What the Olympics Can Teach Us About Toxic Workplace Culture
Even the most casual of Olympic enthusiasts are by now aware of the saga surrounding Simone Biles, the GOAT of modern gymnastics who temporarily stepped away from competition in Tokyo due to a case of what she termed the “twisties” - a dangerous lack of spatial awareness when soaring through the air.
Simone displayed remarkable courage to step aside; to tell the world “I am not okay right now.” She persevered and earned herself a bronze medal during the final competitive event with the world cheering her on.
During an interview with NBC, swimming legend Michael Phelps – who has publicly shared his own mental health struggle – was asked to share his thoughts when the Simone news broke. He alluded to “the people around Simone” and wondered what those conversations sounded like. The person sitting on the couch watching the Olympics didn’t have to travel far in their imagination.
Phelps’ observation was on point. For the preceding week, NBC shuffled through events like a poker player shuffling a deck of cards. Every few minutes viewers were treated to the best in the world in some specific sport battling for global supremacy. It’s one of the best parts of watching the Olympics: the ability to jump from sport to sport and see people who have trained their entire lives for one moment, often in sports we don’t ordinarily follow.
It also gives viewers a sense of the culture within these lesser-known sports. Fencers seem to be intense and full of flair, ping-pong exudes a culture of precision and near compulsive behavior, the skateboarders gave the impression they were all best friends competing in the Olympics just for fun, water polo is rough yet collaborative, while volleyball is seemingly a roller-coaster ride of emotions between sets.
As viewers we experience the culture of these sports by watching the athletes of course, but we also experience them, more subversively, through the observations of analysts hired by the network, many of whom are former Olympic competitors.
The night following Michael Phelps’ interview, I paid careful attention to the NBC gymnastics analysts, Tim Daggett and Nastia Liukin, both former gold medalists. They should be included on the list of “people around Simone” because they are, in fact, the only two people around Simone that the average viewer has access to. They are often the medium through which people watch Simone, and their commentary paints a grim picture of the sport’s culture.
Even putting aside the ongoing civil and criminal proceedings against USA Gymnastics, due to the organization’s overwhelming failure to protect their athletes and subsequent effort to cover-up that failure, the culture of global gymnastics is toxic.
Nearly every single comment uttered by Daggett and Liukin during a gymnast’s routine was infused with some combination of disappointment, passive-aggressiveness, perfectionism, judgment, or comparison. It was a fascinating, albeit sad realization. Meanwhile, as a viewer who can’t do a cartwheel, I found myself slipping into their culture while watching: “ooh, she missed that quadruple somersault where she flies through the air at 85 mph and lands on a space the size of a nickel by 1/10th of inch, can you believe it?!”
It was a relief when NBC then shuffled the cards and took viewers to the swimming pool. Rowdy Gaines, the NBC swimming analyst and gold medalist in his own right, is hilarious. He screams with such enthusiasm and support into the microphone that there are audio imperfections due to the sound techs trying to figure out the right level for his mic throughout a race. During some of the individual and team relay events, especially the ones that came right down to the wire, he would go silent because he was watching so intently with bated breath. His job is to call the race, yet he was so emotionally invested in the swimmers’ success that he lost the ability to speak.
Of course, swimming culture assuredly has its challenges, but the difference in tone and mindset of the announcers was noticeable. As someone who looks like they’re towing an anchor when they try to swim a lap, I found myself slipping into Gaines’ mindset when watching, screaming superlatives at the television as though the volume of my encouragement was the only difference between gold and silver.
Think about the people around you, and in keeping with the themes of this newsletter, think about the people around you at work. What do those conversations sound like? In other words, what is the culture of your organization? If it doesn’t sound like Rowdy Gaines calling a race, chances are there is room for improvement.
What comes next for your organization may just be up to you. Whether you’re in the pool, on the uneven bars, in the announcer’s booth, or supporting from home, you have more agency in shifting your organization’s culture than you think. Just ask Simone.
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Co-authored by David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer, Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans will be published by the Hachette Book Group under the PublicAffairs imprint on September 21, 2021. Now available for pre-order!
