Reversing a toxic workplace cultures

Question: What steps can a company take to reverse a toxic workplace culture? On average how long does it take to overhaul a toxic workplace culture?

Answer: Let me answer the 2nd question first.  It will probably take about 2 years to reverse a toxic workplace culture.

Now let’s talk about how and what steps to take.

If you have a toxic workplace culture, it can either be a culture or it can be an individual creating a culture.  Often, it’s an individual. Once you get rid of them, things fix themselves. 

You have a couple of challenges: Identify who is behaving toxically. Figure out if they are doing so because they are an instigator or follower.   

Instigators generally have to be let go otherwise, their toxicity will continue to impact and infect the organization.  Then, it’s just a matter of helping the people remaining rebuild trust and positive working relationships and new collaborative work patterns.

The steps to do this are:

1. First, create clarity.  What are the job descriptions? What are the ethical principles you expect people to follow.

2. Document every interaction with the suspected toxic individual.   Just follow up on every conversation with an email documenting what was discussed and agreed to and timelines etc.

3. Treat everyone with dignity including the suspected toxic person.

4. Look at how people respond.  A toxic person will not like their power being taken away from them. And their toxic behavior does give them power, that’s why they behave that way.  Or, it could also be mental illness, which is why you should treat everyone, including them, with dignity.

5. If there is a problem, clarify and document resolution. Work on the assumption that everyone wants to work well with others.  

6. If someone routinely violates the ethical principles of how you treat colleagues with dignity, document it.  It isn’t unusual for toxic people to bad mouth others and spread rumors.

7. Research to see if the rumors are true. This will help you know who is really being a problem vs who is accused of being a problem.  Toxic people engage in behavior known as DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse the Victim and Offend.  People accused of being toxic may just be the victims of the toxic person. Make sure you don’t get rid of a good person and keep the toxic one.  This mistake happens a LOT – like 75% of the time according to a study that I can’t remember, but it was from the Workplace Bullying Institute. 

8. Keep documenting. Eventually the toxic person reveals themselves and behaves so egregiously that it’s undeniable what they are doing – and you can get rid of them.

9. Keep monitoring. Expect a backlash from their allies and perhaps them. 

10. Continue working on clarity as clarity creates trust.

11. Continue treating every interaction as a collaboration. 

And yes, I’ve done this at a few places I’ve worked and have mostly been successful.  

Here is an example. http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2019/03/rebuilding-toxic-culture.html 

 If you want me to teach you how to do this too- take one of my classes at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

And yes, I do group training as well. 

Sneak Peak of my new Civility Course

Civility is a hot topic, but what most companies are really trying to accomplish, is to create dignified inclusive workplaces. Taking a humanistic approach, that emphasizes dignity, helps lift up employees and avoids the problems that occur when trying to "enforce" civility.

This video comes from my Humanistic Approach to Civility Course at Humanist Learning Systems. https://humanistlearning.com/a-humanistic-approach-to-civility/

This course has been approved by both HRCI and SHRM and a general certificate is available. It's also a good choice for group lessons. 

Links about dignity: 

• https://globaldignity.org/
• https://drdonnahicks.com/books/dignity/

Kindness in the workplace

Why do you think kindness should matter to leadership today? What difference does a more caring workplace make?

In other words, why should business want a kind environment? Studies have shown a  more caring place has a loyal staff, happier employees and more productive work done. 

The big challenge of any workplace is creating cohesive yet diverse work teams. Diverse teams helps make sure your solutions will work. Cohesive means - everyone gets input and no one is ostracised.

One of the best ways to make that happen - is to emphasize kindness and dignity.

All businesses are in the business of solving problems. Kindness helps make sure we solve problems well because it ensures that all viewpoints are heard.

The added benefit it is - people like working in places where they are treated kindly.

Kindness is both a moral good and a pragmatic good and that is the reason it should be practiced in the workplace.

