Is Blame Killing Your Workplace Culture?

Lars Nielsen (00:27.368) Welcome back to Cultures from Hell. is the podcast that dives deep into the good, the bad and the ugly of workplace cultures. I'm your host Lars. And today we are tackling a topic that unfortunately is all too common. Blame culture. A culture where pointing fingers and assigning fault overshadows learning and growth. This can stifle innovation, create fear, and ultimately damage the very fabric of an organization. To help us navigate this crucial issue, I'm thrilled to have, as always, my co-host and the expert of our show, Paulina, co-founder of the Culture Code Foundation with us today. Paulina, welcome back to the show. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:24.038) Thank you Lars, it's great to be here again. Lars Nielsen (01:27.414) Yes, we are back again. Paulina, as always on our shows, we start out with the basics, just so we set kind of a baseline. What exactly do we mean by blame culture and why is it so destroying to a workplace? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:49.66) Great question, Lars, as usual. So first of all, blame culture basically describes a work environment where people get blamed and shamed potentially if they make mistakes. Often this even takes place publicly and is usually explicitly designed to help keep people small, scared and obedient. The problem is when people are in fear mode, and I think we've spoken about this before. They will not perform on their ideal level. So that's the problem, the one problem for the business. Additionally, a blame culture effectively kills learning from mistakes as well as any form of information, because people will not be willing, will not be willing to take risks or try out new ways of doing things. So not the best scenario you want to have in either business because we're all task with creating so much, you know, or innovating constantly or changing up the things we're doing things. So if you want to, if you kill this, then yeah, you just hurt your own business. And on top of it all blame culture will lead to your people turning against each other and against you in order to protect themselves. And you've said that it'll stifle any form of collaboration since you're missing, you're missing out on the basics of effective collaboration, which is trust. Lars Nielsen (03:27.798) Okay, sometimes on the show, just for everybody that's tuning in for the first time, we bring in live stories. Some of them are anonymous. Some are willing to come on the show and tell the story. But today we are talking about an anonymous story. And thank you very much for sharing that, whoever sent it in. So we recently heard a story about... Sorry. We recently heard a story about a VP of people who on one hand holds mistakes over people's heads for extend appearance, while on the other hand reacts poorly to any criticism directed her way. This seems like a prime example of a toxic blame culture in action. What are your initial thoughts on this kind of situation? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:21.732) Yes. just so I'll start by telling the story and just to make it easier for me. Yes, we, this person wants to stay completely anonymous, to make it easier for me to actually tell the story, I'm going to name that person. And, so this will be the story of Peter and Peter shared a story with us where they tried to. Yeah. Basically drive, drive employee experience forward within their company. And they had gotten like a very vague go ahead from the VP people to dive into this topic and to assess it into more detail. somewhere, somewhere around the finishing line, the VP people said, I've never given permission to assess this topic. I've never wanted you to dive into this. There is no basis for changing anything about our current politics. you made a huge blunder in doing so, and I can't believe how junior you're reacting on this, in this kind of situation to just go ahead and do something that you didn't have a go ahead to go for. And not only did the VP people in the story blame Peter so bluntly. But they also did it publicly. So they shared this kind of criticism, this kind of attack actually is what I would use. That's actually more the word that I would use. They shared it in a public channel. I don't, I'm not sure if it's teams or Slack. doesn't matter. So, but other people could read these messages that were addressed to Peter and this, and at the end, and then Peter learned in the long run because Not only did nobody protect him or speak up for him because other people had clearly understood that he had gotten go ahead to research this kind of improvement that he was trying to accomplish, but nobody dared to speak up for him. And so Peter felt quite isolated. And then Peter learned afterwards from other stories that people told him about the same VP of people. