Cliques Kill Culture in Business and at Work

Recent reports of Nike’s pervasive culture of exclusion have resulted in the resignation of several key executives, including but not limited to Nike’s president.

In response to questions, Nike portrayed its problems as being confined to “an insular group of high-level managers” who “protected each other and looked the other way.”

“That is not something we are going to tolerate,” said a spokesman, KeJuan Wilkins.

Nike’s male leadership clique problems included but were not limited to holding functions at strip clubs, berating and name-calling of women employees and other team members clearly rising and crossing the boundary to harassing workplace behavior. These and other exclusionary behaviors contributed to a culture that also minimized the role of women employees, effectively discouraging women overall (directly leading to turnover of talent) and from moving into Nike’s leadership ranks:

While women struggled to attain top positions at Nike, an inner circle of mostly male leaders emerged who had a direct line to Mr. Edwards (Nike’s now former President). Within the company, as reported earlier in The Wall Street Journal, this group was known as F.O.T., or Friends of Trevor. They texted him in meetings or bragged about having lunch or dinner with him.

Cliques like Nike’s Friends of Trevor are unfortunately common in almost all workplaces at all levels, comprised of all gender combinations, not just the province of male leaders and team members. On the surface, a clique appears to operate as a cohesive team. However, cliques are the polar opposite of teamwork. A workplace clique deems its approved members as special, and anyone who is not a member of the clique is defined by the clique as not special, and most of the time, inferior to members of the clique, more often that not incurring the disdain of clique members. (Yes, this also sounds like the plot of Mean Girls and/or your worst high school memories. Any bad behaviors – e.g., clique behaviors –  that are not corrected while still in school are effectively and eerily carried into the adult workplace.)

Workplace cliques at minimum are a constant and distracting source of HR problems, a colossal waste of HR time and payroll – resources that could otherwise be devoted to strategic organization development initiatives. At worst, unchecked cliques effectively and pervasively kill an organization’s culture while drinking their own bath water with blinders – the water’s just fine for the clique(s), and they usually can’t understand the core issues (mostly emanating from clique-think) negatively impacting retention and recruitment, and why non-clique members find the organization’s culture toxic.

How do your effectively address workplace clique behavior, preventing it from killing your organization’s culture, employee retention and recruitment, in business and at work?