To learn how to do this better - take my online course - Humanistic Communication Strategies: https://humanistlearning.com/humanistic-communication-strategies/

Culture Carriers

I participated in a panel on culture carriers and business icons.  Here are my notes from what I talked about.

Main Point: Culture is behavior. Culture is shaped by what we reward and what we ignore! 

Changing it requires ethical philosophy and behavioral science!

• Don’t confuse – charismatic leaders with culture
• Leaders are often branded and marketed – to help sell things. (Elon Musk for example.)
• Culture is created by what we reward and what we ignore.
• What do we measure? 
• Social Accounting. 

What do we value? Service to others!!! Yes!!!! This is key to creating a good culture.

• Humanistic approach – solving problems – making the world better
• Problem solving is collaborative
• Culture of dignity to make sure everyone is included in problem solving

Barriers to creating good cultures: Let's Use Science

• bullying and harassment
• All about exclusion
• Harms effective problem solving

Solutions:

• Humanistic philosophy (what do we value and want to reward)
• Behavioral science (what do we reward and what do we ignore)

Building Trust - a benefit of a well run whistleblower program

A company that runs whistleblowing software for companies to use - surveys their customers regularly.  One of their findings is that the system builds trust.  Here's how.

First the link:

https://acfeinsights.squarespace.com/acfe-insights/2019/4/22/new-survey-building-trust-the-main-benefit-of-a-whistleblowing-program

From the article

"The key purpose of any whistleblowing system is to enable companies to detect and act on misconduct before it causes too much financial and reputational damage."

The reason companies who take whistleblowing seriously - increase trust in staff is because - people who are unethical are exposed and fired before they can do too much damage. with unethical people not infecting the workplace, the remaining workers are freed up to trust each other because - they can  - because the people they work with are - trust worthy.

The work I do mostly centers on ending bullying and harassment, but according to their survey most of what whistleblowing systems catch is fraud and financial crimes. There are good reasons to put a whistleblowing system in place.  The challenge - is to make it work so that staff do trust the system.

Their advice?  The whistleblower must receive anonymity. This means - staff in charge of investigating the allegations - don't actually need to know who the whistleblower is - to validate whether the allegations being made are true or not. What matters isn't who blew the whistle. What matters is whether or not the allegations are true.

Given the increase awareness we all have about the importance of whistleblowers, we would all do well to remember that.

The second part of the system is to have good people who are empowered to investigate allegations and processes in place to handle reports.

I would add - finally - you need upper management committed to ethical business practices so that when their whistleblowing team tells them they have a problem - they act to get rid of the offender rather than protect them.

What I can help with is training on how to create behavioral training systems to help you better respond to allegations that are made: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Can play be used to counter dominance tendencies in the workplace?

Can play be used to counter dominance tendencies in the workplace?  This was the question my friend, Jessica Coleman asked me as she shared a link about the role of play in creating egalitarian societies.

The article is by Peter Gray at Psychology today and it is about how "play counters the tendency to dominate, in humans and in other mammals." - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201908/the-play-theory-hunter-gatherer-egalitarianism

What followed was a four way conversation about this between myself, Jessica Coleman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-coleman-1406353/), Sherri Sutton (https://www.positiveimpactforce.com/),  Kae Bender (http://everydayediting.com/).

And yes, people do actually discuss humanistic leadership and practical - how do we do it questions. Everyone gave me permission to share the conversation here.   I encourage you to read the article - and let us know what you think in the comments. Keep the conversation going.

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My response to the article:

What a cool article!  I have no doubt the thesis would prove true as it's social conditioning.  And you do have to actively work to be egalitarian. It's not easy as we ALL have dominating tendencies.  Very interesting. 

I guess the question is - how do we introduce more cooperative play. More intentionally. 

This is the area where educators who come up with play activities - do so well. My friend Sherri Sutton does this well.   I am ccing her so she can read the article. 

It may also explain why people who go to boarding school - get boarding school syndrome. Where cooperative play is almost non-existent.  
Interesting. 

I want to play with this idea!!

