Leaders Make Wrong Assumptions about Toxic Work Culture

In many organizations, bad news about toxic behaviors gets filtered out as it moves up the hierarchy. As a result, top leaders often think they’ve done a better job addressing toxic culture than they actually have. In a survey of 16,000 managers across nearly 500 companies, top executives were 24% more likely to say that they addressed unethical behavior quickly and consistently compared with how well middle managers thought the C-suite dealt with unethical actions. Top executives were 48% more likely to believe they dealt effectively with cutthroat managers. 

Donald Sull and Charles Sull writing for the MIT Sloan Management Review