Is Your Workplace Toxic? Here’s How to Fix It. with Teri Chilcoat

In episode 255, Coffey talks with Teri Chilcoat about navigating and recovering from toxic workplace environments while building healthier organizational cultures.  They discuss defining toxic workplace dynamics beyond legal thresholds and into lived employee experience; recognizing psychological and physical symptoms of chronic workplace stress and burnout; understanding the toxic triangle of leaders, followers, and culture enabling dysfunction; applying personal agency and stoic principles to regain control in adverse environments; building leadership accountability systems that reinforce values and ethical behavior; identifying disengagement signals and preventing employee turnover through proactive management; evaluating why high-performing individual contributors often fail as managers; fostering self-awareness and emotional intelligence as core leadership competencies; addressing the hidden costs of toxic high performers on team morale and retention; preparing organizations for potential waves of turnover driven by disengagement and economic shifts.  For HR teams who discuss this podcast in their team meetings, we've created a discussion starter PDF to help guide your conversation. Download it here https://goodmorninghr.com/EP255  Good Morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative—Bulletproof Background Checks. For more information about our commitment to quality and excellent customer service, visit us at https://imperativeinfo.com.   If you are an HRCI or SHRM-certified professional, this episode of Good Morning, HR has been pre-approved for half a recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information for this episode, visit https://goodmorninghr.com.   About our Guest:  Teri Chilcoat is the author of Surviving the Toxic Workplace from an HR Insider: A Roadmap to Power, Peace, and Happiness, a practical guide that exposes the hidden dynamics behind toxic work cultures and offers a clear path for professionals who want to reclaim their voice, well-being, and sense of purpose at work. Drawing from more than 15 years of experience in human resources, Teri combines real-world insight with research-backed strategies to help employees and leaders recognize the patterns that lead to burnout, disengagement, and silence in the workplace—and what to do about them.  As the founder of Inner Authority Co., Teri has spent her career advising executives, managers, and employees through complex workplace challenges including employee relations issues, culture breakdowns, leadership conflict, and burnout recovery. Her work centers on a simple but often overlooked idea: sustainable performance and healthy workplaces begin when individuals reclaim their inner authority.  Building on the lessons from her book, Teri delivers her keynote, “Retention Signals: What Employees Need to Stay (and What HR Can Fix Fast),” where she challenges conventional thinking about workplace well-being and shows leaders how to recognize the early signals of disengagement before employees walk out the door. Through real-world examples and practical tools, she helps organizations shift from reactive retention strategies to proactive leadership.  She also leads the BOLD Roadmap Workshop, which equips professionals and organizations with a structured framework for self-awareness, authentic leadership, and long-term, sustainable success. Teri holds a Master of Science in Strategic Human Resources from the University of Denver and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of La Verne. She maintains professional certifications from both HRCI and SHRM and has been an active member of DallasHR since 2015.  Teri Chilcoat can be reached at  https://www.innerauthoritycompany.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/teri-chilcoat-phr  https://www.facebook.com/tchilcoat  https://www.instagram.com/tchilcoat   About Mike Coffey:  Mike Coffey is an entrepreneur, licensed private investigator, business strategist, HR consultant, and registered yoga teacher. In 1999, he founded Imperative, a background investigations and due diligence firm helping risk-averse clients make well-informed decisions about the people they involve in their business. Imperative delivers in-depth employment background investigations, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance, and due diligence invest