291: How To Fix Toxic Work Cultures

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:01]:

Whenever I do research into toxic workplace culture, what I find is that most people have experienced a toxic workplace at one time or another. I have found myself in a couple of toxic work environments and also working under toxic leaders, where the environment wasn’t really toxic, but it was, it was the leader, and people can relate to that as well. In the run up to the launch of my book Thriving Talent, these solo episodes are focused on themes that are taken directly from the book. Now, last time’s episode focused on positive workplace culture, which is two chapters in the book. Today I’m talking about toxic workplace cultures, which is one of the chapters within the culture pillar within the culture section in the book. Now, if we can agree that we don’t want to be in a toxic workplace culture, how is it that so many people have experienced toxic work environments, and how is it that we have created these environments? Today I’m going to talk about how leaders can avoid creating the conditions of a toxic work environment. And usually it’s unintentional. We don’t set out to create these environments of toxicity.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:14]:

It happens often by accident. It’s not because we are bad people as leaders. It’s not because of a handful of people in the organization. Oftentimes the responsibility lies in what we reward but people for. So what behaviors are we rewarding people for? What are we recognizing them for? What conversations are we avoiding? And what are we tolerating at work? And that’s how toxic workplaces evolve. My Thriving talent framework has five different elements to it, and I want to talk about toxic workplaces in relation to all of those different elements and what it might look like. The first thing I want to talk about is psychological safety. And in a toxic working environment, we, we don’t have psychological safety.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:03]:

Psychological safety has been eroded. And that means that people are not willing to speak up. Maybe they think they’ve spoken up before and nothing has changed, nothing has actually happened. And because they’re not speaking up, leaders assume that their silence is actually agreement and alignment with whatever decisions are being made. They’re not speaking up, and that is perceived as agreement. So specifically within the culture, then I’m sure you can relate to this, because I certainly can. The high performers are protected despite being toxic. They are protected because they’re bringing in money.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:38]:

They’re dealing with a very valuable client, whatever it might be. But their toxic behaviors go tolerated. They’re not addressed in any way because the person is deemed a high performer because of the nature of the work that they do. And this breeds toxicity within the organization and not another way to look at culture is when we say one thing, but we behave in another, or when an individual is kind of allowed to get away with things that are not in line with the behaviors that we would expect and that’s perceived and that might spread throughout the organization, well, if they can do it, why can’t I do that as well? So that is the way that toxicity spreads from a culture perspective, from a driver’s perspective. So that is one of the. The pillars within the framework is drivers or our needs. And when, when we’re in a toxic environment, that tends to turn to control rather than autonomy. So leaders are trying to control everything they feel maybe out of control in some senses.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:44]:

And so they’re trying to exert control onto people. And people then feel a sense that they’ve lost their autonomy in some way. In those situations, it’s oftentimes that everything feels urgent as well. There’s a great sense of urgency. Things have to be done immediately, things have to be done straight away. It has to be done right now. Within drivers, then from a relational perspective, there can be a lot of blame. So we are looking at who we can blame for this situation or who can we blame? Who can we throw under the bus? I certainly have worked in this, what we call the cya, cover your arse kind of environment, where you had to document everything on paper just in case it came back to bite you and you could show that it, it wasn’t your fault, that something went wrong.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:30]:

And that kind of environment of blame is really, really toxic. From a capabilities perspective. We are not properly resourced leaders are not trained how to become effective leaders overall. The team is not resourced properly. And again, I have experienced that where one of the leaders deliberately kept gaps in the team to remain not just profitable, but to have a higher level of profitability than one of the other departments. So became quite competitive. And the result of that then was everyone knew what was going on and the morale in the team was really low. People were working much longer hours than they needed to be.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:06]:

And all because this deliberate gap within the team, the last part of the thriving talent framework then, is all about leadership. And in this toxic environment, leaders become ineffective. So what they’re doing is not necessarily working. And so they might feel themselves that they’re ineffective, that there’s no change happening, but also the team perceives them as being ineffective leaders. The consequences then of having these toxic environments, and I’m sure you have seen this firsthand yourself, if you’ve ever experienced that toxic workplace culture, high performers, they either burn out because they’re the ones taking on all the additional pressure, they’re the ones doing the additional work, or they leave the organization before they burn out. So that is consequence number one. The second consequence is that clients experience inconsistency or churn. So maybe they’re not getting the same level of service from the person who is dealing with them because they’re close to burnout, or they’re spinning too many plates, they’ve got too much going on, or they just don’t care anymore because things have got to such a state that they’re like, I don’t really care that much for this organization anymore.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:17]:

I don’t feel loyal to them. I’m not going to do my best work with this client. Or if they leave the organization. And so the client is experiencing churn, they’re experiencing different people who are, who they have to deal with at your organization over time. And I have seen this, I’ve seen it in a few different ways, where people just don’t care anymore. But also when things change within the organization, there could be either a restructure or when people leave, clients get frustrated because a new person has had to become familiar with their business from scratch every few months, which is quite frustrating for them. The other thing here is that leaders can become really frustrated because no matter what they’re trying to do, things just don’t stick. Whether they recognize that toxicity and they’re trying to address it, they’re not addressing the root causes that I talked about before within the pillars of the framework, they’re trying to put on quick fixes, and nothing is really working for them.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:14]:

So they end up feeling quite frustrated because of that. So this is specifically why in the Thriving Talent book, I’m not focusing on perks, I’m not focusing on programs. I’m looking at the system of work and how things get done. And it’s about creating the conditions. This is a new word that I’m using a lot to create an environment where people can really thrive, where people feel fulfilled through the work that they do. But how leaders can actually create those conditions to drive not just what’s good for people, but what’s good for performance of the organization as well. So a reflection question to leave you with today before I wrap things up, and that is, what behavior are you currently tolerating that contradicts what you say you value? So you’re tolerating something currently and that might be contributing to causing this toxic work environment? So think about what you’re currently tolerating, what difficult conversations are you avoiding? What do you personally need to do to make sure that this doesn’t slide into a toxic or a further toxic environment? Beyond what I’ve talked about today, some of the other things that I cover in that chapter in the book are the signals of whether you should stay or whether you should leave in a toxic working environment. So sometimes we find ourselves in that environment.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:41]:

And if you have the opportunity to leave. I’m not saying everyone has the opportunity, some people have to stay for financial reasons. But if you have the option and the opportunity to get out of that situation, some people still choose to stay. And it’s thinking about, well, what are the things that I’m willing to tolerate, but also thinking, am I going to be the one, one of the people who can stay and make those changes? And just knowing the nuanced difference between getting out because you can’t tolerate it anymore or staying and being the change that you want to see in the organization. It’s kind of a. It’s a tricky fine line that we need to. That we need to tread. I also talk about the consequences of toxic working environments.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:25]:

I’m not going to go into great amount of detail. I share some examples from companies of specific things that have happened, what those signals of what a toxic environment looks like, a lot of which I have covered on today’s episode. One of the other things that I look at is what do we do after toxicity? How can we recover from that? What are the specific steps that we can take if as a leader we’ve recognized we’ve created a toxic situation or we’ve entered into a new organization and realized it’s actually quite toxic? So I talk about some of those as well. If you want to get your hands on the book, it’s available for pre order now and you’ll find all of the details on thrivingtalentbook.com.