Kae's response: 

 So THAT's why making it about winning and losing makes it feel like the game isn't fun any more.

I started out thinking, so what’s Play? (I’d have liked him to include more concrete examples.) And initially I thought of the Save the Whales game we play with Sage, where we all work together to save more whales. Okay, cooperative play. And Kornered where we each encourage the others to find the solution for their piece. Also cooperative. But then I thought: Monopoly, where it isn’t fun when you have a competitive person, especially one who cheats (I’m thinking Victoria when we were kids) and gloats when you lose. And then I thought, Victoria doesn’t really like to play games, not like Heather does. I’m thinking Yahtzee, where we all root for each other to get a great score, so that it isn’t about winning and losing but rather mastering those dice!  And why we still play Boggle with you even though you come up with a zillion more words than we ever see — because we can admire your mastery and we keep striving to do better ourselves. And puzzles, where each piece anyone places gets us all closer to seeing the whole picture.

Which made me think of school and other things (like Toastmasters and even team sports) which COULD be about focusing on mastery and simply encouraging each other to become more capable and giving each other helpful hints and support but where often the pleasure of learning and growing instead becomes a competition by some to be on top. (Again, I think of Victoria crowing about her IQ being better than mine (when I don’t even know what mine is!) and always pushing to be right in every argument and refusing to just let it go — perhaps that’s why she became a lawyer whereas I like to share my knowledge and expertise with anyone interested and so became a yoga teacher.)

And THEN I thought about hearing about the Australian term "Trimming the Tall Poppy" which I’m told meant they ridiculed and belittled people who were excelling at some learning — which seems exactly the wrong thing to do, so I wondered about the Hunter-Gatherers "putting down someone’s budding attempts to dominate" by "making fun of the person’s excessive pride, or they may tease him about thinking he’s such a 'big man.'" After some reflection, I decided those were different: "Trimming the Tall Poppy" was meant to limit a person’s growth, to keep them from excelling, whereas the deprecation of group dominance was intended to foster others’ ability to grow by making sure everyone had a chance equally to participate.

Which made me wonder why girls are usually more cooperative and boys so often domineering — and it IS a societal thing. Because girls are taught to nurture and help (playing dolls — or ponies!) as well as being (wrongly!) disciplined by adults for being assertive ("pushy!") whereas "boys will be boys" aren’t (rightly) disciplined by the adults for using strength to get what they want or talking more loudly to dominate the conversation (which isn’t tolerated from girls!). You see it in politics today — the women candidates are castigated for the very behaviors that are simply accepted in men, and the interruption factor in debates (I’m thinking Trump v Clinton) lets the man simply roll over the rules as well as etiquette or even civility without any negative repercussions. THAT certainly sets an example for those watching…and the tone for the ensuing administration....

Which of course then makes me think of how societal standards also have enabled discrimination, letting those who can claim membership in a categorically "superior" group put down for no obvious or actual reason the demeaned group — and perpetuate that claim even in the face of a frankly opposite reality (yes, I’m talking white supremacists and the patriarchy), with the help of socially accepted standards — like the vocabulary of White and Black as well as those "universal" male pronouns.... I could go on, but I digress.


So, Jen, I imagine that introducing more cooperative play, whether with kids or adults, would necessitate establishing standards of play that reward working together for a common accomplishment. I suppose, too, that there would need to be some recognition at the beginning that some people have more innate (or already-developed) talent in the assigned developmental task but that everyone has the ability to improve their current skill level, and to establish that the improvement of each and all is more important than the topmost excellence of any one person. To that end, there would need to be reward of a mastery level only for the group as a whole, with special attention to those groups that demonstrate consistent mutual interaction in the pursuit of the accomplishment to encourage all members' helping behaviors to support and nurture the others in the group who are not initially naturally grasping the content or progressing in the development toward mastery of the content or skill. And as a final task of the game, perhaps have the group when it has achieved mastery, teach the game to a new group….

I wonder, too, Jessica, if those escape room experiences might be a model for another type of cooperative play?

