Welcome to Cultures From Hell

Lars Nielsen (00:01) Welcome to the very first episode of Cultures from Hell. I'm Lars, I'm your host today alongside with my co-host and the expert of the show Paulina. We will dive into what makes workplace cultures so toxic and how to recognize and fix them. Whether you face micromanagement, lack of transparency or just an overall bad culture. We're here to decode this dysfunction and bring clarity to the chaos. So let's get into it. Welcome Paulina. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:39) Thank you, Lars. It's great to be here. Lars Nielsen (00:42) Pauline, before we start diving into why you wanted to do this podcast, because it is your idea, just give us a introduction to yourself, why you wanted to do the podcast, and also what are you doing today? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:59) Okay. Thanks Lars. So I wanted to do this podcast because culture has been like my number one passion topic for such a long time. I always call myself a cultural warrior because I've seen so much shit out there, both from companies that I've worked with, companies that friends have worked for and the companies that are actually my customers because I co-founded the Culture Code Foundation just last year. which is a small consultancy that is focused on helping companies transform their culture to become just more engaging and more human. so our goal basically is, always say that, I want employees to go to bed on Sunday night, looking forward to Monday and not with like a grim stomach and being afraid of having to face their there. colleagues or their bosses again the next morning. So that's what we're doing and yeah, culture has been my number one topic for I think the past 13 years actually. Lars Nielsen (02:12) And let's just be very transparent here on this podcast here. You and I used to work together. You used to be my, and again, like we're speaking about culture. So saying that you used to be my boss is actually a bad culture, right? Because it's kind of, you can whip me and get me to do stuff, but we used to work together in a company called SoftMate. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (02:20) Yes. We did, we did, absolutely. And as you know, I loved every minute of that. And for me, obviously, you know that as well, I don't like the term boss, but there are different forms of culture that fit to the different kind of environment that you're working in and the different kind of dynamics you need to make that specific business successful. However, I very strongly believe that there are a couple of cultural basics that just every company should bring if they don't want to fuck it up. Basically. And what I see a lot out there is the companies that tend to be more toxic than others. They usually have CEOs or leaders that believe that people are lazy, that people need to be put under pressure and that people need to need to just function and just get their shit together and basically put all the responsibility for performance on the employees. That's like a common theme that I've seen. Lars Nielsen (03:45) Maybe we should in a later episode of this podcast, because we have planned out a lot of episodes already, but maybe in a later episode, we should talk about like, let's call it job titles, you know, and like, do you want to use the term boss and why it might not be a very good idea to use the term bosses and so on. But let's put a note on that and get back to that. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (03:52) Yes. I've put a pin in it mentally. Lars Nielsen (04:12) So Paulina, again, you explained a little bit about why you wanted to create the podcast. What's the big issue with workplace culture and what isn't talked about out there when it comes to workplace culture? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:33) I think, so first of all, thank you the question, for the really great question, for the really great, no, it doesn't work anymore. For this really great question. There we go. So I think from my perspective, when it comes to culture, a lot of CEOs, entrepreneurs, they do theoretically understand what kind of importance culture has. Lars Nielsen (04:43) Hahaha! Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (05:03) in terms of their business, but they don't fully grasp either that it actually is the biggest lever that they have towards their overall success and growth. And or they do not understand that it is their responsibility to actually intentionally forge their culture. They just believe that culture is something that happens. and that they can't really change anything about it or they, as I said before, think it's a wishy-washy... Is that an English term? I'm not sure. Lars Nielsen (05:45) Let's just use it. You're German, I'm Danish. We can come up with whatever we want to. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (05:50) So a lot of entrepreneurs think that culture is a soft topic, know, that it doesn't really contribute to business success, it... Damn it. I'm looking for the perfect translation into English. In Germany, would say, is not a pony ranch, right? And work is not a pony ranch. And they associate culture with... just benefits or doing things for your people. They don't make the connection of that. you have people focused, if you're people centric and if you work your culture in a way that it actually engages your people, that that becomes an unhackable USP. has influence on your productivity, on your innovation levels, on your sick days, on your burnout rates, on retention rates, both for customers and employees, referral rates, both for customers and employees, and lowers the amount of revenue you have to put down to actually when new customers, et cetera, et cetera. So it is literally the single most important lever you can influence to scale your growth and your bottom line. And people just don't... find it important enough for some reason. Maybe it's because it's too complicated to, or that it seems too complicated to fix. Lars Nielsen (07:28) Yeah, and I would say that I've been fortunate enough to work at a couple of companies where I would say they had an amazing culture. And back to what you're saying, both of them were acquired for a large sum of money. So in that sense, at least, was a big success. But also, it was a pleasure to go to work every day. It didn't feel like going to work every day. Everybody was smiling. Everybody was happy. They didn't have particular sick days. If you just needed to take some time off, you just did it because everybody was okay with it, et cetera, et cetera. So I know that it sounds kind of a thing that everybody's saying that a great culture leads to this. But to be honest, and I know that we're going to dive into this topic, not in this episode, but in future episodes. For me, I can't like put a finger on what made that a good culture. I can 100 % put a finger on the co-founders or the founders and say like, they contribute to that culture and they were these kinds of persons that just embraced everybody, believed in everybody and so on. But like put it into like a formal way you can say like, this is why it happened. I can't do that. But yeah, you can. You can, but again, another pin for another episode. Let's do that. Pauline, let's get back on track here. Can you give me an example of a, let's call it a particular hellish culture you have encountered in your career? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (08:58) Yes. yes, I can. mean, believe me, I have seen a lot of really shitty behavior, really shitty companies out there. To be fair, not just in my own employment, but also from stories and things that I've seen on customers and as well. But I think the worst thing that I have personally encountered was when two C-level executives approached me to harass one of my team members. in order to make them quit their job on their own so that the company could avoid paying a severance check to this person. That was just really horrific. And it wasn't the first kind of incident in that company. It was the first time that I had to do something like this. But that was just, that went against every single bone in my body. And I addressed that very loudly. I absolutely refused to do that. and actually ended up leaving that company myself very, very shortly after that. And yeah, I think that hands down was my own worst experience. Lars Nielsen (10:23) think we have all heard stories about like you're saying that the sea level kind of pushes people to save money in terms of service packages. Again, like I live in Denmark, you live in Germany. I think we both live in countries. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:35) Mm. Lars Nielsen (10:44) where we are well protected as employees in terms of separate packages and so on. So there is money at stake here for the companies if they have to fire you. Because in Denmark, for example, it is very common, depending on what kind of work you do and so on, but it is common that people can get up to three, six or even nine months of salary after leaving if they get fired. And that's a lot of money. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:58) Absolutely. That is not necessarily as strong in the case in Germany. mean, yes, severance packages are quite common. However, I mean, don't get me wrong. It is always okay as an entrepreneur or a CEO or a manager of any level to say, this doesn't work out anymore with an employee. I mean, that happened to me before as well. I've been fired before. Which is fine. It's completely okay to want to get rid of someone, right? But A, there is a right way to do it in terms of be honest, talk with the person that things aren't working out and talk to them about why it's not working out anymore. And the other thing is obviously that before you make that kind of decision, you as a manager, boss, leader, however you want to call it, it is your @#%&! fucking responsibility to make sure that they can turn things around. And if you don't do this, you have failed in your job, not them. Lars Nielsen (12:26) One thing you said a little bit earlier is like, this is a story from your life and just back to this being the first episode and we're kind of setting the scene up for future episodes. So what we're actually going to do is we're actually going to talk about real life examples of people that reached out to you and told you about experiences. are... Of course, going to be anonymous about everything because it's not going to be fun. We are trying to get people on the podcast that wants to kind of just tell their story. But we kind of respect that this is a sensitive topic for a lot of people, but it just to kind of set the scene of what we want to do in further episodes of the podcast. