If you know us here at Orange Leaf, then you know we love Halloween.
This time of year gives us fun decorations (and we love that they are all ORANGE!), haunted houses, and an excuse to eat your kids’ candy. There is also something so fun about watching a movie that makes you second-guess every creak and noise in your house for the next week.
Scary movies have given us some pretty unforgettable and quotable lines.
“Here’s Johnny!”
“They’re heeeeere!”
“I see dead people.”
When you hear the line, you instantly know the movie. Why? Because certain lines stick with us. We remember them, repeat them, and they eventually become part of our culture.
The same thing happens at work.
Every company and team has certain phrases that you hear and see over and over again in meetings, Slack messages, and repeated at the coffee station.
And just like those phrases from a scary movie, there are a handful of statements that should make everyone’s skin crawl. Not because they’re dramatic one-liners, but because they reveal something much deeper about your culture. Think of these as the workplace equivalent of hearing a strange noise coming from the basement and deciding, for reasons no horror-movie fan will ever understand, to go investigate it alone.
These phrases at work don’t arrive with creepy music, flickering lights, or a masked villain. They show up on a random Tuesday morning. You hear one during a staff meeting, walking to the parking lot after a long day, or casually tossed into a conversation as though it means nothing.
Except it always means something.
And when the wrong lines keep getting repeated, they can become part of your culture.
That’s when things get scary.
Here are a few of the biggest offenders:
“That’s not my job.”
Few sentences kill teamwork and progress faster.
Of course, everyone should have clear roles and responsibilities, but organizations don’t grow because employees stay inside siloed comfort zones. Or are okay with wearing one hat.
They grow because people step up when the team needs them. They’re willing to learn a new skill and offer support.
When someone automatically defaults to “not my job,” they’re telling you they care more about protecting their task list than accomplishing the team’s goals.
That’s not a staffing problem.
That’s a leadership conversation.
“We’ve always done it that way.”
Oooof. We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but things change. And will change for the worse if you’re stuck in old ways, unwilling to open up to new ideas. Every successful business eventually reaches a point where what got them here won’t get them there.
Markets, customers and technology evolve. And you need to evolve with them.
“That’ll never work.”
Well, not with that attitude!
This phrase can stop a good idea before it even has a chance to become one. It’s easy to point out everything that could go wrong. It takes a little more curiosity and creativity to ask what could go right.
Does every new idea deserve a green light? Of course not. But when “that’ll never work” becomes the automatic response to something new, people eventually stop bringing new ideas to the table.
Instead of immediately listing all the reasons something won’t work, encourage your team to ask, “What would have to be true for this to work?” or “How could we make this better?”
You don’t have to say yes to every idea. But you do want to create a culture where people feel encouraged to bring them forward.
“That’s good enough.”
Is it?
Or are we just tired? Underwater? Complacent?
Perfection isn’t the goal. But progress is.
“Good enough” often becomes permission to stop improving, to stop challenging ourselves. We don’t always have to go above and beyond, but there are certain benchmark standards your team should strive to hit. Do they know what those standards are? This is an opportunity to educate your team.
“That’s above my pay grade.”
Usually this one comes with a laugh or a shrug. But leaders shouldn’t laugh it off too quickly.
Sometimes, “that’s above my pay grade” simply means, “I don’t have the authority to make that decision.” Fair enough. But when it becomes a go-to response, it can signal something bigger: That’s someone else’s problem. I don’t need to think about it.
You don’t need every employee making decisions outside their role. You do want them paying attention, asking questions, sharing ideas, and taking ownership of what they can influence.
There’s a big difference between “I can’t make that decision” and “I can’t do anything about it.”
When you hear this phrase, encourage a better question: “What part of this can I help with?”
Because job titles may determine authority, but they shouldn’t determine who gets to care.
Culture Is Built One Conversation at a Time
The scary phrases aren’t really the problem. They’re symptoms. They’re subtle clues about beliefs, habits, and expectations that have quietly crept in over time. Especially when folks have been at a company for a while, they tend to get comfortable and forget how to keep moving the business forward.
The good news? Culture can change. We don’t want to jump-scare our teams with a sudden culture restructure or overhaul, but it can happen bit by bit. A coaching conversation here, an expectation set there, a discussion about accountability. It just takes one leader stepping up when they hear those scary phrases sneaking in.
The ghosts, ghouls, and goblins are the least of your worries this Halloween. Worry about the conversations haunting your hallways.
Because the scariest things you’ll hear at work can be disguised as something surprisingly ordinary. And if you address them early, they never become part of your company’s permanent culture.