(This post originally appeared on my LinkedIn Profile.)
Trust is the currency of any high-performing organisation. Yet I’ve watched it drain away in cultures where bullying—overt or subtle—goes unchallenged. What strikes me most isn’t the immediate harm: it’s the cascade effect, the quiet unravelling of ethics and the slow death of knowledge sharing.
How Bullying Erodes Trust
Bullying thrives in silence. When someone is undermined in a meeting, excluded from decisions they should shape, or publicly ridiculed for a mistake, a message travels fast: this is not a safe place. Others pull back. They stop speaking up. They stop sharing ideas. Trust—the belief that you’ll be treated with respect and dignity—evaporates.
The damage isn’t confined to the bullied individual. Colleagues who witness it withdraw too. They’re calculating risk. They’re protecting themselves. The whole system shifts from cooperation to self-preservation.
The Moral Toll
Here’s what’s rarely said plainly: organisations that tolerate bullying develop moral blind spots. When leaders ignore it, minimise it, or worse—enable it—they send a signal about what truly matters. Ethics become situational. Right and wrong depend on hierarchy, on whether you’re the perpetrator or the target.
Over time, this corrodes the foundation. Integrity becomes transactional. People stop believing the values on the website. Policies feel performative. And once that happens, recovery is slow.
The Knowledge-Sharing Crisis
A knowledge-sharing culture requires vulnerability. It asks people to admit gaps, share half-formed ideas, ask for help, and learn from mistakes without punishment. It requires trust.
In cultures where bullying is tolerated, this dies. People hoard information as armour. They hide failures instead of discussing them as learning opportunities. Mistakes become something to conceal rather than dissect and understand. Junior staff don’t ask questions. Expertise becomes gatekept.
The irony: organisations that most need collaborative learning—those navigating complexity, scaling, disrupting—are often the ones undermining it through cultural toxicity.
It Starts with Accountability
Building a knowledge-sharing culture isn’t about more training or better platforms. It’s about choice. Choosing to act when you see bullying. Choosing leadership that models respect. Choosing to investigate concerns seriously rather than dismissing them.
It’s about saying: here, we treat each other with dignity. That’s non-negotiable.
When that’s genuine—when accountability is real—everything shifts. People contribute ideas. They admit what they don’t know. They help each other. And organisations move faster, adapt better, and attract people who want to build something that matters.
Trust isn’t built on fear. And knowledge isn’t shared in silence.
Is your workplace psychologically safe? What does knowledge sharing look like where you work?
P.S. this article was inspired by the discussion in our podcast on July 28, 2026, if you missed it you can find it here: How to Thrive as a Human in an AI World: S2 E9. Thank you Simo Routarinne and Melanie Byrne Adams for such a wonderful, inspiring discussion.