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:14) Exactly. So, the, the idea is to not be just theoretic about things, but really get into the grid of things and that you can usually only do by working on real life experiences or real life examples. And so if so, everyone who sees this, I'm sure every single one out there has at least one story, of toxic leadership behavior or, really bad company culture. And so feel free to DM me or Lars obviously and just send me send me any story that you want to share with me. can you can also say that if you want to you can come come come on the show, but you can also just send me any any story and Lars and I will dissect it in one of the episodes. Lars Nielsen (14:05) And we'll put a link to both our LinkedIn and Instagram in the show notes. So people just reach out if they have anything they want to share. And again, if you want to share something anonymous, perfectly fine with that. Okay, Paulina, have... Yeah, sorry. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (14:20) Yeah. even if you, sorry, just even if you do share, even if you do share it, like the company name or whatever, we will always keep it anonymous on our end. Lars Nielsen (14:31) Yes, very good point, very good point that we will do that. I was just about to say that I want to ask you a, and I'm going to do this in quotation marks for everybody to listen as a podcast and can see that I do the quotation marks. I wanted to do a fun question, but it's like the topic doesn't really like resonate with the word fun here. So here we go. If someone were to... guarantee a toxic workplace. Like this is how you guarantee that you get a toxic workplace. What should they do? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:09) so first of all, I, I want to be very clear that I'm not the biggest fan of the word toxic because it's a bit overused these days. So not every bad behavior, not every bad example that you see out there necessarily is toxic. Toxicity is an actual psychological term that, and I'm not a, I'm not a psychologist, so I wouldn't want to judge that. But, just as a short disclaimer, Lars Nielsen (15:18) Okay. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:38) But for me, like if you really want to fuck it up on cultural side, there are a couple of must haves that you should check. And first of all, it's micromanagement. down, hands down, that is the worst thing that you can do or allow. It is, it's a killer for innovation. It's a killer for creativity. It's a killer of micro for, for accountability and ownership. It drains people. Lars Nielsen (15:56) I hate it. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:08) It's the worst thing you can do hands down. Right. and the second thing that you can do is tolerate, what I call cultural skunks and cultural skunks are like, I think Netflix called the, calls them brilliant jerks. the all blacks from the, the rugby team from the, from New Zealand calls it, what was it? I think they say no dicks allowed or dickheads allowed. Yeah, no dicks allowed in an o- Okay, let's not go down that road. Lars Nielsen (16:41) It is very good that this is our own podcast and we can say whatever we want to. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:45) You So yeah, so apologies if I got anything wrong here, but I think the common theme is basically you need to pay very, very close attention that if you have somebody in there who behaves shittily, who harasses people, who goes against your values, like the company values, et cetera, you need to get them out as quickly as possible. If... Otherwise, yeah, we're coming from the other side, right? We were looking at how to not how to actually fuck it up. Lars Nielsen (17:22) We're actually giving a to-do list, a complete to-do list for any jerk that wants to fuck up a company. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (17:30) Yeah, okay. So let's turn this around. So if you do want to fuck it up, hire as many brilliant assholes as you can find. Lars Nielsen (17:36) Okay, that's a very easy... Okay, Paulina, so again, this is the first episode and we just want to kind of setting the scene for what's coming going forward. So can you just kind of take the listener through like what can they look forward to in upcoming episodes? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (17:59) Absolutely. So, as I said before, please send in everything, every story that you want to share with us. We already do have a stockpile of a couple of things that we want to discuss and we will basically at the beginning, share the story, give a bit of context on what is going on in that story. And then Lars and I will start discussing how you can avoid this kind of situation and I personally have more than 10 years of leadership experience under my own belt. So I will also in the case where I can give like sound advice on it, I will also try to give you some advice as how you as an individual can potentially react to this kind of situation to keep your own sanity, but also to potentially change things in your company. Because so many people also believe that culture is something that has to come from the top alone. that only the CEO has to change it or your manager or whatnot. And even as individual contributor, you always have a small area of self-efficacy that you can personally really influence. So you can always by self-reflection, by changing your own behavior, by changing your own reactions, actually change your workplace culture for the better. So you're not powerless. at all. Obviously there are positions, there are companies, there are surroundings, environments that make it easier to have a bigger influence than others. But in every situation you do have a little bit of power to change something. And if, I mean, the ultimate power that you all have is leave. That's the smallest bit of power that everyone always has. Lars Nielsen (19:58) And I actually think that the one advice leaving, it just sounds so easy. I actually had a... Let's put a pin in that one as well. That's another future episode. There's going to be so many things that we need to talk about. I had an incident or an episode about three months ago with a company that I worked for. where there was somebody who really, really didn't like the culture. That particular person actually had another job at hand with a very good package and so on. But the person didn't want to leave. That person was like very like, hey, I'm secure here. I know what I'm getting. I don't know what I'm getting at the other end and so on. So that one advice leave, that is the one I would give to everybody because I'm... Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:31) Hmm. Lars Nielsen (20:55) You know me, Paulina, I'll just, you know, whatever, I'll just find something new. But it's not that easy for everybody. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:02) No, and you're absolutely right. And I didn't want to put it in as like a super high-handed suggestion because I do know how hard it can be. And especially if you are in a dysfunctional culture, it can become actually harder because usually dysfunctional cultures also come with diminishing your self-worth, diminishing your self-efficacy and just giving you the feeling that you don't you will not be successful somewhere else. it can... Dysfunctional cultures can instill a lot of insecurities, lot of anxiety in the people that work in that kind of environment and that actually makes it harder to leave. So you are absolutely right on this point, on this part. And again, when we come to situations like this, I will go into this a little bit deeper, but it would definitely be too much for the episode today. Lars Nielsen (22:01) Yeah. And speaking of that, let's start to wrap it up. Any kind of last words that you just want to give to our listeners out there? Why should they listen to this podcast? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (22:15) I think you should listen to this podcast because culture, not be it dysfunctional, be it beautiful, what, whatever you're experiencing is such a huge topic for every single one of us out there. Right? I mean, we spend more time at work usually than we do, than we spend anywhere else. So it should be a place that supports you. should be a place that lifts you up, that helps you grow and thrive. And if this podcast can give you just a little point, a couple of pointers. on how to have a more fulfilling work life. I think that's our mission here. Or at the very least, maybe we can make you laugh a little bit and put a fresh spin on your day or give you the feeling you're not alone. You're definitely not alone with the things you're seeing and facing and feeling. Lars Nielsen (23:10) maybe what we should do because like I've been reading up a lot about how to do a podcast and do podcast episodes and everybody speaks about like, you have to stand out in your niche and everything. So maybe what we should do is start every episode with a joke to make people smile. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:27) Yeah. Lars Nielsen (23:29) Okay, Paulina, thank you very much. That's a wrap for our very first episode. Woohoo! Yeah. It's been great. Great seeing you again, even though it's just virtual that we're doing this. For everybody listening out there, this is the wrap of the first episode of Cultures from Hell. Already in the next one, we are going to dive into real life experiences. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:34) Woohoo! Thank you so much, guys. It was a lot of fun. Lars Nielsen (23:58) And as said earlier, if you have something you want us to discuss or you have a story you want to share, everything is anonymous, then just DM us. We're going to put links to Instagram and LinkedIn in the show notes. We will see you or hear you or listen to you, however you want to say it. don't know. See you. don't know. Yeah, we will talk to you. Yeah, exactly. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (24:23) Be in touch. Lars Nielsen (24:26) We will see you on the next episode of Cultures from Hell.