[ANNOUNCER]: Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.

[COBY]: Did we lose a patient?

[JAMES]: No, that’s just my lunch.

[COBY]: Hey, thanks for joining us. I’m Coby, he’s James. And let’s get started with a question. How do you turn around a toxic workplace culture?

[JAMES]: Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack in that question before we can really kind of even get into providing any valuable, response. Because toxic workplace cultures can have so many different entry points. so the first thing that we kind of need to do is figure out, you know, where is this toxicity leaking into our workplace? And this is going to lead us to identify behaviors that are, let’s say, less problematic at best. So one, I guess one example that we’ve seen a lot is like, we’ve seen huge levels of job dissatisfaction. President present. In entire departments, where employees are constantly at each other’s throats, frustration and anger are commonplace. There’s backbiting, undermining. All of these things lead to poor work outcomes, high turnover, and really costly mistakes. And as bad as all of those behaviors are, it doesn’t mean that the entire team is toxic, or at least not necessarily terminally. So. So I think to start us off, the, the short answer is twofold. You turn around a workplace culture with starting with just being able to identify, understand, and then resolve. Right. We’ve used this mantra many times in the past. So you identify the source. we need to understand whether or not we are dealing with a toxicity that is terminal. It’s at a terminal stage where, let’s be honest, the only real recourse at that point is to remove it from our organization or whether it’s treatable. And then if it’s treatable, then we need to resolve it with coaching, discipline, training, redefining expectations or termination.

[COBY]: Yeah, yeah. And the, the thing too is, like, when we talk about toxic, you know, talk workplace culture, toxic people, toxic teams. It’s. It’s kind of a blanket term that we kind of think is like, it’s one thing like, like a toxic culture talks like, you know, but it’s actually, it’s actually a symptom of, of, of other causes. You usually like, say entry points is a great way to put it. What was the kind of, what was the catalyst for this snowball effect of behavior that, you know, that turned into a toxic environment or a toxic team or, or even a toxic individual? Because it’s one of those things that, you know, the. A Toxic, like a toxic culture is basically poisoned. And what was the source of the poison is the whole idea of kind of the, identification. We also have to identify, like you say, is it terminal? The conditions can’t be reversed. It can only be managed until it collapses or needs to be removed or is it treatable, where serious. But responsive interventions and care can actually turn it around and it can actually be healed. And we go into different organizations and we see all kinds of different environments. And, it’s often we hear the term toxic thrown around. I think every. I can’t think of the last.

[JAMES]: We often hear it as this person is toxic, or this team or this department is. Yeah. And I’m going to split hairs for a second, but I think it’s important to just. The distinction that we try to make is that a person is not toxic, but a collection of their behaviors. Maybe the way that they present in the workplace may be causing toxic. Causing a toxic workplace culture. So, it’s. It is a small shift in language, and it’s not about, you know, anything other than just recognizing that people are complex, we’re messy, and we are more than a single set of behaviors.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: But, that’s not to diminish the impact that those toxic behaviors have on our workplace. It’s just making sure that we are still identifying what the problem is. The problem isn’t necessarily that the person is cancerous.

[COBY]: Right.

[JAMES]: But the way that they present their actions, their activities, their behaviors are causing this much bigger problem.

[COBY]: Yeah. And I mean, we’ve talked about toxic, environments of people a little bit in past episodes. We did an episode, let’s say it might have been season three. I’ll put it in the show notes, where we talked about, are we sheltering toxic leaders? And then I think. And then I think, last season we talked a little bit about toxic employees and stuff like that too. And I also published an article on LinkedIn challenging that exact thing about the idea of toxic, behaviors are what we actually should be villainizing. Not, not, not the individuals that necessarily show them. Right. but this is the whole idea is that, you know, the impact is the same regardless of the why. We should also be kind of clear on that too. If you’re in an environment where you’re experiencing kind of like, you know, toxic team members talk, toxic culture, toxic norms and expectations, all those kind of pieces like that, it, it. The why may not feel important to you because you’re just experiencing the effect again. The symptom is clearly there. But to resolve it you have to understand, you have to understand the cause. You have to look at the sickness itself.

