When Workplaces Start to Feel Like Cults
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There’s a conversation we’re still not having enough — even though the breadcrumbs are out there if you look — about how certain workplaces quietly slip into cult-like territory.
I’ve worked in more than a few of them myself. And when you zoom out, it actually makes perfect, disturbing sense. A workplace is the ideal structure for cult psychology to take root: a group of people under the influence of a leader (a boss, a founder, a CEO) who may or may not have your wellbeing anywhere on their list of priorities. Let’s be real — plenty of people climb into management on the back of ambition, ego, and self-interest, not empathy.
The Cult Leader in a Suit
The parallels between a toxic boss and a traditional cult leader are honestly uncanny. The higher someone sits, the more their personality becomes the measure of “normal.” Company culture is not some abstract thing; it’s a reflection — often a funhouse mirror — of whoever’s steering the ship.
And that means who’s in charge matters. A lot.
If your leader thrives on control, fear, secrecy, hierarchy, or praise, that energy eventually trickles down through every meeting, every email, every performance review. People learn the rules of survival quickly.
When Workplace Culture Starts Using Cult Tactics
In Steve Hassan’s Combating Cult Mind Control, he outlines the common features of cult behaviour: authoritarian leadership, discouraged dissent, isolation, micromanagement, rigid hierarchy, and an “us vs. them” narrative that keeps people compliant.
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