The Psychology of Leadership Shaped by Success – Part 4: Why Teams Must Be Carefully Designed from the Very Beginning

When you look deeply into an organization, one truth reveals itself again and again:

Villains inside an organization are not simply individuals with problematic personalities — they are largely the result of the system that produced them.

And there is an even more important reality:

If even one villain is allowed to succeed, their behavior quickly turns into culture.
Colleagues observe it, adapt to it, and eventually replicate it as a survival strategy.

This is not an issue unique to a specific company.
It is a structural risk that can emerge in any organization.
And when leaders fail to recognize it early, the organization begins to deteriorate quietly from the inside.

1. The Soil Where Villains Grow — The Shadow Cast by Short-Term Performance Culture

Villains thrive when an organization treats short-term numbers as the sole measure of success
and fails to examine the context, process, and values behind those outcomes.

People who grow in such environments tend to:

  • use relationships as a resource,

  • monopolize credit,

  • create the appearance of greater performance than what actually exists,

  • and leverage organizational blind spots to expand their influence rapidly.

As a result, they rise quickly through the ranks and catch the attention of leadership early.
The real danger is that their success sends a misleading message to the organization:

“This is the correct way to succeed here.”





2. Villain Behavior Quickly Becomes the Organization’s Survival Strategy

The way an organization rewards behavior becomes its culture.
If a villain is rewarded or allowed to maintain influence, employees read the situation immediately:

“Ah, this is what gets recognized here.”

From that point on, subtle but harmful changes begin to unfold:

  • Trust erodes rapidly

  • Collaboration declines

  • Blame shifting becomes routine

  • Internal competition intensifies

  • Talented individuals begin leaving quietly

Even if performance appears stable on the surface,
the organization’s structural durability is already in sharp decline.

3. Prevention — The Battle Is Decided Not Later but at the Moment of Initial Team Design

Healthy teams do not form by accident.
Toxic teams do not form by accident either.

In reality, about 80% of organizational culture is determined by early design decisions.

✔ Cultural standards must reward not only results but also values

Customer value, cooperation, and ethical judgment—
factors that are not immediately visible in numbers—
must be formally included in evaluation criteria.

✔ Leader selection requires multidimensional assessment, not simple metrics

  • peer feedback

  • team health

  • customer outcomes

  • long-term sustainability

This prevents a single distorted leader from contaminating the entire team.

✔ Leadership should be stewardship, not domination

A manager’s role is not to extract energy from employees,
but to serve as an enabler who makes the team’s growth possible.

✔ Without transparent governance, the organization can be captured by a single personality

Decision-making must incorporate diverse perspectives
to prevent any one aggressive individual from controlling the entire system.

4. The Business Conclusion — Long-Term Resilience Ultimately Comes from People and Culture

Even in an era where technology and capital matter greatly,
an organization’s long-term resilience is still determined by
the health of its people, culture, and operating model.

If the villain’s approach becomes the definition of success,
it spreads quickly and inevitably contaminates the entire organization.

This is why teams must be designed carefully from the beginning.
Respect, accountability, and customer-centric principles
must be embedded as defaults in organizational operations.
Early leader selection, cultural standards, and reward systems
must all be designed with great precision.

This is the final message of

“The Psychology of Leadership Shaped by Success”

— and a conclusion that resonates most deeply with leaders
who have experienced the realities of organizational life firsthand.

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