[JAMES]: Yeah, you’re right. I mean when you’re in the middle of it, when you are in a work environment that is toxic. The effect on you doesn’t change. Right. It’s still. It is incredibly damaging.

[COBY]: Yeah, yeah. And this exact question so how do you turn around a work, a toxic workplace culture? Something that we get asked by again, you know leaders that have, that have stepped into a new role or people that have taken over a new organization or even organizations are now experiencing much higher than average turnover. These are the kind of questions that we get. So this is so.

[JAMES]: I mean we’ve asked ourselves this question as we’ve stepped into different organizations, looked around and gone okay, how do we deal with this toxic workplace culture?

[COBY]: Right, exactly. Yeah. So I think that our best bet is going to be for us to again acknowledge that the culture itself is more of a collection of symptoms. Sorry M. Collection is based on different entry points of causes. And let’s actually look at a few different scenarios that we’ve seen that I’m sure anyone listening to this can relate to at least some of them. We have a few here, hopefully we can get through them all. So we’ll talk a little bit about scenario that we’ve seen kind of what we’ve done or how we’ve helped kind of ah, address this and again to kind of help turn things around with the teams. and then ideally so you listening have something that you might be able to kind of connect with or might give you a little bit of strategy to how to deal with it in your own workplace. So let’s start with the first one that is probably the, I wouldn’t say it’s one that we see the most often but it’s probably the most quintessential one that most people think of.

[JAMES]: It’s the one that gets probably quoted the most or the most easily identifiable that we’ve in conversations have, has come up so many times and it’s the toxic Rainmaker. It is that. So we’ve seen this present in. I can think of one particular client that went through, brought in a, A very effective new outbound salesperson. That individual ended up like almost tripling the businesses revenue month over month and huge impact on the organization. from leadership’s perspective they were golden. They could do no wrong. Cuz they were making bank.

[COBY]: Right.

[JAMES]: However, as sometimes happens when you are highly successful in A very short period of time. egos can get in the way. The way that person interacted with the rest of the team, they knew they could do no wrong.

[COBY]: Right.

[JAMES]: They pushed those boundaries completely. They were, while not hostile to their team members, they were certainly not, celebrating other people’s successes. They were not respectful of the rest of the team. They were, they did what they want when they want it. Everybody else be damned. Because I’m the one making bank and the rest of you are all peons. Yeah. It created this really divisive culture within the, the sales team that filtered through to the production team as well because they would be calling into the shop to push, make sure that their orders were being filled above anybody else’s, that their clients were being supported above anybody else’s. Because they were the most important. Their clients were the most important. And like, it just, it created this entire very toxic environment where staff, employees, peers saw somebody who was just an arrogant.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: And not, not a great person to be around.

[COBY]: No. And the thing was they walked all over the management team. They often walked over some of the executive team because they, because, because they, they knew that they were too important to that, that they could do whatever they want. And, and the, the reality was though is that fortunately the owner of the business worked in the business, so they had to experience this person too. And even. And they got a little bit sick of this person the way that they carried themselves. Whereas, you know, fortunately, that’s what kind of was the catalyst for, for this being addressed. But, but I mean, you know, if they had been in an organization where the, you know, where the owner or you know, who’s, who’s making the. Making the big bank wasn’t part of the everyday, it might have actually kind of gone differently. So we’re, it’s fortunate in this situation. But the thing is, is that one thing that’s really important to understand is this terminal or is this treatable? Is. You have to understand both. Is the person able to turn this around? That’s, that’s a key component in understanding if it’s terminal or treatable. The other part is, are the relationships that have been poisoned, are they also treatable? and be able to turn around or has everything. Is everything so far gone that no matter even if this person does a 180 and is and is able to like, you know, trying to. It makes the sincere efforts to rebuild trust is the. Is there too much trauma involved and they, and no one will ever trust them again? That, that’s a big question to look at terminal and treatable.

