Andrew Laffoon’s Thoughts

One of the things that can most easily destroy startup culture is passive-agressive behavior. At my previous company, one of our employees would often display this in meetings. When something was really bothering him, he would go off on a rant and then say “oh, well it doesn’t really matter anyway.” He would constantly send mixed signals that led to confusion among the team and made working with him a real challenge. Today I read a great blurb on this idea on Munjal Shah’s blog:

One of my key beliefs is the worst thing for a startup is passive aggressive behavior. Many people who join startups from big companies bring this culture with them. The political nature of those companies requires them to do this to survive. At a startup, you just can’t let things simmer in the background, you have to pull issues to the forefront and deal with them as fast as you can with the least amount of denial.
Link

I will definitely be watching out for this type of behavior in myself. Creating a culture that is open and honest but still gracious will be difficult, but well worth it.