Last September, 4.4 million American workers left their job—in no small part due to the warning signs of a toxic workplace checklist. Whether you call this the Great Resignation, the Great Purge, or something else, the fact is this marked a record-setting shift in employment history.
The implications were clear: the American worker was ready and willing to leave for greener pastures (or what they believed to be greener pastures).
The strength of the Covid-scrambled labor market undoubtedly played a big part. But a nationwide resignation wave is contagious, motivating employees who are on the fence about their current jobs to finally test their luck elsewhere. With the wind at your back, workplace issues that may have once been tolerable can quickly become intolerable.
One perennial issue is a toxic workplace. No matter your industry, title, or location, few things are as morale-sapping and performance-killing as a manager who makes things worse. Studies have confirmed this for years. In 2018, for example, a survey conducted by the benefits administration tech company Businessolver found that 60 percent of workers would take a pay cut to work for a company they considered “empathetic.”
Signs of a Toxic Workplace Can Drive Your Best Performers Away
Keep your best employees with the right leadership and workplace culture.
If you’ve experienced a high staff turnover within the past year or two, it’s possible that your workplace may be more toxic than you know. This obviously isn’t ideal, but as the saying goes, recognition is the first step to healing.
You need an old-fashioned detox—but for your company culture. Unlike a spa treatment, this kind of detox will last a lot longer than an afternoon. And it probably won’t come with little slices of cucumber. (Though maybe it could. Whatever works for you.) But it will help your organization stay healthy for years to come.
With all of this in mind, here are four signs you need a detox, stat—and three suggestions for getting started.
“A toxic corporate culture is by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition and is 10 times more important than compensation in predicting turnover.”
– “Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 1/11/22
Your Toxic Workplace Checklist: Four Signs of a Toxic Workplace
1. Your priorities are scattered and/or contradictory.
It’s almost impressive how badly many leadership teams use their time together. They set meeting agendas haphazardly and often just days beforehand, if at all. During said meetings conversations veer off topic into minutiae, leaving decisions that need to be made and problems that need to be addressed completely unresolved.
A recent study conducted by the consulting firm RHR International showed that among high-performing leadership teams, 93% are able to prioritize the most important issues and 96% focus on the right issues.
By contrast, in low-performing leadership teams, only 62% prioritize well and 53% are seen as being focused on the right issues. The consequences of poorly focused leadership are serious: wasted resources, wasted effort, and widespread confusion become the norm.
Take one technology services company I worked with. The eastern U.S. division was known for underperforming against revenue plans in comparison to its central and western division counterparts.
A closer look revealed that the leadership team of the former changed sales promotions every week, while the norm in other divisions was to do this monthly. Its leadership team was also scheduled to meet biweekly, but averaged every six weeks. And those meetings typically lasted about 45 minutes before the leader had to step out for an urgent call or crisis.
The division was so scattered that one interviewee told me, “We never know what’s really important. So whatever someone screams at me on any given day, that’s the priority.”
2. Conflicts at your organization are unproductive.
When conflict and information are mishandled among a leadership team, the rest of the organization follows suit.
The same RHR International study mentioned above showed that 87% of high-performing leadership teams handled conflict effectively and were transparent and open with information, and 82% exchanged constructive feedback with each other.
On the other hand, only 44% of low-performing leadership teams handled conflict effectively, and 52% exchanged feedback and were transparent with information. The difference in performance is profound: Among the high-performing teams, employee engagement averaged 87%, while among lower-performing teams it dropped to 45%.
Speaking negatively behind one another’s backs, withholding honest perspectives, or pocket vetoing decisions after they are made are telltale signs of toxic workplace dynamics. Leadership teams should have written norms that they won’t engage in these toxic behaviors, and they should share those norms with the rest of the organization, asking others to hold them accountable.
I’ve seen the best leadership teams handcraft these behavioral norms themselves, publish them to the rest of the organization, and regularly assess performance against them. In my experience, when you know the organization is watching how well you stick to your own rules, you’ll think twice before breaking them.
3. All information is provided on a need-to-know-basis.
The boss of one executive I worked with loved to play the “I know a secret” game. Instead of being forthright with my client and making his needs explicit, he was constantly alluding to things he was privileged to know that my client wasn’t.
Rather than openly disagreeing, he would say things like, “Well, I can understand why you’d see things that way, but there are more factors to consider that you wouldn’t know about from your position.”
When my client would ask what those factors were, his boss would say things like, “Sorry, I’m not at liberty to share them right now.” This left my client no alternative but to acquiesce to his boss’s preferences on any given decision.
I coached my client to ask early on, “Do I have all of the information I need to make this decision, or is there information you have that could change my options?”
This question forced the boss to either own the decision from the outset or free my client up to make the decision. Rather than feeling blindsided, he limited his boss’s ability to make passive-aggressive choices at critical moments by setting parameters and clarifying expectations in advance.