[JAMES]: But and that’s. There’s no, there’s no line that you’re going to be able to necessarily draw in the sand that is going to be able to really guide this m with clarity because there’s so many factors that I mean again we’re talking about human beings we, and we’re talking about emotional responses to triggers and those are very complex pieces. So as like the, the piece on the, on the kind of co worker or the team side is really important to understand because it’s not just about getting that individual to stop the problematic behaviors. It’s how do you then rebuild the trust and create some sense of unity or some sense of at least balance if you can’t get to harmony, within the team environment that allows people to put aside what has gone on previously without diminishing what they have necessarily had to endure. Right.

[COBY]: Yeah. Now in this situation it worked out, it actually worked out that this, that this was treatable. So the person kind of came in and they. Part of the arrogance was they were, they were pretty young but they were like sharp and they were charismatic and they build relationships really, really well with So it was more of like they kind of had their ego fed. But one of the things that was interesting on this person’s part was that they also found this constant need to pressure to feel like they had to kind of carry the sales teams or whatever like that that pressure started to push them towards burnout. So they saw the, the fact that it wasn’t sustainable. So when the conversations became that this was becoming problematic and that it was going to move towards disciplinary pieces regardless of kind of the how great of employee that they were there, you know, there was consequences to this and some sometimes so we had to build some policies around that to protect actually was a transparent process and that they knew going into it that you know when they were reading these new policies coming down and new expectations that they were putting two and two together pretty quickly. So, so it wasn’t like it was a total shock but it was, it was abode the fact, you know that they became, that they became open to being coached and, and having clarifications kind thought kind of placed on them. But the, the big work was rebuilding those co worker relationships because again people were annoyed at this person and they were really frustrated and they didn’t want to give them a second chance.

[JAMES]: And let’s be real, one of the, one of the reasons why one of the significant influences into why this was actually treatable was because the leadership wanted it to be treatable. Yeah, right. They, they wanted to address this, but they wanted to address it in a way that not only protected the, the revenue that this person was bringing in because let’s be serious, that was a huge asset to the organization. that should not be undervalued in kind of how the behaviors played out.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: But it, so there has to be a willingness from leadership to address these pieces head on.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: Because if you don’t have that, then policies, processes, support structures, coaching are going to fall flat or fall hollow if there’s no one, ultimately at the top who’s holding them accountable.

[COBY]: Well, the thing was that if everyone has to be on the same page and everyone has to be kind of working in unison consistently for the stuff, for the, for this stuff to not fall between the cracks.

[JAMES]: Yeah.

[COBY]: Part of how we got there was we really made it kind of clear. So again, we brought up what we were hearing about a toxic employee. And what was interesting was no one had, we didn’t have to use a name. Everybody in the leadership team knew who we were talking about when this rolled to the top. So it wasn’t like it was a secret. But we talked about the fact that like there’s, there’s stats and there’s research being done from like Harvard Business School and stuff like that to talk about how as great as a high performing employee is, if they’re toxic, it actually is very costly to realize how much their toxic behavior is actually diminishing the productivity of everyone else. That actually that one toxic employee you think is creating a high performing team, but actually they’ve actually weakened the entire team because everyone else is running at a much lower capacity than they would be if that person wasn’t there.

[JAMES]: Well, and that’s what we had. That’s why like when going into this situation, we had to get the data. Right. We were able to go back and show how the rest of the team’s per sales performances had been declining over time. Right. And it wasn’t. And these are people who had been meeting their okrs for consistently.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: Right. So it’s, it’s, as with anything, you, it’s hard to make a decision if you don’t have good data, to support your decision making. the other piece that we were a little unsure of how this person would respond to this problem being addressed head on. So we wanted to build a little bit of a contingency plan around it. And so if you’re if you’re experiencing this type of situation, one of the things that I would encourage you to do is you don’t want to necessarily lose all of the great work if somebody has come in and we’re talking about sales. But it could be in any other type of position. Right. You have somebody who is a high performer who is just crushing it in terms of, the outcomes. You want to try to build some sops around. What are they doing differently that is allowing them to be so effective in this role.

[COBY]: So building.

[JAMES]: Starting to go down that route of making sure that we could capture that bottle. Bottle the lightning, so that it can be replicated if this conversation had not cone. Gone as productively as it actually went. Right. Because you, you don’t want to lose all of the great momentum or all of the great outcomes that this person has been able to accomplish. But you cannot let that tox run rampant through your organization either. Yeah.

