It’s Humpday!

WEDNESDAY - August 19, 2026

HUMPDAY

Weekly Insight & Inspiration for Purposeful Leaders

THIS WEEK’S FOCUS

The High Cost of Dysfunction at the Leadership Table

Gossip. Backstabbing. Sabotage. The quiet epidemic of incivility among leadership peers - and what it truly costs everyone it touches.

You can learn more about a leader by watching how they treat their peers than by watching how they treat everyone else.

“It was like someone punched me in the gut!” This was how a nurse leader recently described what he heard through the walls after a recent interview for a next-level role. Because he currently works for the organization, many on the interview panel were peers and leaders he’d worked alongside for more than two decades. These were people who encouraged him to apply for the job and publicly professed their support for him prior to the interview. But once the interview was over and he had been excused he could overhear the conversations through the all-too-thin-walls. Despite responding to the interview questions with objective data that supported his strong performance now words like “He probably made up that data” and “I’m way more competent that he is” came through the wall like a lightening bolt. What was worse - the voice that pierced the deepest was the one he considered to be a trusted colleague and friend.

The Peer Relationship No One Talks About

Leadership development spends most of its energy on how we lead those that report to us - coaching a team, delegating well, building trust with direct reports. Far less is said about how we lead sideways: how we show up with the peers who sit beside us at the table, who compete for the same promotions, who share credit and blame in ways that are rarely equal.

That silence is expensive. When peer relationships turn dysfunctional - when gossip becomes currency, when credit gets claimed by someone who didn’t earn it, when one leader builds themselves up by tearing another down - the damage doesn’t stay contained. Researchers have a name for this pattern: workplace incivility, the rude dismissive, or undermining behavior between colleagues that studies consistently link to burnout, turnover, and safety events. It moves through the organization like a slow leak: trust erodes, collaboration stalls, and good people start protecting themselves instead of serving the mission. In nursing leadership especially, where incivility among colleagues has been directly linked to medical errors, that leak can have a devastating impact.

And it moves through the individual too. The nurse leader being talked about at lunch gatherings. The one whose idea was quietly claimed in a meeting they weren’t in. The one who learns a decision about their own unit was made without them. That person carries it. Their wellness suffers. Confidence erodes. Some leave roles they are genuinely good at - not for lack of competence, but for lack of cover.

Peer incivility among leaders is not a soft-skill issue. It is a leadership failure with a body count of trust. It tends to show up as one or more of five behaviors, each a form of incivility:

Gossip. Trading information about a colleague that was never yours to share, often dressed up as “concern”.
Backstabbing. Agreeing to someone’s face and undermining them the moment they leave the room.
Using others to get ahead. Claiming credit for someone else’s work, or leveraging a colleague’s mistake to make yourself look better in comparison.
Dishonesty. Shading the truth, withholding information, or telling different people different things to protect a position.
Sabotage. Quietly working to make a colleague’s job harder, make them less likely to succeed, or their reputation more fragile because their success feels like a threat.

If You Recognize Yourself Here…

Many of you reading this lead with integrity every day, and this section will simply confirm what you already practice. But for some, reading the list above is uncomfortable - not because the words describe bad behavior, but because they describe your behavior.

If you have spread information about a colleague that wasn’t yours to spread. If you have smiled at someone’s face and worked against them the moment they turned around. If you have used another leaders’ mistake, real or exaggerated, to make yourself look better. If you have shaded or even omitted the truth to protect your position. If you have quietly made someone else’s job harder because their success feels like a threat to you - you have done real damage. Not hypothetical damage. Damage to a specific person’s reputation, health, wellbeing, confidence and trust in the people they work beside every day.

None of this makes you irredeemable. It makes you human - and it makes you responsible for what happens next. The leaders who eventually earn back the most trust are rarely the ones who never made the mistake. They are the ones who stopped, named what they did honestly, and said so to the person they hurt. Not a vague “if I offended anyone.” A specific, direct: “I did this. It was wrong. I am sorry and here is what I am doing differently.”

If that’s you, today is a good day to deliver that message.

If You are the One Being Targeted…

If you are on the receiving end of this kind of incivility, here is what actually helps:

Document, don’t ruminate. Keep a simple, factual record of what happened and when, not to build a case for revenge, but so you can see patterns clearly instead of relying on memory shaped by emotions.
Separate the behavior from your worth. A colleague who gossips about you or claims your work as their own is telling volumes about their own insecurity and character, not your competence or the value you bring.
Find one or two trusted people. Not to spiral together, but to reality check what you are seeing and get support you can’t always find from inside the situation.
Escalate deliberately, not emotionally. When the behavior affects patient care, team function, or crosses into harassment, put it in front of the people who can actually address it - documented, specific, unemotional.
Protect your energy for the work that matters. Don’t let managing a difficult peer become a second job. Give it the attention it needs, and no more.

3 PRACTICES FOR PROTECTING YOUR PEACE

Name it privately before you name it publicly. Get clear with yourself - or with a mentor - on what actually happened before you respond, so your reaction comes from clarity instead of hurt.
Keep your own hands clean. No matter how a peer treats you, decline the invitation to gossip back, retaliate, or match their tactics. It is the fastest way to lose the ground you’re standing on.
Build the table you wish you had. If you are not the source of the dysfunction, become the peer who refuses to participate in it. Culture shifts one leader at a time.

Fortunately, the nurse leader I mentioned above has some solid mentors that helped him to see the truth of the situation - the members of his peer team lacked the integrity and character that he considers “must-haves” in the workplace. He applied for and was hired into a similar role in another organization and is knocking it out of the park. Unfortunately for the organization he left - well…let’s just say they have a few leadership struggles that are showing up in their quality, financial and retention performance.

A Final Thought

Every organization has a culture among its peer leaders, whether anyone has ever named it out loud or not. That culture is being built right now, in the small choices leaders make about how they talk about each other and what they allow when the room is quiet.

Trust between peers is not automatic. It is built - or broken - one choice at a time.

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This week, do one thing: if you’ve been hurt, protect your peace and speak up where it matters. If you done the hurting, say so - plainly and to the person who deserves it. If you are witnessing incivility - call it out. Do not allow it to exist in your culture.

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I’d love to hear from you. Please reach out and share if you found this insight helpful, if you’d like to talk about it more, or if there’s a topic you’d like to see in a future Humpday. Stacie@LumisLeadership.com

~ Stacie

The “Humpday” was an e-mail originally created by a great leader and mentor - Marc Strode. He used the Humpday to bring insight and inspiration to his team every week. With his permission and at his request to Keep the Spirit - the Humpday lives on. Marc, thank you for being a leader worth following. Despite your love for camels, you truly are the GOAT!