My response to Kae:

Kae – wow.  I had been thinking of this in terms of – work play if that makes sense. And how the teams I’ve been on in a work environment – the work felt like play – because it was cooperative. 

But your notes here – wow.  It is why I hated chess.  My brother was super competitive, and it was never fun.  He never attempted to teach me the game.   We are watching an anime about a shogi player in Japan (their version of chess), and he is asked to teach the little girls in a house he eats at shogi  - and he is horrible at it. And part of the problem is – for him – it’s about winning. His friend gives the girls a comic book about it – and is sharing his love of the game – and they love it in turn.

The conditioning of women and men in our society through play and what is acceptable play – I think you are spot on correct about. Wow.  Lots to think about.

Sherri's response:

This is such great reading – I look forward to the blog post Jen puts together!! I’m really fascinated by the different points presented here and the ideas I would never have thought of on my own.

I use play in learning to allow for unlearning. Adult learners have the need to feel the learning is relevant and builds on their experience or expertise in some way and they display these same characteristics in learning by wanting to ‘know everything’ already when they enter a learning opportunity. We don’t do any activities that require competition unless the outcome increases cooperation, like the XY game. I try to get the adult learners to have an individual shift first and then cooperate, though I do try to make that individual shift positive. Growth in learning comes from being able to shift your perspective and develop curiosity. Once an adult learner is curious they begin to work cooperatively to explore opportunity. That’s been my experience. If I try to tell someone how they behave or how they will behave, I am met with resistance because a lot of times we don’t have the self-awareness to realize we’ll behave in a certain way, so we create a safe opportunity through play to allow you to experience your response. Play in learning environments allows the learner to let their guard down and suspend judgment. Art works great because they can say, “I’m not good at art anyway, so I don’t care.” It’s always about the process used in making the art, never the actual end product and most learners are willing to be curious in that space because they have so little training in that area.

I’m wondering about the overall effects of the tribe with the loss of using their voice. One thing I’ve discovered in business is that some people are really good leaders, they have vision, they are not afraid to go outside of their comfort zone and they give people confidence. Others feel more comfortable in having someone lay out a plan and tell them what to do. I do agree that part of it is conditioning, but part of it is how we are wired. I remember being in play groups with my children when they were 18 months and watching the personalities shining through in the little ones. I studied the Holacracy model used at Zappos and I realized that in my organization, some of the employees really thrived better with leaders. The leaders were more like coaches, and they did not belittle each other to hold the voices down, but used their strengths to help them become better. I’m curious as to why the tribes don’t organize in a strengths-based way and work together to maximize everyone’s talents in a way they feel valued instead of lowering the bar and not allowing perceived dominance. It seems that new ideas, thinking outside of the box or trying to go against the grain could all be considered dominant traits.

The challenge: 

 How can we use play in learning to help create cultural changes to less dominance and more egalitarian in the workplace. I really like Sherri's idea of leaders as coaches - helping everyone be better.  What about you?

I would add that the reason this conversation happened is that all of us view each other as collaborators and not competitors.

Using Behavioral Psychology to Influence people in the workplace

I received this question from a reporter who was interested in gaining a deeper understanding on the relationship between behavioral science psychology and how HR uses that to influence employees.

They were looking for specific examples of how it is used.

I provided an example of how it is not used, but should be. It has to do with harassment situations.  There is more that we can do.

With harassment situations, behavioral psychology could be really useful. Behavioral Psychologists have known for 70 years how to make unwanted behavior stop.  If HR learned these techniques, they could use them to help stop bullying and harassment in the workplace.

What does this look like in practice?

1. How reports of harassment are responded to, can be tweaked to take advantage of what we know needs to happen to make unwanted behavior stop. Right now – current processes tend to make things worse. It’s unintentional, but it still happens.

2. Employees reporting problems can be provided training that would help them understand – how to make it stop – in a way that goes beyond – just keep reporting it.