[COBY]: And we see this with any kind of like linchpin employee who’s pivotal to the organization success, whether that’s through like say sales and being a rainmaker, whether it’s through someone that has unique, like skill sets or, or, or is like the. What is holding together all the, like, you know, it, parts of the, of the business. You want to look at cross training and you want to look at operationalizing their expertise. That way you’re not. Because you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have linchpins in your organization anyway. Right. So that should always be part of what you’re trying to do. Trying to de. Risk the organization by operationalizing stuff that works really, really well. If someone has shown proficiency that you become reliant on, you’re asking for trouble. If you don’t try to standardize and bottle that lightning as you said, and make that kind of like repeatable and trainable for other people. So that’s one of the things that we do in any organization that we go into, whether they have a toxic rainmaker or not. But it is something that is, is like I say it’s critical is if you want to not lose the positive pieces of that. Because part of that too is also. It also diminishes a bit of the power of a toxic rainmaker. If they know that they’re not the. They’re. They’re not a unicorn that cannot, that can’t. Is the only one that can do it. That there is ability for others to pick up on. that if they go. It weakens some of their, Some of The arrogance too, as well.

[JAMES]: Well, and it also, it, it weakens some of the arrogance, but it also kind of plays into a little bit of the arrogance by helping. Getting them to, You know, they have been hugely successful. And because the, the way that the sales, like the, the, the, rest of the sales department were not in competition with this person. Right. They weren’t competing for the same, clients. So giving them an opportunity to, even for this person at a young age, be recognized for the amazing work that they’ve been doing and kind of using that expertise to help the rest of the team. I mean, it was not the most well received from the rest of the team in the beginning because there were a lot of hard feelings that had happened. But it, you cannot expect that, you’re going to. If you want to address, toxicity, if you want to treat toxicity, it’s not going to be a single action. Set it and forget it.

[COBY]: No, it’s one thing.

[JAMES]: Process.

[COBY]: Yeah. One thing we should say too. I do want to move on. But the one thing that’s really important to clarify the beginning, the earlier you intervene, the more treatable it is.

[JAMES]: Yes.

[COBY]: Right. So that’s. That’s something too, is that this didn’t go on for years. This went on for a few months before there was intervention. So it wasn’t like there was. There’s massive amounts of, you know, like it wasn’t ignored and slept under the rug for a long time. Right. And that’s one of the keys why.

[JAMES]: It was also true people were frustrated and angry and.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: Didn’t particularly like the person.

[COBY]: No.

[JAMES]: But it was over a course of months, not, as you said, years and years of betrayal and hurt and broken trust and all of the rest.

[COBY]: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So. So, so that’s good. Hopefully someone that may be experiencing the toxic Rainmaker in their environment got something from. From that. That managed to make it helpful. Let’s move on to the next one. which is the Stronghold. Department head is. Was kind of the experience that we had. So this is. So we talked about, silos and strongholds in an episode earlier in the season. I’ll put that into the show notes as well. But the idea of a stronghold is when you have a team or a department or location that’s at war with the other ones and they’re. It’s in. It’s about protectionism, it’s about insulation. It’s. It’s about kind of like, like battling. It’s. It’s very much an OSP versus Them type. Type of.

[JAMES]: They might be competing for resources, competing for supports, competing for attention and praise from the executive, team, but it, it really is a scenario of, like you said, protectionism, kind of making sure that they can hold on to what they have, even. Even if it comes at the expense of other people.

[COBY]: Yeah. So we, so again, we often, when we go to organizations, one of the things that we often look to figure out is what is, is when there’s inefficiencies, when there’s communication breakdowns, are we dealing with silos which are often designed that way intentionally to kind of have people kind of working on their own? We’re all, we’re all kind of familiar with like, with like work silos. Yeah. Strongholds are much, much more dangerous because there’s that, there’s that embattlement kind of mentality and it’s very much that they’re at war with, with, with the other departments or whatever it is. So we went into organization and we saw this, going on where there was, There was a, There was a department and the department head was kind of the, like they were the, they were the warrior king of of this, of, of this apartment that, that was constantly at war with everyone else. And it was very much, again, they were very embattled and it was, and they were at odds with a lot of the other, A lot of their peers and a lot of the departments. And it was something that was. We were told like day one, watch out for this person, watch out for this team. M. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re problematic. And it was, it was difficult kind of going into it because this is something that was kind of like looming on us.