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (06:38.074) that they would hold mistakes over people's heads for months and even years and keep reiterating the blame that they would dish out over time. And at the same time, there was a situation where the VP of people made a mistake and they absolutely refused to take any criticism on that. this hypocrisy, I find especially interesting in this, in the specific situations. So blaming others even for months, while not taking any responsibility for your own mistakes shows from my experience, huge insecurities in the VP cultures assessment of their own leadership skills and potentially even operational skills. So they are trying to control every aspect of the work others are doing and at the same time, trying to control extremely to an extreme extent, how their own work is perceived. And Lars, I would even wedge a bet and say that someone like this is quite likely to throw someone else under the bus in order to protect themselves. So in this specific situation, I can imagine that Peter's VP of people originally did give the go ahead just as Peter had had perceived. so they said, yes, go ahead, do it, assess the possibility of improving the situation for, yeah, just as Peter had suggested basically. But I'm also really sure that they kept this go ahead as noncommittal as possible to have a safe way out. if things didn't go their way. And I also assume that they got a hard no from the sea level somewhere down the line of the project. And now the VP people had to throw Peter under the bus, openly and publicly to make sure that they were completely distant from the whole situation to really make sure I wasn't involved in this. I never gave the go ahead. I have no idea what the... Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (09:00.092) If Peter did here because I wasn't involved at all. like, you know, this, kind of really distancing yourself of it. So my guess that it's just a guess again, I don't know the situation from like, from like the get go, but from my experience, this kind of behavior is a common theme in companies with such a clear blame culture that then what we've seen in Peter's story. Lars Nielsen (09:30.158) I noted the thing you said about putting out in a public channel. Like you said, it could be email, team slack, whatever people are using out there. That part I have, I would say I've tried myself, but it was not against me, but other people have done it. Like you were a leader, put something in the public channel to blame or shame. employees. And it's just so to use a young term here, cringe, when people do it. And I don't get it. Like, why don't you just approach that person and say like, hey, let's talk about this. It's like, I just don't get it. It has to be people that are so insecure that does this. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:00.316) Mm. Lars Nielsen (10:24.832) This is back to Pauline that we need to get that psychiatrist or expert in people's mindset on the show to tell us why are people doing this, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:32.496) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:36.026) Yeah. So I can only, I can only answer this question from, from my own experience. And I, I, yes, I clearly see a lot of insecurity. I also potentially see trying to cover your ass kind of, kind of, behavior in this. And I'll be super frank. I think there are also a couple of people out there, not the norm, not most of them, but there are few people who are just cruel. and like making people feel bad. I mean, we all remember bullies at school, right? Why do people bully other people at school? Or so it's basically the same. It's like a bullying kind of behavior. And that usually comes down to, I want to belong. I want to feel like I belong. I want to feel like I'm safe and I am safe by making sure that nobody attacks me. because I'm the biggest bully on the playground kind of thing. But yeah, that's just my personal experience. Again, not a psychological analysis, but yeah, it's definitely not something that is really. Lars Nielsen (11:51.43) And we are recording this in the middle of April, 2025. And right now we are seeing this life in action on a global scale with the big bullying in the schoolyard, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (12:03.574) Yes we are. Yes we are. And let's not go down that rabbit hole. Lars Nielsen (12:05.132) Yes, we are. Okay, Paulina, back, Nope. Let's get back to today's topic. What are some of the key indicators that a company might have a blame culture problem? What should people be looking out for out there? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (12:25.392) Yeah. I think we've mentioned all of them somewhere along the line already, but let me just summarize it here. So you should definitely look out for any fear of admitting mistakes, public reprimands, especially when that kind of reprimand trickles down from like senior leadership levels into lower level leadership, et cetera. Lack of transparency is also always... An indicator, not a debt giveaway, but an indicator that something might be going on. And definitely a focus on finding fault rather than solutions. Let me be super, super clear here. I am a huge fan of speaking about things that went wrong, but only under certain conditions. So condition number one is the intention has to be to figure out how to do things better next time around. And the second condition is that it's done purely fact-based. So no emotions, no personal opinions, no personal bias. That is super, super important because we are all biased and we have to self-reflect in order to understand where our biases are. And then discussing, always discussing only the how, how we can do things better and never the why. Why have things gone wrong? And never the who, so who has done things wrong. Under those conditions, becomes talking about mistakes becomes a huge opportunity for learning and growth for a business and for individuals. Other situations, it is just knocking people on the head with a stick. Lars Nielsen (14:16.95) Great, great points. Especially like singling out that we shouldn't be or we can't be biased. Which like you said yourself, this is such a hard thing to not be because we are all biased. So kind of seeing things from the other people's perspective, right? Instead of seeing it through your own eyes always. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (14:44.016) Yep, exactly. Lars Nielsen (14:45.622) Okay, so in the story, you mentioned Peter was publicly criticized for trying to improve employee experience and then bad mouth for a month afterwards. How can individuals in such a situation protect themselves and potentially influence the culture positively? my God, I hated that. is not my mother tongue. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:11.676) This is a really, really good question, Lars. And it's a really tough one because breaking up a blame culture, if you aren't in a lead senior leadership position is really, really hard to accomplish. And especially if the perpetrator is to be found in the HR department, like in Peter's story, because usually I would always say, talk to your people partner about it. But if the problem. originates in the HR department. Obviously there is not going to be any trust to reach out to the HR department and try to figure, figure things out together with them. So I guess my most applicable advice for any individual contributor is to always make sure that you know what is expected of you, both in your role and in a specific project and not just And don't just discuss this orally, make sure this is documented clearly, because that will help you to make sure that you can't be reprimanded afterwards. I'm not a big fan of giving this kind of advice because it definitely is operating within a bad culture and it's not so much contributing to a better culture. But I think again. This is your best way forward just to protect yourself in the situation. And especially if you're in a position where you cannot quit the job at the moment or don't want to for whatever reason. Right. If you do have leadership responsibility, however, you can definitely start by creating what I call a pocket of excellence within your company, with your team, and work really hard on showing the rest of the business. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (17:09.724) how well a culture of learning instead of culture of blaming contributes to your team's success. And that is big talk right now, right? So let me break the stone into something very, very practical for you leaders out there. So if you're in this kind of situation, I would recommend to start by very clearly setting the expectations toward your team, making very clear every step along the way. What do expect them to deliver? What do you expect them to do? How you expect them to provide feedback to you as well. And then walking the talk by speaking openly about your own mistakes, like sharing things that you've fucked up. sorry. I swore again. And also share and, asking for help, right. Creating, sharing vulnerability, asking them, okay. I made this mistake. This is my approach. This is what I want to do. Can you get, what are your ideas? How I can remedy this, this mistake even better, for example. And the next step would be from my perspective to implement after action reviews. That's a super simple technique actually comes from the Navy SEALs and it only takes about 15 minutes. and can be run after every important task or project. And you can easily implement it because it's just anchored around three questions. So basically after every project or important task, you can just gather the team together and just ask those three questions. What went well? What didn't go well? And what will we... do differently next time. So as you can see, is no who F'd anything up. There is nothing about, why did this, why did this go wrong is just focused on the how. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (19:24.86) So I love that. Lars Nielsen (19:24.896) Yeah, we are not singling anyone out by using those three questions. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (19:28.152) Exactly. Exactly. We're not singling anybody out. And especially the last question, what will we do differently next time also gets you involved in the solution. It gets the entire team involved in the solution, including the team leader or senior executive. Right. So this is super simple, easy to implement. And you can do this no matter what the structure is in the rest of the company. Just do it. Just go ahead with this. And you will see your team thrive, I assure you. Lars Nielsen (20:05.208) Let's just recap it for everybody out there listening. So after any project, sales cycle, anything that goes on in the company, use 15 minutes, ask three simple questions. What went well? What didn't go well? What will we do differently next time? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:26.233) Yes, exactly. Lars Nielsen (20:28.034) Perfect. So Paulina, many people might recognize aspects of blame culture in their own workplaces. What's one popular myth about blame or accountability that you would like to debunk for our listeners? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:44.796) I think I'll keep it super short and crisp here. I'd really like it if people start to understand that accountability will always be easier to achieve in any environment. If your people are allowed to take calculated risks and if it is truly accepted to fail when taking said risks. Lars Nielsen (21:12.206) And you did it actually short this time. Big applause. Okay, Paulino, now we get a little more personal here. Can you share a mistake, either personal or professional, that in retrospect has been a valuable learning experience for you in understanding learning or blaming culture? