DYSFUNCTIONAL COMPANIES

 How they get that way. And how not to end up in one.

In psychology, there is a well-studied phenomenon—the dysfunctional family. Decades of research, beginning with Virginia Satir and Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, have described in detail how such families produce fixed roles, unspoken rules, and mechanisms of denial. Hundreds of books have been written. Therapeutic protocols have been developed. Support groups exist.

Yet when the very same patterns reproduce themselves in work teams and entire companies, we somehow call it “aspects of corporate culture.” As though it is one thing when an alcoholic father destroys a family and quite another when a chief executive does precisely the same to his organization. In reality, the mechanics are identical. Only the scale differs.

How a Dysfunctional Family Works

It all begins with the denial of reality. One of the key figures behaves destructively, but the family collectively agrees not to notice. The father drinks—but “everything is fine, he’s just tired from work.” The mother controls every step and breath the children take—but “she’s just very caring.” The problem exists, but it somehow doesn’t. And to sustain this illusion, every family member unconsciously assumes a specific role.

In 1981, Wegscheider-Cruse described six such roles: the dependent (the source of the problem), the enabler-peacemaker (usually the spouse, who smooths things over), the hero (the overachieving child who proves to the world the family is fine), the scapegoat (the rebel onto whom all problems are conveniently pinned), the lost child (the one who becomes invisible so as not to create additional difficulties), and the mascot (the one who defuses tension with humor).

The critical point: no one chooses these roles consciously. They emerge as a way of adapting to an environment in which it is impossible to be oneself. Over time, they calcify, and the person continues to play the role well into adulthood—often without understanding why his professional relationships follow the same script, again and again.

The Same Roles, a Different Set

Now look at the team you work in. Or the one you recently left.

The leader who cannot make decisions is, in essence, the same “dependent” from the family model—the source of dysfunction around whom everyone else builds survival strategies. The strategy changes every quarter. Priorities shift every month. The team lives in a state of chronic uncertainty, but at the all-hands this is presented as “agility and adaptability.” Sound familiar?

The micromanager reproduces the role of the enabler-controller. He does not trust, double-checks, inserts himself into every detail. Formally, he is “helping.” In practice, he strips people of the ability to act independently. After six months of this management style, even strong professionals stop making decisions without approval. This is not laziness or a lack of initiative. It is learned helplessness—the classic result of living under relentless control.

The person who “carries” everything is the family hero. He single-handedly covers for failures in processes, does the work of three, takes on other people’s responsibilities. He is admired, held up as an example at performance reviews, loaded with still more. And then everyone is surprised when he burns out and leaves. Or, worse, does not leave—because he has grown accustomed to believing he is irreplaceable. An organization built around a single “hero” is not a strong team. It is a fragile structure that will collapse along with him. The only question is when.

The employee onto whom blame is deflected is the scapegoat. The project failed? Marketing’s fault. The client left? Sales didn’t close hard enough. A systemic problem is recast as a personal one, because that is easier than admitting the entire chain failed. In a dysfunctional family, the scapegoat is usually the one person who actually sees the problem and tries to talk about it. In a company, the same holds: the first to be fired is not the one who created the problem but the one who pointed it out.

The quiet middle-performer who keeps his head down, takes no risks, and offers no ideas is the lost child. Not because he has nothing to say. But because he once said something and was quickly made to understand that silence was safer. Now he hits his KPIs, attracts no attention, and survives. The organization loses his potential without ever suspecting it exists.

And finally, the office joker—the mascot who lightens the mood. The one who cracks a well-timed joke in a meeting to keep the conversation from reaching an uncomfortable truth. He is likable, everyone is fond of him, but no one takes his opinion seriously. Behind the humor lies anxiety—and the understanding that in this environment, it is safer to entertain than to argue.

The Karpman Drama Triangle: How Dysfunction Perpetuates Itself

Beyond roles, there is another mechanism that makes dysfunctional teams so remarkably stable. It is Stephen Karpman’s drama triangle. Many have heard of it. Few understand what it actually describes.

Three positions: victim, persecutor, and rescuer. The key is that people within the triangle constantly switch roles, creating an endless cycle of conflict.

