What took you so long?

I always wanted to be fair to employees who were struggling. Once I left a manager in place too long thinking I was being fair to him. The result was that the team underperformed and missed out on bonuses. When I finally changed the situation, the employees asked why I hadn’t acted sooner. I then realized that in trying to be fair to the manager, I was very unfair to the whole team.

Balancing fairness and instilling harmony is an ongoing piece of the leadership puzzle. Sometimes the right people are in the wrong job. Sometimes we hire the wrong people. Every company experiences a work culture hurdle. It's a tough lesson learned for those of us who’ve been asked, ‘What took you so long?’"

Company culture, good or bad, historically seeps down from leadership to employees to customers. When it’s awesome, it’s contagious and creates great relationships, great employees and a great place to work. When it’s toxic, it can create havoc. Most companies say their culture falls somewhere between the extremes.

Statistics are on the side of positivity. Well-oiled organizational machines drive revenue. People are engaged and more productive, and there’s a can-do spirit of innovation and trust. On the flip side, workers are more likely to leave jobs because the environment is toxic than because of compensation, which tells us people valuing a healthy workplace more than they value good pay.

With a new year comes new opportunities for your business culture to not simply improve but leverage the power of "we" and create a culture of care.

Start by looking for red flags, including things you might have missed.

Do you have a defined set of core values that give your employees a sense of identity and belonging? Are your employees uncertain about their roles and responsibilities? Do you have an org chart that illustrates how people connect, collaborate and work together? Are your employees overworked, struggling to meet expectations or impacted by gossip that flourishes in negative environments?

The trauma of working in a company with a broken culture sticks with those who experience it. As a leader, if there’s gossip, address it head on. Create a no-gossip-in-the-workplace policy and eliminate the blame game; once it takes hold, it can be bigger than any other problem. Blame is a cascade of finger pointing, whereby someone looks for someone or something else to blame for the problem. Blame can become contagious and once it becomes part of daily life, employees start hiding problems to avoid blame.

It's easy for leaders to turn a blind eye and avoid confrontation when the employee delivers results. The most common scenario is not holding high performers, sacred cows, or employees who are above reproach to the same behaviors expected of everyone else.

Most of us have known these people in our organizations. They can be high potential but high-maintenance employees, salespeople who win big accounts but skip out on accountability or long-time employees respected by the owner for their loyalty but who have stopped learning. They know they are not pulling their weight where it counts, but nothing is done. There are many exceptions to this generalization and genuine super stars who leave an incomparable impact. However, in many cases, when companies scale and grow, they often outgrow these employees. When new bars are set for performance, they gradually become demotivated or give up trying to carry their team to the next level.

I recommend that if you are in a position of leadership, you watch for these silent culture killers and deal with them immediately. Instead of resulting in a loss of productivity, the more likely scenario is a positive jump in positive activity when your employees ask you, "What took you so long?"

It has always struck me how fast my companies have bounced back when I finally made changes and dealt with problem employees. We ended up never missing a beat and had a better, happier team.

Words of Wilson features a rotating panel of consultants from Wilson360, a landscape consulting firm. Bruce Wilson is founder and chairman of Wilson360 (formerly Bruce Wilson & Co. He can be reached at bruce@wilson-360.com