Earlier quoted context omitted.
Protecting your abstract "employer" from a toxic exec is a political suicide. The right thing to do is sniff out who's the exec's political enemy and what move is he planning next against him and aid that person in his move without directly confronting the toxic exec. It's dirty politics, but it works.
Yeah.. Lesson learned I hope... Am I naive to think that in a business setting, problems should be constructively confronted proportionally to the extent of their damage potential directly with their author? Wouldn't the business be able to grow more efficiently and be able to keep a peaceful environment free of backstabbers if people could accept that everyone makes mistakes, that they don't really matter as long as…
A) The company is bootstrapped, profitable, gets positive cash flow from paying customers and is investing profits into adding new features that will cover larger markets. Its competing with other bootstrapped companies on how fast it can add features.
B) The company is VC-backed, runs at a loss, gets it cash from rounds of investments. A competitive factor for getting more capital is showing rapid growth and creating an impression that the company is sexy, has a great future, etc. A competitive factor in getting rapid growth is offering services subsidized by the venture capital and getting high-profile salespeople through the CEO's network.
In the first scenario it's all about the product. In the second it's all about the CEO's ability to sell the right impression to the venture capitalists.
Things get more complicated once you bring in psychology. The people that are good at confidently overselling a product and giving a perfect impression are usually people-oriented. They can give a good impression, and they draw their motivation from impressing others and glorifying their social status. If a person you're talking to starts dropping hints about how much of a big guy he/she is, that's the personality type I'm talking about and you don't want to confront that person because you'll be seen as a personal threat regardless the long-term effects. This doesn't benefit the long-term product quality and efficiency, but will benefit their self-confidence (hey, I'm a big boss, nobody dares object me) and will help them attract more venture capital and get more high-profile sales people aid their course.
So yes, in many real-world scenarios everyone is talking about results, learning opportunity, positive environment, growth, etc. because this is a part of the impression you want to make, but in reality everyone is backstabbing each other because if you don't do this, someone will backstab you.