Divide and Conquer: How Toxic Workplace Tactics Destroy Trust

Behaviours like intentionally creating mistrust, backstabbing, or setting coworkers against one another are blatant signs of a toxic workplace culture that is frequently driven by insecurity, unhealthy competition.

Often such divide-and-conquer or triangulation strategies, manipulative techniques employ subtle acts of gossip, and deceit to obtain an advantage for themselves. Sorting blame to escape accountability, hiding important information to cause colleagues to miss deadlines or perform poorly, claiming credit for someone else's work to appear more competent, spreading rumours to harm reputations, or bringing a third party into a dispute to skew communication and increase tension are all examples of this.

In more extreme situations, people might even intentionally mislead or sabotage others in order to set them up for failure. When combined, these actions weaken teams, undermine trust, and make real cooperation challenging, if not impossible.