# Toxic or Just a Bad Fit? How to Tell the Difference at Work with Leanne Elliott of Truth, Lies, & Work

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/fried-the-burnout-podcast-88086/toxic-or-just-a-bad-fit-how-to-tell-the-difference-at-work-with-leanne-elliott-of-truth-lies-work
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/fried-the-burnout-podcast-88086/toxic-or-just-a-bad-fit-how-to-tell-the-difference-at-work-with-leanne-elliott-of-truth-lies-work.md
Podcast: [FRIED. The Burnout Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/fried-the-burnout-podcast-88086)
Published: 2026-05-24T04:00:34+00:00
Episode link: https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/af365c2e-a0f5-4d86-a459-f75b881b46f7
Audio file: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/af365c2e-a0f5-4d86-a459-f75b881b46f7/stream.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/fried-the-burnout-podcast-88086/episodes/toxic-or-just-a-bad-fit-how-to-tell-the-difference-at-work-with-leanne-elliott-of-truth-lies-work
Duration seconds: 3301

## Resource

Your workplace might not be toxic. It might just be missing the biology lesson that explains why everyone keeps behaving badly. Work burnout is rarely one person's failure, and this conversation makes that case clearly. Occupational psychologist and Truth, Lies, and Work co-host Leanne Elliott joins Cait to untangle what actually makes a toxic work environment, and what we keep getting wrong when we try to fix it. Before culture initiatives and values workshops, there are psychosocial risk factors: the concrete, measurable conditions that quietly drive stress and erode workplace culture and wellbeing. Cait pushes back from the body, pointing out that biology can make a bonded team reject a new hire without anyone realizing it, and that childhood trauma can permanently rewire how someone reads neutral feedback. Leanne doesn't argue. She acknowledges the limits of what organizational psychology can change and makes the case for cross-disciplinary collaboration as the only honest path forward. One of the more useful reframes here is the difference between a toxic work environment and a bad fit. Real toxicity is behavioral. Workplace incivility rarely looks like explosive conflict. It looks like withheld information and subtle undermining that compounds quietly until mental health and psychological safety have eroded completely. Frequency is what turns friction into toxicity, and self awareness is what makes it possible to catch before it spreads. The conversation gets pointed on manager training and workplace burnout. Managers have the single largest documented impact on employee health and performance, receive almost no formal training, and remain the first target when things go wrong. Work burnout and employee behavior are treated as individual failures rather than syst…

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## Transcript

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