Cynics have a strange allure in pop culture.

Born from the imaginations of various hollywood storytellers, their personalities range from lovable and sympathetic to horrifyingly sociopathic:

Gru in Despicable Me, Stanley from The Office, all the characters Harrison Ford has ever played, Logan Roy in Succession, Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Rose Armitage in Get Out.

We feel drawn toward these characters because they represent something inside ourselves that we resonate with; the instinct to self-protect. Cynicism feels aloof and safe; even cool. Expecting the worst about people and circumstances feels like a sure way to prevent blindsiding or disappointment.

But what happens when cynicism comes to work?

Let’s imagine a fictional teammate from your last job named Roxy. You really liked Roxy. At first she was the highest performer on your team. But Roxy had some adverse circumstances stacked against her: she always got talked over in meetings, and her boss wasn’t a particularly good advocate for her skills. When the promotion she was in line for got reneged due to budget cuts, her attitude soured. She started waiting for the shoe to drop. ”It’s every person for themself around here”. She always left right at 5 — sometimes leaving you to finish up projects on your own, since she wasn’t “gonna give the company any more time than they deserve”. She started taking credit for the work you were an equal partner on. She blew up the Slack channel with a string of negative commentary on every decision the company made — even the ones you felt were neutral. She started coming in late on days when your boss wasn’t there and took extra long lunch breaks when no one was holding her accountable.

You felt for her, sure, but working with her was no treat, either. Roxy was a cynic, and that attitude leaked into the rest of your team. It sucked.

Here’s the truth: We might find the Ron Swansons of the world entertaining, but we certainly wouldn’t want to share an office with them. We may feel sympathetic toward cynics (especially if their cynicism was born out of hardship or injustice), but unchecked, they create an “every man for themselves” ethos that erodes healthy culture and sabotages high performance teams.

So, how exactly are we defining cynicism?

Cynicism toward work is an attitude that “companies do not care about their employees and that most jobs are not worthy of a worker’s commitment” (as described in this incisive research project). On a grand scale, “cynics in the workplace distrust the motives of their coworkers and leaders, and believe that their employers, when presented with the opportunity, will exploit their contribution.”

These attitudes embedded in your company’s culture have negative impacts on an individual and organizational level. The cynics themselves “earn less money over the course of their lives, are more likely to experience depression, and are at greater risk of heart disease than noncynics.” (HBR) Cynicism also spreads like an infection, bringing a slew of negative outcomes: poor personal performance, burnout, turnover, and cheating on teams.

People with a negative view of the behavior of others start to spread this idea throughout their circle of influence. They work less, take more, are less productive, and foist their negative biases on others.
(Texas A&M’s Dan Chiaburu and coauthors).

People take their work-cynicism home, too: “a high correspondence was found between employees’ cynicism toward work and cynicism toward life experiences.” (JSTOR)

The villain origin story, and where cynicism thrives.

The cynics on your team have all kinds of origin stories:

Some cynics came already having baggage from bad experiences in life or in the workforce. They project it onto your company or organization with loads of negative confirmation bias.

But some cynics are born in your company as a result of cynicism-inducing business practices of all kinds —

simple insensitivity, a mismatch between what leadership says and what it actually does, and exploitative policies.
Cynicism thrives in organizations where there is a “Zero sum game” reward system (your employees win at the expense of others),
where sudden layoffs occur with no transparency,
where supervisors control rather than coach, and keep their employees on a tight leash for fear they won’t get it right, or worse, will take advantage of the company.
And in the presence of micromanage-y practices like requiring “CCs” on all emails, or having your direct reports give painfully precise reports on time spend.

All of these are cynicism rocket-fuel.

The kids aren’t alright.

Data indicates that Gen Z is especially prone to cynicism. (Save yourself: don’t spend a half-day on #cynicism TikTok lest every last shred of optimism in you melt like packing peanuts in a heavy rain.) NYT outlines reasons why Gen Z feels politics is infested with bad actors and lack of commitment to meaningful change. Ranked alongside other generations, Gen Z polled the lowest when asked how hopeful they feel about their future (a 2020 study by the American Psycholical Association). Compared to millennial perspectives in 2006–”I expect the best to happen” — Gen Z in 2021 said “I expect the worst to happen.” (Tim Elmore).

In a fascinating twist, though, the Harvard Kennedy School determined that Gen Z ranked work as having the highest positive impact on their mental health when stacked up alongside other factors — work, school, social media, politics, and news media. (any guesses which had the highest negative impact? Yeah, it’s social media.) Gen Z, sweet young cynics, find that the generativity and sense of purpose and meaning in work support their mental health.

But they’re still cynical — their perspectives on work are fragile. Their work satisfaction may be hanging in the balance of what they find in the first few, formative years of their time in the workforce. Will they encounter company cultures with integrity, that care for their people and do what they say? Or get confirmation of all their worst fears: that bosses and leaders are as exploitative as TikTok claims they are.

Alright, then what’s the fix?

The particular woes of Gen Z aside, the impacts of cynicism on employee output (and ultimately, company culture), are far-reaching. But there’s good news: human nature is malleable. People become who they feel you’ve painted them to be, good or bad. People rise to the level of trust you and the leaders in the highest parts of your organization demonstrate.

1) Overhaul policies that perpetuate cynicism.