3. We could revamp our current sexual harassment training programs to include this information. CA law for instance, requires training on how to stop abusive behavior in the workplace. We can fulfill that requirement by providing a behavioral psychology based training that teaches – how to make unwanted behavior stop.

What happens when you provide this sort of training?  You change the culture of the organization. I did a training for a law firm once. Trained all their offices. What they said happened, as a result of a behavioral training, was that people started behaving better with each other. The one problem person who had been identified prior to the training quit, and everyone else just treated each other with dignity and professionalism.  

When you give people the knowledge of how to handle difficult interpersonal interactions with grace and with dignity – using science – it changes everything. 

If you want to learn more or would like to train your staff and management on these techniques - check out my courses at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

How to improve empathy in the workplace

Why is improving empathy in the workplace important? 

Most people want to work in caring workplaces where they feel accepted and as a valued member of the team.   Empathy – helps us connect to one another and is one way to help encourage that feeling of connectedness we all desire and that helps work teams collaborate more effectively.

How do you effectively improve empathy throughout your workplace? 

One way is to make space and time for people to bring their whole selves and share their joys and sorrows as a team. This takes an amazing amount of trust.  This is why it’s probably better to start by having conversations about dignity and compassion.  What does it mean to treat colleagues with dignity and compassion?  What does it mean to treat customers with dignity and compassion?  Once a dignity and compassion mindset has taken root – you will find that levels of empathy have naturally increased as you are making caring – a regular part of the workplace conversation and expectations.  Empathy should grow naturally once the conditions have been set for it.

What steps do you take to help employees improve empathy if it doesn't come naturally to them?

You don’t. Part of having empathy is understanding that everyone is wired differently. And that’s ok. It is wrong to try and make a fish climb a tree. If empathy doesn’t come naturally to someone – trying to force them to be empathetic – is rather cruel. All an employer can and should do – is create the conditions in which ethical and caring behavior can grow. Those that want that level of motivation in their lives – with take that on. Those who don’t want that or are not naturally inclined won’t. But an empathetic workplace makes equal space for everyone and doesn’t shame people for people for not being exactly like everyone else. Which is why – focusing on dignity and compassion – will get your further than an emphasis on compassion.

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I teach humanistic management and am the author of the new book – Applied Humanism: How to create more ethical and effective businesses.

You can check out my online courses or hire me to do a training for your staff here - https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/

And learn about my new book here: http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2019/08/my-new-management-book.html

How to build a thriving work culture

The key to creating a thriving workplace culture - is to be specific about what the values of this - thriving culture are. What are the values you want people to exemplify in their work and with each other?  This is why Humanistic Management is so important.

The number 1 tip – is to integrate ethical questions into every discussion.  What is the moral and right thing to do here? What is a good – and ethical outcome of this situation?

When people talk about workplace culture – they are really talking about morality and ethics. Which is apparently missing – or we wouldn’t be talking about culture.

One way to get an ethical workplace culture – is to make talking about what is ethical and good – part of the normal business practice and you do that – by asking the question – what is the moral thing to do.  Whether it has to do with helping a customer or figuring out how to get energy for your company, make sure to talk about ethics.

I teach humanistic business management and am the author of the new book – Applied Humanism: How to create more effective and ethical businesses. http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2019/08/my-new-management-book.html

Why civility is good for business

Dignity, civility, compassion and professionalism. Humanistic Leadership in a nutshell.

There is a great ted talk on the importance of civility and how it's good for business.

I was

I was thinking about this the other day. Civility is good for business.

I live in an area that is still basically - segregated. It's getting better. But the laws that created the segregation in housing, work, etc - are still in force and you don't undo centuries of segregation in just a few years. Attitudes and civility and dignity has increased - but we still have way too many people who do not view some members of our community - as members of the community. And they are not civil about it. At. All.  This lack of civility is real in places where segregation was an active force in community development.

How does this impact our economies? Well - it's pretty clear that in places in the US where diversity is the norm, you have booming economies. The economically depressed areas of the countries - are the places where segregation was enforced. This pattern holds - everywhere in the country.