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:15.256) Yes, I'm learning. you Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:37.222) Yes. Yes, I'm happy to. So this actually happened in the company where we both worked at, at Solvemade. And I was responsible for the international sales department. And I discussed with Eric, our CEO, it's yeah, a solution about lead generation. So for all non-sales people out there, was that lead generation is a very crucial part of the sales process. It can be super expensive. can, and it basically defines your sales success at the end of the day. And I had researched specific tools and support systems that could help us bring in more leads that we can follow up on. And I presented these solutions with my clear recommendation to, to Eric, CEO and said, okay, this is what I want to do. It's going to cost us 60 K. I know this is a lot, but I project those outcomes. And Eric was true to his word. Like we always have this rule at Solvemade, you remember that probably Lars, that anyone could take any decision as long as it was researched and based on facts. we discussed the solutions. He said, I believe you're wrong. I believe this is not going to work. I believe it's just going to give cost us money. But go ahead and try it. And I went out, I tried it. It completely miserably failed. Just as Eric had predicted. It just cost us a lot of money and it didn't deliver the results that the customer had, the solution provider had actually promised us. And then I worked individually on trying to minimize the Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:40.412) the fallout. So I had very clear discussions about them. Yeah, doesn't let's not go down into the details. So it minimized that we didn't fall out on the 60 K but only had to pay like 5k. But anyway, it was a failure. And I took it to Eric. And I said, Okay, Eric, you were right. This didn't work out. It cost us 5k was I'm super angry with super angry with myself. And Let me have it. Let me have it. And Eric just turned to me and he was like, Ooh, I love this. Okay. Tell me, what did you learn? Right? So he didn't dwell on being right. He didn't ask me how he didn't say, yeah, great. Now we've lost this money. Nothing about nothing down this line. He just asked me, okay, what did you learn? What are you going to, what are you going to do differently next time? And I think that's a brilliant example of learning of a learning culture. Sure. It costs us five K. which could have been avoidable, but I took a calculated risk. I learned something throughout the process. I learned quite a lot throughout the process and I would be willing to try out new ways in the future and make sure that I implemented the things that I've learned to get a better outcome next time. Lars Nielsen (25:16.18) And I would also argue Paulina that some of the people that I know and I admire is the people that have failed in different aspects of life, either personally or professionally, because when you fail, that's when you learn. If you're able to sit down and reflect on it, of course, some people also fail and never learn. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:34.992) Exactly. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:43.068) Fair point. But I totally agree. Failure is where growth happens. If everything just goes smoothly. Lars Nielsen (25:49.27) Yes, it is. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:53.434) And you'll just sail through. there are people who are just super lucky out there, but my guess would be that people who just sail through everything don't take big enough risks. Lars Nielsen (26:05.624) Exactly. 100 % agree. Okay, so we are coming to the end of this episode. Could you please kind of summarize or sum up the episode for today? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (26:18.224) Yes, I'll try my very best to keep it short. Thank you. First of all, for all of us, for all of you out there listening to us today and listening to how we were shedding light on the often toxic world of blame culture. We have spoken about how blame culture can stifle growth, erode trust and create a climate of fear and thereby reducing innovation and also having a very negative impact, obviously, on the mental health of your employees. So please remember when you are doing the opposite, if you foster a culture of learning where mistakes are seen as opportunities for improvement rather than reasons for punishment, that creates such a huge positive impact into all areas of your business. And especially you leaders, I'm sorry that I have to single you out all the time, but it is true. leaders, you do play a vital role in setting the tone, in promoting psychological safety and in focusing on systemic solutions for such a culture because individuals just don't have enough impact to do so. Lars Nielsen (27:35.758) And for keeping it short, you're getting this one. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (27:39.1) you Okay, okay, keep it short! Lars Nielsen (27:48.558) Okay, for all our listeners out there, if you found today's discussion insightful, be sure to follow Paulina and the Culture Code Foundation on their websites. We will leave a link to the website and all social medias in the show notes. They offer incredible resources and expertise to help organizations build healthier and more productive cultures. Thank you for tuning. into Cultures from Hell. Join us next time as we explore another fascinating aspect of workplace dynamics. Until then, take care and cultivate a culture of growth, not blame. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:34.044) Thank you, Lars, and thank you everyone out there.