[JAMES]: Even in the scoping conversations that we had before we actually started the, the project, this particular department, this particular person was identified as. You are going to have a problem with them.

[COBY]: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we went in after there was a big leadership, transition and we were in working with kind of the, the new CEO. So we were trying to advise them on how to like, you know, handle this new transition as they were kind of like, as they had this again, this toxic department, ah, as it was kind of told to all of us. but one thing that was interesting was when we, but we, but we always try to go in understanding information is context to us, but it does not define our own opinion. So we went in and we met with the team, we met with the person and we kind of got to know a little bit about them and what’s interesting was they were surprisingly self aware of the reputation that they had and they hated the fact that they were constantly at war with the other departments. But they felt like they had to pick up and fight every day because that was just what was normal. They didn’t want to be, but they did not know. But they didn’t know how. How not to be.

[JAMES]: Yeah, I mean I, I took their conversation as at face value of they didn’t want to be, but they didn’t know any different. Yeah, what I found really interesting as we began to kind of dig into where. Okay, so if you don’t want to do this, why are you doing this? Right. Like because ultimately intent is less important than how the impacts of your behaviors play out because it was having a significant negative impact on the rest of the team. So yes, intent matters, but yeah, what you actually do carries more weight. So it was interesting kind of as we were digging into this that it, the you you mentioned, we came in with that transition of the exec of the executive and a lot of the problem came from the previous CEO.

[COBY]: Right.

[JAMES]: Kind of pitting people against each other in terms of making them compete for attention or not attention’s the wrong word.

[COBY]: Resources. It sounds like you had to fight to keep your seat at the table.

[JAMES]: Yeah, it was very much a justification based leadership structure of if you cannot prove to me that you are a battle hardened veteran that can hold ground and you know that type of fight mentality. Ah, he, that previous person wanted what they considered to be strong. A strong people make a strong leadership team was kind of their mentality which I can see where they are going with that. I think that that is a misguided mentality to go into executive leadership with. Yeah. But that was kind of how things played out and so this manager had picked up on that. They, they were, it was reinforced in the way that the way that we reward behaviors reinforces behaviors. So if you reward somebody for toxic, for behaviors that could ultimately become toxic over time, they’re going to do more of them.

[COBY]: Yeah, yeah. So what was interesting was so, but like there seemed to, there was again there’s a willingness to have this not be their legacy under the new CEO. Which was probably the biggest relief to us is okay, this person is willing to admit that maybe things could be done better. And, and that’s always a great realization when we again we try to go in without premade assumptions. And often and more often than not that actually pays Ah, off for us. So we were happy to see this. So then part of it was we then had to figure, okay, so can this person and this department kind of redeem itself? You know, and is this poison that’s been festering in this company for a while, is it treatable? And with a number of like, new other department heads, they hadn’t. Things weren’t so bad. So they were willing to give the person the benefit of the doubt and they were willing to kind of collaborate more. And other departments were able to kind of say, you know what, you know, they kind of saw that this new shift might actually improve things because they actually, they love their jobs, they wanted things to improve, so they were optimistic about it. But there were a few that had some trauma built into how their interactions and unfortunately, some of those individual relationships were not redeemable. They weren’t, they weren’t treatable. They were terminal. So part of what had to be was they had to either move people out of those positions or they had to transfer them to different locations or whatever it was. But it was about realizing when you’re dealing with this kind of toxicity, it’s not about is this person redeemable? But almost all of the relationships that, that this toxicity, this poison behavior of impacts how treatable and terminal are those, which is, which makes everything so much more complex.

[JAMES]: Largely the relationships that the rest of the. Around the rest of the leadership table were largely redeemable because the other leadership team members had also seen how the previous exit, the previous person had reinforced these behaviors. So while they felt they had been attacked, they had been wronged, they had been pitted against each other. And that had rippled through not only one department, but through multiple departments. Yeah, they were willing to extend a little bit of grace to this individual because they had experienced that same type of, yeah, kind of, I don’t want to say cattiness, but that,

[COBY]: Sorry, those just, just the toxic relationships kind of.

