I’m currently sitting at the BiFrost Leadership Conference, where Jamie Riedesel (@sysadm1138) just finished their talk entitled “Organizational trauma and how to survive it”.

The sessions so far have all been very good and I’ve taken some value from all of them. However, this talk really made me reflect on how I fit in at Plooto (and past positions), how I affect people around me (especially as I’m given more and more leadership responsibility), and how I perpetuate negative behavior.

The mention of cynicism and its toxic affect on an organization is something that I’d never really considered before. After thinking about it, I’m hugely complicit in allowing this to happen, and contributing to it happening at pretty much every company I’ve ever worked for.

I’m not sure if this is a developer thing, a tech thing, or an employee thing, but as far back as a I can remember, I’ve always had conversations with co-workers about how this project was “complete bullshit”, how management was “asleep at the wheel”, or that we’re heading in the wrong direction.

The normalization of this behavior has been ingrained in me by pretty much every team lead I’ve ever had. Some were worse than others, but it’s a common theme. This sort of superiority complex leads people to shit-talk management decisions constantly as if everyone in the company is an idiot.

How do I correct this? For myself? On my team? In my organization? What is the cause of this behavior?

The more I think about it, the more it feels like this is the result of people feeling helpless. This is what happens when people feel like they can’t make a difference in their organization.

My goal going forward is to gripe less, and spend more time trying to positively affect my organization and my team.