Comment by Aurornis
12 hours ago
> Ejecting a single problematic person doesn't fix the underlying problem - how did that person get in the door in the first place? If they weren't problematic when they arrived, does that mean there were corrosive elements in the environment that led to the change?
This is exactly the toxicity I’ve experienced with blameless postmortem culture:
Hiring is never perfect. It’s impossible to identify every problematic person at the interview stage.
Some times, it really is the person’s own fault. Doing mental gymnastics to assume the system caused the person to become toxic is just a coping mechanism to avoid acknowledging that some people really are problematic and it’s nobody’s fault but their own.
On the contrary. It's all too easy to dismiss as being the fault of a fatally flawed individual. In fact that's likely to be the bias of those involved - our system is good, our management is competent. Behead the sacrificial lamb and be done with it. Phrases such as "hirinng is never perfect" can themselves at times be an extremely tempting coping mechanism to avoid acknowledging inconvenient truths.
I'm not saying you shouldn't eventually arrive at the conclusion you're suggesting. I'm saying that it's extremely important not to start there and not to use the possibility of arriving there as an excuse to shirk asking difficult questions about the inner workings and performance of the broader organization.
> Doing mental gymnastics to assume the system caused the person to become toxic
No, don't assume. Ask if it did. "No that does not appear to be the case" can sometimes be a perfectly reasonable conclusion to arrive at but it should never be an excuse to avoid confronting uncomfortable realities.