[JAMES]: Yeah.

[COBY]: And this is the idea going back again, to identify, understand and resolve. We identified what the problem was, but, but then this, then the other, the department heads understood, they got it. And this, this one department head admitted that they could do things better and they wanted things better, so they were willing to resolve. So how we resolve this was something that we put a lot of efforts with the new CEO to actually make the executives themselves an actual team. They actually never really met very often together. They really only interacted on small things in individual groups. As things came on where we actually had them come together and do some Leadership coaching with one of our partners to actually make them a kind of cohesive team, rebuild trust, create psychological safety, develop their skills. And, and that was one of the best ways to actually. Because eventually we were able to bring up these things and talk about them and everyone had very harsh things to say, but it is very safe place. And it actually really, propelled this, this, this executive team forward.

[JAMES]: Well, that piece is important to understand because the, the fact that the rest, that the leadership level of the organization did not communicate with each other and everything had to go through, through the previous CEO was what allowed the CEO to pit people against each other. Yeah, right. That was a way of them protecting themselves and protecting themselves by cause, by sewing discord, through disruption, through the entire, leadership team. But once we were able to kind of get them to that place where they were meeting regularly, where they actually became a leadership team and we could address those. Well, I say we, we and our partner were able to kind of bring them together and go through that exercise of becoming an actual leadership team. It opened up the opportunity for dialogue. And you mentioned something that is that I want to just capitalize on because there has to be a willingness to change. Yeah. And we had a willingness to change with this individual. And it. Without that there can. If somebody’s not willing to change their behaviors, then thank you very much, we’re going to continue on without you.

[COBY]: Yeah, absolutely. And that was just it because like most people don’t want to think about this, but the toxic individual, the person. Individual displaying the toxic behaviors are. That’s poisoning the culture. It’s stressful being that person. Most people don’t want to be that person. but it becomes so status quo, so normalized. So there’s. I don’t know how else to do this, that they feel trapped by their legacy of being this, this, of being this toxic person. And they. So, so they’ve been leaning into it.

[JAMES]: But, but it also wasn’t a matter of I want to change, but I don’t know how to. And the organization saying, well, you’re on your own. Right. It was a situation of I want to change. I don’t necessarily know how to. In saying, well, let’s put some supports around the entire leadership team so that we can get to a place. Right. So it. There is responsibility on both sides. There needs to be a willingness to change from the individual, who is expressing those toxic behaviors. And there needs to be a willingness to support the change from the organization’s perspective.

[COBY]: And this is what’s so great about, about having someone like a third party leadership coach come in to take the teams on this journey. Again, we have some excellent coaches that we work with that we’re always happy to refer people to because part of that journey needs to be facilitated by someone that knows how to unearth these things in a very safe and kind of controlled way. But also a great time is during these leadership transitions is when this is the time to, to do that. Because things are going to change no matter what. So you have to be willing to change because the change is happening based on this new direction, this new leadership or whatever it is. So there are, there are pivotal moments where you can actually truly address toxic cultures at a much, in a much more natural standpoint than just trying to do it cold. When everything is, is, is. Is very status quo. Right.

[JAMES]: And one of the, I’ll. I’ve said it with, I think probably every single client that we’ve worked with. when it, when we, when we start to change, when we start to change our expectations, when we start to put changes in place, when we start to raise the expectations or raise our standards, we are going to provide people with every opportunity to come along with us. But if people are not willing to come along with us, we only ever raise our standards. We do not lower them. So if you’re not willing to come make this journey with us, we’re going to thank you for your time, for your service, and we’re going to continue on our way because we are now going down a path that is all about better outcomes, better profitability for the organization, better productivity, better experience for the employees. And so it’s really a get on the boat or goodbye, we’re leaving without you. Yeah.

[COBY]: Bon voyage.

[JAMES]: Yeah.

