You Can’t Build a Strong Culture with Secret Handshakes

The turf wars up top? They’re not just a nuisance; they’re a slow burn.

While leadership draws battle lines and protects their kingdoms, the frontline is left to carry the weight and absorb the fallout. They’re not collapsing from the workload. They’re collapsing from the constant crossfire. And the people holding the line?

They’re the ones getting scorched, silently, daily, and without backup.

There’s a quiet kind of sabotage happening in the workplace. It’s not loud. It doesn’t show up in performance reviews or safety audits. But you’ll find it buried in the gaps, where knowledge wasn’t shared, where experience wasn’t passed on, and where people let their pride outrank the mission.

Knowledge hoarding can and will destroy your team. When the old-timer stands back and lets the new guy struggle, just to watch him fail, it’s not tough love. It’s petty. And when teams divide like that, protecting their own little corners and hoping the new folks don’t succeed, everyone loses. That kind of culture doesn’t build strong crews. It builds resentment, burnout, and a revolving door of wasted potential. Let’s be real: if you’re more invested in watching someone fall than helping them rise, you’re not a team, you’re a liability

And when someone treats what they know as leverage instead of legacy, when they don’t train, they don’t mentor, and they sure as hell don’t share unless it benefits them directly that mindset doesn't build teams it builds turnover. Because in their mind, knowledge equals job security.

But here’s the truth they don’t want to admit:

If your value depends on others staying in the dark, you’re not leading. You’re surviving.

And when survival becomes the culture, the team suffers. Bad.

There is a significant cost to withholding knowledge, one that often goes unnoticed until it’s too late. When individuals choose to gatekeep what they’ve learned, what they know, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it creates barriers to growth, mistakes multiply, turnover climbs, team cohesion weakens, burnout spreads like wildfire and this slows organizational progress. The next generation walks in blind, wondering why no one taught them anything useful. Knowledge is meant to be shared, not stockpiled. When we keep valuable insights to ourselves, we miss the opportunity to develop others, strengthen our teams, and build a culture of continuous learning and trust. In the long run, the silence does more harm than good.

We complain about the skills gap but forget that we’re the ones holding the damn gate shut.

And while all this is happening, another storm brews quietly, the turf wars. Departments fighting each other. Leaders throwing up walls instead of building bridges. Peer-to-peer politics over collaboration. And worst of all? The cliques.

Those unspoken inner circles that decide who’s “in” and who’s not. Where you only get support if you play the game, stroke the egos, and follow the invisible rules.

If you challenge the status quo? You’re shut out.

If you do things differently, even if it works? You’re a threat.

If you ask questions? You’re “not a team player.”

That isn’t culture. That’s exhaustion in disguise. And it drives away good people who just wanted to do the job well, without having to audition for acceptance.

Frontline teams end up caught in the crossfire. They’re not just trying to do their jobs; they’re trying to dodge ego shrapnel from the top. And they’re burning out because of it.

Let’s be honest: some people don’t train others because they’re afraid of being replaced. You don’t protect your position by refusing to teach others. You protect your ego. And in this industry, where experience is earned the hard way and turnover is high, this kind of gatekeeping is as common as high-vis vests. Too many seasoned leaders hoard what they know. But refusing to share knowledge doesn’t make you indispensable, it makes you the bottleneck. And eventually, bottlenecks break. Real leadership in waste isn’t about guarding your knowledge; it’s about passing it on. If your value is built on what you withhold, you’re not building a legacy. You’re just holding the door shut on the very people who could carry it forward. Real leaders don’t hoard wisdom like currency. They give it away freely, because they know legacy > leverage.

And if you’re in a leadership seat, hear this: Your team isn’t failing because they’re lazy. They’re failing because you’re too busy competing instead of teaching.

In this industry, like many, you either grow together or collapse alone. There’s no middle ground. Hoarding knowledge, isolating experience, or treating expertise like a secret recipe doesn’t make you valuable, it makes you a liability. Because when the weight gets heavy, and it always does, silos crack. But strong teams? They hold. And strong leaders make sure everyone knows how to carry the load. This isn’t about kumbaya circles and forced collaboration. It’s about being smart enough, and humble enough, to understand that none of us win when we let internal battles sabotage the mission.

The frontline is watching. And they’re tired.

Tired of being collateral damage in power struggles. Tired of navigating broken systems built on ego. Tired of wondering why no one is showing them the way. If we want to keep good people, we have to act like we care about keeping them.

You can’t build a strong culture by creating a circle so tight that only the familiar voices get heard. That’s not leadership. That’s exclusion wearing a team shirt.

It’s not just that these cliques shut people out, it’s that they harvest the ideas, the effort, and the insight of those they refuse to truly include. They watch the quiet ones do the heavy lifting… then slap their name on the outcome and act like collaboration happened.

But real culture doesn’t steal ideas and ignore the source. It lifts up the people doing the work, even if they’re not part of the “in” crowd. Even if they challenge the norm.

Even if they don’t speak in the approved tone, language, or politics of the power circle.

You can only silence people for so long before they stop trying to contribute altogether.

And when the most capable, creative, and committed people go quiet, you didn’t win anything. You just lost the very thing that could’ve taken your team to the next level.

So, keep pretending your clique is culture.

Keep rewarding performance politics over actual performance.

But just know this: the people you’re overlooking? They’re already building something better, without needing your handshake to do it.

And if your biggest contribution is “protecting your turf,” don’t be surprised when the whole damn thing falls apart.