Here is how it plays out in corporate reality. The CEO shields a new vice president from the consequences of a botched product launch—rescuer position. The team that had warned about the risks in advance is blamed—they have been pushed into the victim position. The vice president, sensing impunity, begins pressuring those who “undermined” him with their forecasts—he becomes the persecutor. Six months later, the CEO tires of providing cover and begins publicly criticizing the same vice president. The roles rotate again.

The triangle never stands still. The roles circulate, but the triangle itself endures. And it cannot be dismantled from the inside, because every participant derives a certain benefit from his position—even if that benefit is entirely unconscious.

How a Company Becomes Dysfunctional

At the organizational level, the scale is larger, but the mechanism is the same. It is denial of reality elevated to a system.

Everyone knows the product is outdated. Everyone understands the key client is on the verge of leaving. Everyone can see the CTO has long since fallen short of the demands of the role. But saying any of this aloud is impossible, because the CEO “doesn’t like negativity.” In a dysfunctional family, this is called denial. In a company, it is called “we believe in a positive culture.”

Unwritten rules begin to dominate over official ones. The job posting says “we value initiative and openness.” In practice, the initiative-takers are the first to be fired—because initiative creates discomfort for those accustomed to inertia. Openness is encouraged right up to the moment it is directed upward.

The boundaries between personal and professional blur—not because the team is so close, but because blurred boundaries make it possible to demand more. “We’re like a family here” is one of the most alarming phrases you can hear in an interview. Because in healthy organizations, as in healthy families, boundaries are not walls or barriers. They are the precondition for normal interaction.

How Not to End Up in a Dysfunctional Company

Dysfunctional organizations do not post a warning at the door. They post something else: “we’re disrupting the industry,” “we have a flat hierarchy,” “every voice matters here.” Recognizing reality behind these formulations is not easy, but it is possible—if you know where to look.

Ask about failures. In an interview, pose the question: “Tell me about a project that didn’t work out. What happened and what conclusions did you draw?” In a healthy organization, they will calmly walk you through what went wrong and what they changed in their processes. In a dysfunctional one, there will either be a long pause or a story about how “one person let everyone down.” The transference of a systemic problem onto a single culprit is a reliable marker.

Ask about departures. Who among the key people left in the past year, and why? If three directors have turned over in twelve months and the explanation each time is “cultural misalignment,” the issue is not culture. It is a pattern—and it will not change with your arrival.

Pay attention to the hiring process itself. The meeting has been rescheduled for the fourth time? No response for two weeks, then a demand to decide by tomorrow? They cannot clearly explain the reporting line? This is not “temporary chaos due to growth.” It is a management style, and it will manifest in your daily work in exactly the same way.

Talk to former employees. Not the ones the company offers as references, but the ones you find on your own. LinkedIn is an open tool. Former employees are generally willing to talk, provided the questions are respectful and specific.

Watch for the “heroes.” If, during the interview, they proudly tell you how one person “saved the quarter by working twenty-hour days,” that is not a success story. It is a symptom. In a healthy system, one person should not have to save an entire quarter. That is what processes and distributed accountability are for.

If You Are Already Inside

The first and hardest step is the same one required in working with family dysfunction: stop pretending everything is fine. As long as a person normalizes what is happening—“it’s like this everywhere,” “at least the pay is good,” “it’ll sort itself out in a couple of months”—he remains part of a system that is using him.

After that, there are three realistic scenarios.

You can try to change the situation—if you have the authority and support from above to do so. Changing a system from the bottom, without a mandate from leadership, is virtually impossible. This is not pessimism. It is a sobering statistic: most attempts to “fix the culture from within” end with the termination of the person who tried.

You can adapt without sacrificing yourself. Set internal boundaries. Stop being the “hero” who covers for other people’s failures. Do your work well, but not the work of three. This requires awareness and discipline, but it allows you to preserve yourself while you look for an exit.

And finally, you can leave. And please—without guilt, without a sense of betrayal. You are not obligated to heal an organization that hired you to work, not to serve as its therapist. It is not your family—even though that is precisely what they told you.

I counsel many candidates. They tell me a great deal. And among their stories are those of talented, capable people who stayed in dysfunctional structures for years because “maybe it’ll get better,” “I’ve already invested so much,” “what if the next place is worse.” These are rationalizations familiar to any psychologist who works with codependency.

Dysfunction is not a temporary difficulty and not a growth phase. It is a self-perpetuating system. It will not fix itself, and in all likelihood, you are not the person who will fix it.