If your processes and procedures are cynical, they’ll create a cynical team. Stop hover-managing. Say things like “I hired you because I believe you have the skills necessary to get this done. No need to update me until our next monthly 1–1, but I’m here if you need support”. Lean into transparency about your own personal workload rather than feeling the need to project the image of someone who never takes breaks: “I worked late last night so I’m headed home early this Friday”. Change your performance review metrics to reward collaboration between your direct reports rather than a spirit of competition. Revisit your employee handbook: what do your policies say about the kind of people you believe your team to be? Do you dole out vacation days in drops because you believe your team is full of untrustworthy sneaks waiting to take advantage of company sick days? Do you set up security cameras so no one steals property? These cynical practices are actually self-reinforcing. People become who you believe them to be. If they feel like you don’t trust them, they live into that belief.

2) Manage your team’s expectations about organizational change.

“Organizational cynicism [encompasses] the sense of betrayal and pessimism experienced by employee repeatedly observing failed managerial attempts to initiate change.” In short, employees who see the organization as impotent–unable to make necessary change happen when it’s called for–grow disillusioned and cynical.

Let me give a shamelessly therapy-themed example: say you’re in a relationship that’s struggling, but you have hope because your partner promised they’d change. They committed to couples’ therapy! You go to therapy for 6 sessions together, but despite your partner’s verbal commitment to change, you watch no progress being made. That makes you feel trapped. Nothing’s gonna give. Why stick around? You actually feel worse about the relationship than you did before the intervention began, because now you feel hopeless. This person doesn’t deliver on their commitments. There’s nothing else to try.

Manage your team’s expectations around change so that you deliver on what you say you will. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Say things like “I hear you on your concern about your team’s remote work situation. I want to make this happen for you, but I don’t think I can get it done in the next 3 months like you’d hoped for. I plan to work this solution into our 1-year budget review. Let me give you an update then.” Tell your teammate: “I know you want me to add this initiative to my quarter’s goals, but it’s just not going to be a focus of mine due to my current workload. Can you say more about what you hoped this would accomplish?”

Doing what you say you will and demonstrating your willingness to advocate for all change possible when it’s in your power to do so goes a long way to cultivating an anti-cynical work culture.

3. Be as transparent as possible when it comes to the most sensitive stuff.

Your employees are most vulnerable to cynicism when faced with sensitive issues like their pay relative to your pay and their team’s pay, your pricing practices, layoffs (their own or their teammates’), or your organization struggling or undergoing budget cuts. Cynicism grows where your team’s negative interpretations on sensitive issues go unchallenged. “Cynical employees believe that the average worker is exploited and does not receive a fair share of organizational rewards” (JSTOR).

Treat these especially sensitive topics with extreme care. Use radical transparency whenever you can: “let me explain why our pay structure is the way it is.” “Let me share how we make our money and the budget we use to determine the rates of pay raises.”

As emotionally distressing as they can be, even layoffs can be handled in a way that fosters anti-cynicism. “The attitudes of employees during times of workforce reduction are a function of the amount of control they experience over their own job security” (JSTOR). Give employees as much control over this process as possible, including making your performance management/improvement process explicitly clear. Resist the urge to fall into leniency bias when you actually need to give hard feedback early on–before performance becomes a crisis and a layoff is immediately necessary. Without going into privacy-breaking detail, be as candid as you can with the rest of your team about the reasons for someone’s departure. Transparency breeds trust.

The final(ish) word.

Organizational struggle doesn’t have to be a breeding ground for cynicism. By implementing trust-building practices like the above, your organization can weather a pandemic, a micro-recession, or even turnover on your team while still maintaining an anti-cynical culture.

If you manage your own cynicism enough to truly believe the best about your team and then communicate those beliefs to them, you’ll draw them into a magnetic culture of health and mutual support that brings out the best in everyone. Tell them true stories about how you’ve seen them and their teammates as trustworthy, creative, high-powered, collaboratively-minded people who want to bring inspiration and passion to work, and then let those beliefs be reflected in your policies and procedures.

Of course, in organizations defined by trust and anti-cynicism there will always be takers who grift off of and exploit these freedoms. But if the vast majority of your team is bought into the benefits of believing the best, these bad apples will weed themselves off the team soon enough. Their high-trust teammates will sniff them out immediately and collaborate with them less. Their cynicism will drive them somewhere else. But unmanaged (and in the majority), cynical attitudes on your team become root-rot that makes even your highest performers feel punished for caring.

So, how cynical is your team? Or better yet — how cynical are YOU?

…
(I recommend this tremendous article from HBR for more reading on cynicism at work.)

P.S.: Radical trust in your team and believing the best doesn’t mean you should stop mentoring, coaching, and guiding them (especially the new ones to the workforce hungry to learn). It means you believe on an organizational level that your team is capable, believes in the mission, and when presented with the opportunity, will do it the most good they know how.

P.P.S.: Cynicism is not the same as job dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction is a ‘pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences.” This is retrospective and self-focused, where cynicism is anticipatory and outwardly-directed. Sure, there’s some overlap between the two: cynicism can negatively shape your view of your job experiences and thus impact job satisfaction, but they’re not always correlated. You can be satisfied with your role and feel good about the work you’re doing personally, while still holding a significantly negative outlook about the intent of your organization and the people in it. Leaders should take note of this when interpreting engagement surveys that have job satisfaction as an evaluated item.

Cynicism: the silent killer of happy, effective teams.