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It's not uncommon for teams to develop their own "semi-culture", but "toxic pockets" show up when expectations don't align, a workplace advisor says.

Every team has formal expectations of culture, but it's the team's informal rules that are "a lot more powerful and pervasive", says The Zalt Group director Zandy Fell.

"Each team, by the nature of being a smaller unit, creates its own flavour or its own tone... [but] some of those teams just don't quite get it right," she tells HR Daily.

"It could be a range of factors, it could be there's a mismatch in expectations, it could be that bad behaviours are allowed to start and [nobody is] held accountable either by the peer group or a supervisor or a manager. It could be that something actually happened and it's not resolved, so resentment lingers and then that plays out in the team or relationship..."