Civility and dignity - isn't just about being nice to each other, though ... that is nice.  It's also about how we deal with and cope with people who are different than us.

Diversity is difficult. Dealing with people who don't share our backgrounds or religions, is difficult. And yet, most of us navigate that just fine - by being civil to each other. Through civility - we recognize our common humanity and dignity and worth of the people we are interacting with. 

That civility - allows us to work together and through that work - exchange goods and services with people who are different from us. It allows us create and generate wealth - separately - yet together.  Why? Because we aren't artificially restricting our customer base!!!! 

In places where segregation was enforced, that basic level of dignity and civility was absent.  The result - depressed economic activity as the building blocks for economic activity - were absent.

Diversity isn't just a moral good. It's an economic good. To get there - we have to  not just be more civil - we have to recognize the dignity of everyone we work with and all our customers. Which is why humanistic management and humanistic businesses and a humanistic economy is so important. 

What to do when an employee doesn't fit your culture

Question: 

Culture fit is important these days. But what do you do if an existing employee is just not a great fit? Or, if your culture is shifting for an employee doesn't seem to be able to shift with it? I'm looking for input from HR and business professionals on: 1) how to spot a mismatch 2) steps to take to get the employee aligned 3) what to do when your best efforts don't work?

Answer:

Culture fit is a term that has an unclear meaning.  We think we know what it means - but we also need to make sure we don’t use “cultural fit” as a way to exclude people and avoid diversity.

To really answer these questions I would need to ask a bunch of questions to find out what exactly the underlying problem is - you are trying to address by talking about culture fit.

But first a word on cultural shifts.  

Culture shifts within an organization take time to occur. Especially if the shift is intentional.  When people struggle with the shift – it doesn’t mean anything bad or that the person is not a good fit. It just means, change takes time.  I did a talk on this for HR professionals just last week.  Resistance to change is predicted to occur, so people orchestrating cultural change should be patient with people resisting – to a point.  I have found that the people most resistant, often become the biggest champions once they make the change themselves.  It’s actually really rare for someone to just be toxic.  But if someone is toxic – they eventually need to go – but you won’t know that until the 3^rd change wave has occurred.

To answer your questions.

 1.    How to spot a cultural mismatch.  

This should be done in onboarding and dealt with.  This is often less about culture than it is about motivation. I used to do volunteer management for an animal welfare organization. We would occasionally get people volunteering who were interested in animal rights. This was a mismatch, or what I would call other motivation.  We were not an animal rights organization and anyone wanting to volunteer in an animal rights organization would be problematic because they would spend all their time trying to get us to work on animal rights and the organization was set up to do animal welfare.  It’s not that one motivation is better than the other. It’s just that – they had different motivations, goals and purposes. Hence – other motivation.  If you had a hot dog shop and were looking to hire someone and that someone really wanted to sell hamburgers, but you don’t sell hamburgers – then they would not be a good fit – because they would be other motivated.  Motivated to do something “other” than what your organization does.  Whenever this happened, I would refer them to another organization whose goal and purpose aligned with the prospective volunteer.   When you interview, it’s good to get a sense of what the person wants to do and why they want to work for your organization. This will help weed out any other motivated people.  It is ok if someone just wants a job. But it’s not ok if they really really want to do something other than what you are asking them to do in this job.

As for culture – I rarely see mismatches.  Most people value the same things everywhere in the world, so most people are capable of getting along just fine with each other regardless of their “cultural background.” This is why my first instinct when I hear the term cultural fit in an HR context is to wonder whether this requirement will end up excluding people that would otherwise make great employees. This is why maybe you need to better define the term “culture fit” to help us understand what exactly the problem is you are trying to address. 

Why does culture matter? What do you really mean by culture? What is different – if the culture fit is good among the employees?

