When Ego Drives the Culture, Everyone Ends Up Under the Bus

Getting ahead by going around people feels like strategy. It's actually a tax on the whole organization, and the people who refuse to pay it are the ones who last.

By Lynn Cirillo

Every organization says it values collaboration, integrity, and trust. You'll find those words on the website, in the onboarding deck, maybe painted on a wall. But culture isn't what an organization says it values. Culture is what it rewards.

And in too many corners of corporate America, what gets rewarded is the person who wins the room: the one who takes the credit, controls the narrative, and is willing to roll a bus over a coworker, or even a confidant, to get one rung higher.

Here is my point of view, plainly: ego-driven advancement is not just a personality problem. It's a culture signal. When one person gets ahead by stepping on others and nothing happens, everyone watching learns the real rules. And once people learn those rules, the whole organization starts to change shape around them.

What a Leadership Triangle Is (and Why It Matters)

One of the clearest signs that ego is running a culture is the leadership triangle.

A triangle, sometimes called triangulation, happens when two people who have an issue with each other don't talk directly. Instead, one of them goes around or through a third person. Rather than saying, "I disagree with how you handled that," someone takes it to your boss. Rather than resolving a conflict, a leader asks a peer to "keep an eye on" someone. Rather than giving feedback, a manager tells a colleague, who tells you, slightly reworded.

Triangles feel safer than direct conversation. They protect the person who starts them from discomfort and from accountability. But they come at a cost. Information gets distorted every time it changes hands. People stop knowing where they stand. And the person in the middle, the third point of the triangle, gets pulled into a conflict that was never theirs.

In an ego-driven culture, triangles aren't accidents. They're tools. Going around someone is how you make yourself look better without ever having to face the person you made look worse.

The Real Cost: Conflict, Unhappiness and Push-Down Management

When getting ahead becomes the point, three things tend to follow.

Conflict goes underground. Disagreements don't disappear; they move into side conversations, private messages, and closed-door meetings. Teams look calm on the surface while trust quietly erodes underneath.

Unhappiness spreads. People don't burn out only from workload. They burn out from vigilance, from having to wonder who is repeating what, who will take credit for their idea, and whether the person they confided in is building a case. That constant guarding is exhausting, and it rarely shows up on any engagement survey in a form leaders recognize.

Pressure gets pushed down. This is push-down management: when the ego at the top needs to look good, the weight of every missed number, shifting priority, and unrealistic promise rolls downhill. Each layer protects itself by pressing harder on the layer below. The people with the least power end up carrying the most risk, and the people making the promises rarely feel the strain of keeping them.

Over time, this changes how people think. In You're Not Imagining It, I wrote about how, in a difficult workplace, the question can slowly change from "What is the right thing to do?" to "What will happen to me if I do it?" That shift is the real cost of an ego-driven culture. Good people stop leading from their values and start managing their exposure. Innovation slows. Candor disappears. And the organization loses the very judgment it hired people for.

Why Authenticity Still Rises

If you've watched someone get promoted after throwing a colleague under the bus, you may be wondering whether doing the right thing is naive. I understand that. It can feel like the people who play the game are winning, and the people who won't are being left behind.

But here's what I've come to believe: ego borrows against trust. Integrity compounds.

The person who climbs by stepping on others is spending something every time they do it. People remember. Coworkers stop sharing information with them. Confidants stop confiding. Eventually, they're leading a team that complies but doesn't commit, and that kind of leadership has a ceiling, even if it takes a while to reach it.

The person who stays authentic, who gives credit, speaks directly, and refuses to play the triangle game, is building something that doesn't show up on an org chart right away: a reputation people trust. When things get hard, that's who people want to follow. It doesn't always feel like it's working in the moment. It's still always the better choice.

A Framework for Leaders: The Straight Line Standard

If you lead people, you set the rules of the game, whether you mean to or not. Here's a simple standard I'd offer, built on one idea: the shortest, healthiest path between two people is a straight line.

1. Go direct. When you have an issue with someone, take it to them first. And when someone brings you a complaint about a colleague, ask: "Have you talked to them?" Refusing to be the third point of a triangle is one of the most powerful culture moves a leader can make.

2. Credit out loud. Name the people whose work made the result possible, specifically and in the rooms where it matters. When credit flows freely, nobody has to steal it.

3. Absorb before you push down. Pressure from above is real. Your job is to filter it, not just pass it along with more force. Ask what your team actually needs to know, what you can take on yourself, and what promise you shouldn't have made.

4. Reward the right thing, visibly. Watch who gets promoted, praised, and given the big assignments. If people who step on others keep advancing, your culture statement is fiction. If people who build others up advance, everyone learns that integrity is a career strategy, not a sacrifice.

Questions for Leaders to Sit With

• Who in my organization has been rewarded recently for results that came at someone else's expense? What did everyone else learn from that?
• When someone complains to me about a colleague, do I send them back to that person, or do I become part of the triangle?
• What pressure did I pass down this month that I could have absorbed or pushed back on?
• Would the people on my team say credit flows toward them or away from them?
• If my team could speak freely, what would they say it takes to get ahead here?

If You're the One Under the Bus

If you've been on the receiving end of this, if someone you trusted took your idea, repeated your confidence, or went around you to protect themselves, I want you to know that your hurt is legitimate. Betrayal at work stings in a particular way because so much of our identity and security lives there.

A few things that may help:

Don't let their behavior rewrite your values. It's tempting to decide you need to become harder or more political to survive. You can become wiser without becoming someone you don't recognize.

Keep your own record. Document your work, your contributions, and important conversations, calmly and factually. It's not paranoia. It's clarity.

Choose your confidants carefully, not cynically. One broken trust doesn't mean no one can be trusted. It means trust is earned in steps. As I wrote in You're Not Imagining It, "Real loyalty should be able to withstand an honest conversation." Look for the people who can do that.

Address it directly when it's safe to. A calm "I noticed my work was presented without my name. Can we talk about that?" refuses the triangle and puts the conversation where it belongs.

Notice when the culture is the problem. If ego is being rewarded from the top, no amount of personal integrity will fix the system on its own. Staying true to yourself might eventually mean choosing a place that deserves it.

The Long Game

Ego-driven cultures can look successful for a while. The numbers might even be good. But they run on borrowed trust, and eventually, the bill comes due in turnover, silence, and conflict nobody wants to name.

Being your authentic self in that environment takes courage. It may not feel like it's paying off. But the straight line holds. And when the people who went around everyone run out of road, the people who did the right thing are still standing, with their reputations, their relationships, and their sense of self intact.

You're Not Imagining It is the sixth book in my Musings of a Recovering Executive series. It's about toxic workplaces, gaslighting, and reclaiming confidence: noticing what's happening, understanding the pattern, and finding your way back to yourself. You can learn more at https://MusingsOfaRecoveringExecutive.com/books/youre-not-imagining-it/.

About the Author

Lynn Cirillo is an author and the founder of Grounded Leadership LLC. I help people trust themselves again at work and in life, and stop measuring their worth by how much they can carry. I'm over 55, I still live with imposter syndrome, and I write about both because pretending otherwise helps no one. Learn more at https://MusingsOfaRecoveringExecutive.com/.