Responding Poorly to Toxic Behavior: When toxic attitudes and behaviors are rewarded and boundaries disappear. This inadvertently destroys life-giving team health through passivity, overcorrection, or disempowerment.
Although often dismissed as dreamy, doe-eyed romance novels—an attitude possibly influenced by modern portrayals in movies or the Hallmark Channel—Jane Austen’s literary classics present us with disarming social commentary. Like all well-crafted satire, they do not merely criticize. A political cartoon depicting contemporary figures as buffoons, for example, offers no real solutions appealing to the better angels of our nature for a more just society. But Austen reaches across over 200 years of social, political, and economic revolutions that have shaped our way of being today, urging us to reconsider virtue in our calculations of human progress.
In the West, we have been educated in the rationalistic positivism of social Darwinism, which reduces us to nothing more than “brains on a stick” and sacrifices our humanity for technological and economic progress by almost any means. We have been formed in a culture that assumes, through the power of our boundless rationality, we can shape the world to reflect our own image, the Tower of Babel’s towering promise of limitless possibility. We can and should dispel vanities such as faith, emotion, wonder, and myths or narratives, disregarding them as unnecessary (maybe even detrimental!) for our progress.
Austen, however, encourages us to reconsider our ideas of human progress. She presents our various societies (social, political, religious, economic, institutional, and educational) as primarily spaces for practicing and developing virtue. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book After Virtue, called Jane Austen “the last of the virtue philosophers.” Her characters re-engage us with the classic virtues of prudence (discernment and wisdom), justice (fairness and equity), temperance (emotional intelligence and balance), and fortitude (courage and resilience). Her narratives compel us to reimagine them for our current moment, which seems to teem with incivility, hostility, and violence.
Her most beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, explores the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy as it evolves from dissonance to dislike and finally to love. At the outset of the narrative, Elizabeth and Darcy are bound by social convention and a rigid moral scaffolding that is shaped by the virtues that society most prized: propriety, reputation, and class distinction. These virtues, though outwardly noble—serving as the very bedrock of a well-ordered society—kept Elizabeth and Darcy in mutual disdain. She saw in him arrogance and cold superiority; he saw in her a lack of refinement and social standing. Their virtues were performative, rooted in external validation rather than internal discernment.
Elizabeth refuses Darcy’s marriage proposal in a heated exchange, revealing the depth of her prejudice against him. In her mind, he had become a despicable figure, an image shaped by what she believed to be his meddling in her sister Jane’s romance, his supposed mistreatment of Mr. Wickham (whom she wrongly assumed to be a victim), and the haughty tone of his marriage proposal. But her understanding was built on partial truths and hearsay.
In response, Darcy composes a letter to her to explain his actions and the motivations behind them. This marks a turning point in the narrative. As Elizabeth reads the letter, her presumptions begin to unravel, and she is confronted with the painful realization that her judgment had been misinformed. Confronted with the truth, she is struck by the painful clarity of self-awareness and exclaims:
“How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”
As Elizabeth reckons with her own prejudice and both characters face the consequences of misjudgment, new virtues begin to emerge. Humility, courage, integrity, and compassion rise to the surface. These did not upend societal pride and prejudice, for society still retained the scaffolding that led to the conflict in the first place. But Elizabeth and Darcy are changed by personal revelations, revealing how pride masqueraded as principle and how prejudice cloaked itself in discernment. In this crucible of transformation, Elizabeth and Darcy begin to see themselves and each other more clearly. Their love is not born of romantic impulse but of moral awakening. It is a love forged in the fire of self-understanding, where virtue is no longer a social performance but a shared commitment to truth, growth, and grace.
The plot of Pride and Prejudice illustrates our next culture killer of effective leadership teams. I refer to it as Feeding the Cobra. It is closely tied with our second culture killer, Stories that Burn, because it’s these toxic narratives that feed the cobras! Feeding the Cobra is how organizations and teams inadvertently support, reward, and advance toxic attitudes and behaviors that kill mission and destroy people.
The Genesis 3 story of the serpent (which was probably not a cobra, but I think the cobra is a fascinating serpent) and its deception of Adam and Eve was the ultimate story that burned! Adam and Eve were commissioned to cultivate the garden in harmony and loving partnership with their Creator. But instead, the serpent, a creature of chaos from the wilderness, crept into the garden and enticed them with a crafty revisionist history of God’s instruction. They were already like God, created in his image to rule as his regents, receiving his wisdom for good living through the way of trust in him. But the serpent compelled them to become like God (read that as “make themselves like God”), knowing good and evil through their own self-generated and self-interested wisdom (read that as “pride”).