4. Managers invite no dissent
The majority of employees want traits like decisiveness, consistency, and clarity from their boss. In short, they want a leader. But they also want to feel empowered to speak up when they disagree with their boss.
By virtue of their unique role, they may have certain information that the boss just doesn’t know about and needs to hear. But for that to happen the boss needs to be willing to hear it, and be gracious while doing so.
Few things can cause an employee to check out faster than being told (explicitly or implicitly) that their perspective isn’t valued. There’s a good reason so many high-performing CEOs think of themselves as “servant-leaders,” not dictators.
Three Ways to Detoxify Your Toxic Workplace (and How to Survive a Toxic Workplace)
1. Check your envy
Even in the strongest, smoothest-run companies, envy lurks. Human beings are competitive and status-seeking by nature; if you weren’t, frankly you probably wouldn’t be in the (high) position you’re currently in.
As a leader, though, your job is to keep envy from running amok in your organization. You do this by setting a good example: ensuring you don’t come off as jealous or petty at work or outside of.
Learning how to be an effective leader is the first step
If you do slip up, you should quickly acknowledge what happened. If you refuse to do this, hoping instead that people will just forget about it, you can easily breed a culture of contempt within your organization—classic signs of a toxic workplace.
Leaders who model envious behavior reinforce zero-sum thinking by showing their team that it’s okay to vie for what they want at any cost. When you encourage this kind of culture, one in which the success of others provokes envy instead of support, you end up with a group of people who are constantly comparing themselves to others.
As a result, they may prioritize winning against their team over winning with their team. Further, they will struggle to find lasting contentment in their roles and be genuinely happy about group achievements.
To simply tell you to “stop being envious” would be reductive and unrealistic. Leadership is a costly undertaking, and at times it’s bound to make you feel bad about yourself and those you lead.
Your mistakes are public. Your decisions are misunderstood. Your status sought after by others. But when these things start to overwhelm you, try your best to keep a cool head. Take a breath and talk to a trusted ally who can help you regain perspective.
Signs of a toxic workplace don’t appear overnight. So it’s worth scheduling semi-regular check-ins to assess how things are going. Better yet, put reminders on your calendar to make them official.
Talking to someone about it will allow you to gain an objective take on the situation, neutralizing distorted views that come from unhealthy, toxic comparison.
2. Take responsibility for your effect on others.
We all get overwhelmed. Many of us get burnt out. There’s no shame in this. Seen from a more charitable perspective, being overwhelmed or burnt out is a signal that things need to change. The problem arises when you refuse to acknowledge this signal with your team members or employees.
A decrease in work quality, increased interpersonal conflict, leadership mistakes, or flagging demeanor are all visible signs of your increased levels of stress. Once you’re able to admit to yourself that you’re experiencing this, it’s time to come clean with your employees.
There’s no need to overshare or get too personal about the reasons you’re feeling so frayed. A basic, sincere acknowledgment can go a long way in cutting office tension and mending broken connections.
Something to the effect of “Look, I know I haven’t been myself lately, and I’m sorry if that’s had any negative impact on you or the team” is a good start. But be very clear what you’re taking responsibility for. Don’t apologize for being burned out, but do take responsibility for letting its effects spill over onto your work or team.
3. Work toward building a culture of solidarity
The last two and a half years have awakened our innate hunger for meaning and purpose. Forced into self-reflection during an extended WFH period, millions of workers have questioned the value of their work and the sense of meaning it provides.
On top of that, the isolation of the pandemic has intensified our desire for authentic belonging. Recent research from McKinsey confirms that these two factors are playing a substantial role in the current spike in attrition.
Our own research bears this out. In Navalent’s 15-year study of more than 3,200 leaders, when purpose was activated in actions, not just words, an organization was three times more likely to have people treat each other fairly and serve the greater good.
To that end, here are five ways to cultivate a workplace that offers employees a stronger sense of purpose:
- Make personal aspiration a routine part of manager conversations.
- Spotlight the actions that help fulfill your company purpose.
- Double down on helping remote workers foster strong social connections.
- Let employees help create their workplace experience.
- Have flexible policies that are clearly tied to your business.
Understanding how to survive a toxic workplace isn’t just for employees. As a manager, you set the tone and agenda of your organization. You also create the culture and enforce the rules. Use the toxic workplace checklist above to identify your shortcomings as needed—and, when things start to spiral downward, to apply a much-needed dose of detox.
Impactful Leadership Stops the Signs of a Toxic Workplace Before They Start
Navalent, spearheading over 1,600 leadership and organization transformation projects, can help you build effective leadership skills to create a better workplace. Learn how to keep your best talent with a healthy, communicative workplace. Contact us today.