20 Apr Cray-cray’s in the workplace
I know I am pushing the envelope.
Years ago, I came across a book about how not to be an a$$hole at work. It was super cool – blunt, accurate and helpful. The punch line was something like, ‘Every company has one, and if you don’t know who it is, it is probably you!’ When I wanted to find the name of the book now to reference, there were tons of books on the topic. This of course then confirmed the need for yet another book – ‘The a$$hole whisperer’ too.
There are so many trendy terminologies that relates to bullying, narcissistic behaviours, psychopaths etc etc. It becomes such a minefield and hard to be PC about the related topics. Here we are talking about leaders that show up to create general psychologically safety. This is about genuine kindness, not just niceness. Being approachable, even if the answer that you will give might not be the one they want to hear, and still doing it in a kind way.
The cray-cray related behaviours is not just the unacceptable obvious stuff – shouting, swearing at colleagues, slamming doors, or sending aggressive emails. I am talking about something far more subtle, and in many ways, far more damaging. I am talking about a leader who is confident, driven, high-performing – and completely unaware of the trail of fear they leave in their wake. Or perhaps aware, and unbothered, because it is rationalized.
The tricky thing about psychological safety is that it doesn’t only disappear when someone behaves badly in the obvious ways. It erodes quietly. Incrementally. Through patterns of behaviour that individually seem justifiable, even reasonable – a high standard here, a sharp comment there, a decision made without consultation, a vision that changes before anyone has had time to align with the last one. Slowly, people stop offering ideas. They stop asking questions. They do their work, keep their heads down, and quietly begin to disengage. The commitment stays. The fear grows.
I was asked to do a re-run engagement survey for a client’s sister organisation. A year earlier, we did the same exercise as a baseline. I knew the context. Strong, decisive leadership at the top. Lots of energy, lots of change. And a team that, from the outside, appeared to be functioning at the time of the first measure.
When the new results came in, the picture was unmistakable. Not a catastrophic collapse – the kind that is easy to act on – but a systematic, directional decline across the items that matter most when a leader is changing the culture from the top.
These people were not disengaged. They were not checked out. They were deeply invested – and deeply afraid.
That split – between high commitment and growing fear – is the fingerprint of a psychologically unsafe environment driven by a strong leader. It is not apathy. It is something more painful: caring enough to stay, but not feeling safe enough to speak.
When people experience fear and a lack of psychological safety at the top, they retreat into their silos. They stop collaborating spontaneously. They protect themselves. The organisation fragments – not through conflict, but through quiet withdrawal.
Strong is not the same as safe. I want to be careful here. I am not suggesting that strong leadership is inherently damaging. I work with decisive, high-drive leaders regularly – and when that drive is paired with genuine kindness and regard for the people around them, the results can be extraordinary. What the data in this case reflected was something different: a leader whose fearlessness does not extend to creating an environment where others can also be unafraid.
Fearless leadership that does not create psychological safety for others is not truly fearless. It is self-directed courage. And self-directed courage, at leadership level, can systematically produce fear in everyone else.
This is why the item measured call ‘safe offering’ in our Leadership 360, is not soft. It is structural. A non-threatening, approachable leader does not just make people feel comfortable. They make the organisation smarter, more honest, more resilient, and more capable of catching its own mistakes before they become expensive ones.
And if you are a leader reading this and thinking, ‘my team seems fine’ – I would gently ask: do you know that, or do you just not know otherwise? Because the cray-cray a$$hole in the workplace is not always visible to everyone. Sometimes it is perfectly hidden behind 97% commitment scores and 100% customer care. The survey sees what the silence does not say.