The Minotaur Was Never The Problem

In traditional Greek myth, King Minos of Crete kept a bull he had promised to sacrifice to Poseidon. The god punished his audacity by making his wife lust after the animal. As strange as it sounds, the legend tells that she conceived the Minotaur, a creature with a bull’s head and a man’s body. King Minos was so disgusted by it that he hid it away in a labyrinth. To keep it fed, the king sacrificed fourteen sons and daughters of his kingdom’s nobility each year. 

The tragedy wasn’t the creature in the labyrinth. It was that innocent children paid the price for a king unwilling to confront the monster he helped create. 

We thought of this myth when a member of our LinkedIn Culture Club wrote in, asking, 

How does one begin to change a toxic culture? 

Simple answer: It begins with the leader. 

If you’re a leader, and your culture is toxic, it’s your fault. You either set the tone, or you didn’t fix it when you took over.

Culture is a hall of mirrors. Whatever a leader consistently rewards, tolerates, ignores, or celebrates eventually stares back. 

We’re not saying it’s easy or particularly pleasant to stand in front of that mirror and ask what signals you’re sending that your team is reflecting back to you. But we are saying that it’s necessary. 

If your team is disengaged, fearful, territorial, or cynical, don’t start with the people and diagnose them first. Look at the water they’re swimming in. 

The old saying the fish rot from the head is still true. That was what the story of King Minos was really about, and why we still tell it thousands of years later. 

Yes but, we hear you say, what if, unlike Minos, you’re not the one in charge? How do you stop the rot?

Easy. Be a leader anyway. Stand up. Fight for your corner, for your cause, for what’s right. True leadership has nothing to do with a job title.