I’ve seen across nearly two decades of reporting and conversation. The phrase “toxic workplace” barely existed before 2010. Today, it’s everywhere — startups and conglomerates, tech firms and law firms, boardrooms and Slack channels alike.
Ironically, I suspect this is partial progress. We finally have a name for what previous generations silently endured: the burnout, the manipulation, the psychological games disguised as “high performance.” The phrase itself captures a whole ecosystem of dysfunction — from gaslighting bosses to ambitious colleagues fiercely defending their little fiefdoms.
But the real story, I think, lies in what this exponential curve says about us — and what it’s doing to the way we work.
Over the weekend, at a neighborhood gathering, I met a retired surgeon. He told me that after his medical practice was acquired, he eventually quit. Not because he stopped loving medicine, but because the new leadership began every meeting the same way: “Your numbers look good.” Not, “Your patients are doing well.”
A small change in language — maybe — but to him, it was everything.
I think we all have our versions of that story. The project that lost its soul. The team that burned out. The company that grew too fast to remember why it existed in the first place. We talk about innovation as if it were mechanical — more process, more output — but maybe we’ve inverted the model. It’s not that great work creates great culture. It’s that great culture makes great work possible.
In my view, trust and belonging are the real engines of creativity. But somewhere in the late twentieth century, work became the primary stage for meaning. What do you do? became the central question of identity. Religion waned. Communities loosened. Companies stepped in to fill the void with grand promises: purpose, belonging, mission. We’re a family, the corporation says — right before laying off 800 people on a Zoom call.
The crisis, then, isn’t just about bad managers. It’s deeper. It’s about our very definition of progress. And it won’t be solved with “resilience training” or another mindfulness app. The solution has to be structural. It begins by reimagining a company not as a machine for extraction, but as a garden for cultivation. The longest-lasting organizations I’ve studied don’t optimize only for efficiency; they invest in trust. A healthy workplace doesn’t require everyone to be cheerful. It requires honesty.
A company owner in France — whose family business dates back to the 1700s — once told me, “It’s culture. It’s all culture.” That line has stayed with me. Because most toxic workplaces stem from an inverted belief: that people exist to grow the company, rather than the company existing to grow the people.
When I shared a post recently about spending time with the Henokiens — an Association of family-owned businesses over 200 years old — Claudio Stefani, the seventeenth-generation leader of Giusti Balsamic Vinegar, left a beautiful comment: “Love the people you work with — you are at their service, not the other way around.”
That’s it, really. The future of business isn’t about extracting more from people — it’s about investing more in them. The companies that outlast will be the ones that let humans do what they do best: grow, adapt, and create.
In other words, it’s a return to humanity.
A few more links I enjoyed:
The Spotlight – via Ian Cassel
Key quote: “When you start having some success you realize there are two types of people in this world: People that desperately want you to know they are doing well, and people that desperately don’t want you to know they are doing well. The older you get the more you respect the latter. It’s the same with your portfolio. Most problems occur because you can’t keep your mouth shut when you’re doing well. The market hates hubris so it puts a target on your back to teach you a lesson.”
How your cognitive biases lead to terrible investing behaviors – via Barry Ritholtz
Key quote: “You probably think investing is about markets and strategy, but Barry Rithotz argues that it’s actually about biology. Our brains evolved to spot danger, not to manage portfolios, and the instincts that once kept us alive now push us towards panic and greed. That same wiring that told our ancestors to run from predators now tells modern investors to sell at the bottom.”
