Heed the warning signs you have a toxic workplace
When someone leaves the workplace, people often offer feedback about how awful the departed person was to work with, how glad they are that they’re gone and how they wish it had happened long ago.
And sometimes they are even right! Why these voices were silent when the horrid stuff was happening is a topic for another column. But look at the situations when there was solid feedback about a negative situation and those in power chose to minimize the comments. That behavior creates a toxic workplace. Nothing makes an employee feel more powerless than being ignored.
In all my years in business I have seen toxic managers continue in their positions, running good people off, creating misery and a culture of mistrust. For a few years now, I have been counseling a friend in a toxic situation. Her story is all too common.
“Cathy” works as a hospital middle manager in a supervisory capacity. She does the time submissions for payroll and scheduling. What prompted her to ask for my advice was when her boss asked her to falsify payroll information to give one of the favored employees more vacation and other perks. I told Cathy she needed to go directly to Human Resources and report her boss. What she was being asked to do was unethical at the least. She did and things went downhill.
Over the next three years this woman made Cathy’s life miserable. Constant belittling, undermining her authority and general backbiting were the norm. Cathy is one of the easiest-going, solid people I know, and it was just eating away at her.
She recently decided life was too short and resigned from the management position to step back into her previous role. It was like the weight of the world had lifted from her shoulders, and you could see the physical relief when she gave up her position. Why did she wait three years? She felt a responsibility to her staff and felt she had to hang on as a buffer as long as she could.
After returning to Colorado from a vacation in Spokane, Cathy got an e-mail from her employer notifying her of an emergency meeting of all the staff under her boss. At that meeting the CEO and other leaders shared the news that the problem boss was on leave and they wanted to hear from everyone about any issues. The floodgates opened. Years of toxic management came to light and the leadership got an earful.
Cathy shared this with me: “So people just started telling about how she treats them. I could not believe some of the things she said to people, like ‘You’re new here and don’t deserve respect yet.’ The punitive nature of her management style, her lack of vision, her lack of compassion, her lack of the ability or desire to motivate and inspire her staff. … People were crying and saying how much they love their work … but hate coming in now …
“I cried when I told about the day (we) had a baby die (he was born perfectly fine and died of a rare lung problem 18 hours later). I talked to the chaplain about it. The chaplain told me that she had asked my boss how the nurses were doing with all the losses we’d had on our unit this summer and offered to do grief counseling for us. … My boss told her, ‘No, the nurses are fine.’ ”
Cathy’s boss is now gone and the healing can begin.
How did this go on for so long and harm so many people? There were many warning signs that weren’t heeded. Hindsight is 20/20, but where there’s smoke, there could be a fire. Investigate deeper than you think you need to if you are in leadership. Speak up in numbers if you find yourself in a mid-management hell. There are solutions.
Nobody should hate going to work because of another employee, supervisor or not.