Story 360

Re: Story 359

The pattern is identical, even if the players change. In my case, the individual has been at the bank for over 23 years, proving how deeply entrenched this behavior is.

A perfect example of this mindset: following a major reorganization, she openly stated she didn’t need to address negative employee survey feedback because ‘all the unhappy people had gone.’

When a direct report pushed on how she could possibly know that, it amounted to a confession: she had actively targeted and removed the people she had professional conflicts with.

Instead of reflecting on the feedback and adjusting her behavior, she simply eliminated her ‘troublemakers.’

This is exactly why HR training fails in these scenarios. You cannot ‘train’ an abuser or a bully out of their mindset.

True change requires conviction, action, and actual behavioral adjustment—not just adopting more inclusive language to mask the same destructive habits.

Citi purports that these issues can be trained away, but protecting institutional memory shouldn’t come at the cost of tolerating toxic management.

By the way, when my case landed on Leadership’s desk, ‘owning it’ apparently meant choosing containment over resolution.

“The investigation was inconclusive,” while ignoring the mountain of identical or corroborating evidence piling up around the exact same executive from numerous other people.

When smoke rises repeatedly around a person, something is smoldering that needs extinguishing vigorously.

But the longer they want, the more they build their own pattern and practice of ignoring warning signals.