This appears to be a recurring human problem; we enjoy defining reality for ourselves apart from God’s wisdom, even though doing so undermines the good creation around us. Sin is essentially the disordered naming of right and wrong outside of God’s wisdom. It ruptures the harmonious ecology of God’s “very good” creation, where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Wisdom’s creative melody, sung by the heavens declaring the glory of God (Psalm 19), is obscured and made dissonant by the malevolent tones of the “formless and empty” gaining a foothold back into the well-ordered, sacred temple space where God’s image-bearers reside. Their sin breaks the harmony between heaven and earth, and that disruption is apparent in all spheres of the human’s priestly service.
I love the lyrics to the chorus of Rich Mullins’ song, “Not as Strong as We Think We Are:”
We are frail
we are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens
So few inches apart
We must be awfully small
And not as strong as we think we are.
This is the cobra’s poison, and its toxins of “pride and prejudice” choke us, poisoning the harmony for which God’s wisdom and human passion were intended to work in concert. It leads to death and decay and is in desperate need of resurrection.
Now, the word “toxic” is often used too loosely these days to complain about any behavior or attitude we dislike. I have noticed accusations of “toxic” being used to shut others down rather than to understand and appreciate their perspective, fears, experiences, or interests. The irony is that, by calling others toxic, people often act toxically themselves! So, to ensure we’re on the same page, let me provide the following definition based on a virtue ethic.
A cobra’s venom is toxic because its content disrupts normal biological functions, immobilizing and paralyzing all vital systems that sustain life in the body. In a team setting, a “toxic” attitude or behavior disrupts healthy team functioning. It immobilizes team resources needed for creative efforts that support their shared mission. These resources include both intrapersonal factors (a team member’s gifts, education, experiences, perspectives, personality, and location) and interpersonal skills (a team member’s capacities for empathy, critical listening, appreciative inquiry, suspending judgment, showing positive regard, assuming positive intent, creating safety, being honest, and showing respect).
Elizabeth and Darcy’s pride and prejudice toward one another early in the novel were toxic, even though socially affirmed, because they diminished each other’s value, personhood, or weight of existence. It was only when they both stopped feeding the cobra that they came to regard each other with mutual respect, affection, and eventually love.
What would our leadership teams and organizations look like and feel like when we stop feeding our cobras? I believe development of virtue in our teams is the anti-toxin to much of what destroys us. They lead to all the things we most want in our lives and work: positive regard, appreciation, friendship, honor and respect, impact, laughter, trust, and most especially, a positive witness to the joy-filled wisdom of creation’s king, Jesus Christ!
Here are a few practical ways that you may begin to develop virtues back into your leadership team dynamics:
- Name the Cobra Clearly: Identify toxic behaviors and narratives explicitly. Articulate why it’s harmful (why does it shut down healthy team function?). Don’t spiritualize, minimize, or excuse them. Use shared language (like “feeding the cobra”) to create awareness without shame.
- Practice Intrapersonal Reflection: Encourage team members to examine their own assumptions, biases, and emotional reactions. Use prompts like: “What story am I telling myself about this person or situation?”
- Re-center on Virtue, Not Performance: Shift the team’s moral scaffolding from external validation (e.g., status, efficiency) to internal virtues like humility, courage, and justice. Revisit team values regularly and ask: “Are we living these out in our decisions and relationships?”
- Model Empathy and Positive Regard: Assume positive intent in others’ actions. Resist harsh confrontation that shuts people down and confines them to a false narrative. Practice appreciative inquiry and critical listening, especially when tensions arise.
- Interrupt Toxic Narratives: When gossip, cynicism, or scapegoating emerge, pause and ask: “What’s the deeper fear or need underneath this?” Replace corrosive stories with redemptive ones that invite growth.
- Stop Rewarding Bullies: Refuse to empower those who dominate through fear, manipulation, or passive aggression. Set and enforce clear boundaries with consistency and compassion. Examine your organizational systems to demolish structures that inadvertently reward bullying behavior.
- Create Spaces for Moral Awakening: Use literature, music, or spiritual reflection (like Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Rich Mullins’ lyrics) to spark self-awareness and transformation. Invite team members to share moments when they “never knew themselves” until challenged.
- Foster a Culture of Confession and Repair: Normalize admitting fault and seeking reconciliation. Celebrate moments of humility and growth as signs of strength, not weakness.
- Cultivate Shared Discernment: Use communal discernment practices to make decisions rooted in wisdom, not ego. Ask: “What is God’s wisdom inviting us toward in this moment?”
- Celebrate Virtue in Action: Tell stories of team members who embody courage, justice, or compassion. Let these stories become the new culture-shaping myths and antidotes to the cobra’s poison.
Feeding the Cobra has many connections to our final Big 10 Culture Killer, The Wisdom Gap. In that upcoming blog, we will return to the prime virtue of humility.