The one big difference that I do see is how autonomous people like to be. Some people need a lot of autonomy. Others want a lot of oversight. But again – that’s a matter of onboarding properly so that each employee gets placed in a work environment that works for them.

2.    Steps to take to get the employee aligned. 

Well – why? Why do you want them aligned?   If the problem is motivation and understanding of work roles – then clarifying work roles can help.  If there are interpersonal problems, then those need to be addressed.   If you want everyone to get on board with an ethical culture of giving?  Why?  Isn’t it ok for someone to just do the job.  I interviewed Manuel Guillen of the University of Valencia last fall on ethical culture in work. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHurPInnC7o)  He said that the only obligation the company can have is to lay the groundwork for ethical values to grow within the organization.  It’s like laying a flower bed. You nourish it and seed it – but the individuals decide how much to embrace of the values and vision. You can’t force people to work from a higher order motivation in their work and it would be unethical to demand that of employees.  The bigger concern is – is the work getting done and is it getting done in an ethical dignified manner? Yes – Great. No? What do you need to change to create space and encouragement for that to occur. But that’s a management issue and a management failure – not a matter of employee fit.

  

But to answer the question – I would go into interview mode to find out why there is a disconnect and get the employees perspective on things. What do they need?  Normally though, when the fit is bad – it’s because there is a problem with the manager.

3.    What do you do when your best efforts don’t work? 

Question whether you are the problem.  I seem to have to say this in every presentation I do, but if you are not getting the results you want – then you are doing something wrong.  Often, it means our rewards and reinforcements are out of alignment.   Or – worse, we are providing perverse incentives to our employees and so we accidentally reward behavior we don’t want and disincentivize the behavior we do want.  99% of the time, this is the problem.  Occasionally though, you do get someone who is truly toxic and if you identify someone who is unethical – lying for instance – and doing it pathologically – you do need to get rid of them.  When I took over the volunteer management job at the SPCA I worked for – I had 10 volunteers and toxic employee volunteer relationships.   I reset the relationships and all, but one got on board and were very excited about the changes we made. Staff responded well too. After about 6 months, I had to fire the one volunteer who did not want to get with the new way of doing things.  But she made that choice for me by refusing to abide by the new rules and procedures – well after everyone else had adjusted.

Saving your company from a toxic employee

What can you do when you see a toxic attitude spreading among your employees and can't let anyone go?

Organizational culture is determined by the last person promoted.  If you promoted a toxic person – you taught everyone else that the way to get ahead is to be rude.

Without knowing exactly what the “toxic attitude” is, it is hard to give you a course of action to take.

But in general – you don’t reward the behavior you want and you do reward the behavior you do want. If there is toxic attitudes being adopted, it’s because you are rewarding – inadvertently – the toxic behavior.  In other words, whatever incentives you have – they are perverse and need to be corrected or the status quo will remain.

Also – you can always let someone go. Always. The idea that someone is so important you can’t function without them is lazy thinking and counter-productive. Toxic individuals are productivity black holes. The reason they seem to be the most productive is because they are taking up everyone else’s time and making everyone else less productive.  Once the toxic person is gone and people don’t have to spend half their day catering to the toxic person’s whims, the productivity of the remaining staff flourishes. Exponentially so. I used to work at a non-profit. I fired a toxic volunteer and within 3 years we gained an additional 20,000 hours of volunteer time that was no possible while the toxic volunteer was there. That one toxic volunteer was costing us the equivalent of 10 full time employees! 

Truly toxic employees drain productivity. The best way to prevent their toxic attitude from spreading – is to get rid of them. As long as they are tolerated  - you are sending a message that this behavior is not only acceptable – but rewarded.

To learn more about how to stop bullying and other unwanted behaviors in the workplace - take one of my online courses:
https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Creating Humanistic Workplace Cultures with Jerry Wagner

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jerry Wagner on the topic of Creating Humanistic Workplace Cultures on behalf of the International Humanistic Management Network.







Link to the resources mentioned in the talk: http://humanisticmanagement.international/creating-humanistic-workplace-cultures/