By Dr. Alise Cortez
Host of Working on Purpose | Chief Ignition Officer, Gusto Now!
Guest: Marilyn Vetter | President and CEO of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever
Toxicity doesn’t always come crashing through the door.
It seeps in quietly — through fear that masquerades as politeness, through silence that replaces honesty, through the slow erosion of trust.
When people stop believing their effort matters, the culture begins to die from the inside out.
That’s where this week’s Working on Purpose conversation with Marilyn Vetter, CEO of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, begins. Together, we explored how toxicity forms, what awareness looks like in leadership, and what it takes to truly heal an organization’s spirit.
When Silence Speaks
Toxic cultures rarely start with conflict — they start with withdrawal.
As Marilyn shared:
“You know a culture’s gone toxic when people no longer believe they can make a difference.”
When people stop speaking up, stop sharing ideas, stop caring — that’s not complacency. That’s despair in disguise.
The cure starts with courageous candor and leaders who ask the harder questions:
What are we afraid to say here?
What’s gone underground?
The Mirror of Leadership
Toxicity doesn’t spread because leaders are bad — it spreads because they’re unaware.
They’re chasing results, shielding from conflict, or avoiding their own reflection.
“We can’t expect our teams to travel further on their journey than we’ve traveled on our own.”
At Gusto Now!, we call this the work beneath the work. A culture cannot evolve beyond the level of its leader’s awareness. Every great leader eventually discovers that the most important system to transform first is themselves.
Culture Isn’t HR’s Job
Healthy culture is not an initiative. It’s a living system of shared ownership.
Marilyn’s team invites every employee to help define what their values look like in action. When a funding freeze threatened furloughs, the staff created a PTO-exchange fund — no one lost pay.
That’s culture alive in practice. That’s what happens when intention meets impact.
Building Cultures that Elevate People
Healing culture begins by re-owning your mission, not rewriting it.
Marilyn brought 60 employees together to build a new strategic plan anchored in one powerful idea:
Achieve and celebrate ambitious mission outcomes by investing in cross-functional relationships, bold goal-setting, and a collaborative culture.
When people co-create direction, they don’t just follow it — they protect it.
The Call
Culture is not what you write on the wall. It’s what you tolerate, reward, and repeat.
When we stop tending to it, it doesn’t pause — it decays.
The cure is awareness, compassion, and the courage to care enough to change.
Let’s keep building workplaces where people come alive.
Let’s work, on purpose.
Your Call to Action
Read the full Working on Purpose Playbook edition on LinkedIn:
👉 The Culture Cure: Healing Toxic Workplaces from the Inside Out
🎥 Watch the full episode HERE
🎧 Or listen here:
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