[COBY]: Cool. So let’s move on to another example. Now this is probably the most common example. Most people think it’s the toxic rainmaker or example. but actually I think probably the one that we see the most when it comes to kind of a toxic culture or toxic team or toxic in behavior is with the unprepared middle manager. So this is. So this is something. So, so again, this, this, this off. This happens in so many organizations where you’ve got, maybe it’s a, like it’s a. The someone that’s responsible for a location or you have somebody who is again a supervisory role and kind of monitors kind of a team. The more autonomy or the more independence or the less oversight that this unprepared middle manager has tends to actually be a pretty Good indicator of how pervasive or how almost like unregulated some of the toxic behaviors can actually be. We, you know, again, just lack of oversight kind of makes that easier. Right. but yeah, so like, because it’s staggering how often we go into organizations and the middle managers are not trained, prepared, supported. They are just say, okay, you got this new job, figure it out and don’t blow it. But we’re not going to check on you, so good luck.

[JAMES]: And you were successful doing the frontline work. So we’re going to put you into a management or supervisory position because you know how the work needs to be done. Here you go. Keep production, flowing, keep outcomes, happening.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: Have fun.

[COBY]: Yeah. But no support of how do you manage people, how do you maintain, handle conflict, how do you maintain professional boundaries? How do you. All these things that are actually like now 6 their job.

[JAMES]: The, the big problem also becomes how like oftentimes with well with management positions, we’re, we’re still. Where I’ve seen the toxicity grow the most is when the KPIs are linked to performance, to productivity outcomes, not necessarily reflective of what the middle level manager’s role is in supporting their team. Team. Right. So if you are con. If you are told that the only measurement for success that you have as a supervisor or a manager is to keep production targets on track.

[COBY]: Yeah.

[JAMES]: Then you’re gonna do that. However it works for you to do that. Some people are going to default to bullying. Bullying to criticism, to toxic behaviors. And that’s where we often see this. It’s the, the way, even the way in which we, that we, we measure success in a role can hinder toxicity or allow it to grow.

[COBY]: Yeah. Yeah. So I have, I have a very like a vivid example of, of we worked with a supervisor who was working independently on, they were leading, they were leading, a team on, on, on a site that was kind of a remote site and, or sorry, a satellite site. And what was interesting was the, the reports that we got from. So one incident got kicked up to head office that we got when we were there that we were just like, okay, this is pretty bad. Why are you not taking this seriously? And they were, oh well, this is kind of the normal stuff we hear from them. So we, we had, we had some, their, their HR team do a bit of like an investigation to figure out like you know, got us information. We were shocked with the like the, the breach of professional conduct, the incivility, the bullying that just, it was just, it was Incredible. And so then everyone’s like, well then let’s, I guess we’re just going to be passing out pink slips. We’re like hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We need to look at is this terminal or is this treatable? And we kind of pulled the, the supervisor in and because like we had just rolled up progressive discipline policies into the organization and so they came in and they were like I was wondering if I was going to have this meeting which was, it was, it was weird. It was, yeah. self.

[JAMES]: Aware. Self aware. Toxicity without change, is bizarre to encounter.

[COBY]: Yeah. And, and the thing was that, but they, they had almost been prepared for this because they were like here’s the thing. I’ve never been told anything other than I’m doing a really, really good job. Because I’m meeting all of our target outcomes. I’m doing all this, you know, and everything. And, and they were like well yep, we’re, and we’re talking to them with, with kind of like their manager and, and one of the HR people and we’re like like yeah, but your, your turnover is incredible. Your like, like, you know, like your overtime costs are ridiculous. Like you know all this. And they were like though we were told those don’t matter and we’re like well we’re like. And so, so we talked to.

[JAMES]: You can’t hold people accountable for expectations that you have not set.

[COBY]: No, exactly. So our recommendation was to put this person so, so on. So on the but as a discipline track, we kind of put them almost like at the tier below termination and said, you know, it’s justifiable. We said, but we said but let’s try to turn this around because of the skill sets involved. It was worth seeing if this was, if this was treatable. And we said okay, so if you do that though, we need to make clear expectations, we need to provide them mentoring. We need to look at kind of leadership development. Again, one of the things that we had done too was we tried to bring on more the middle of a manager to create. again, almost like we did with the, our last example about trying to create again that leadership, that middle management leadership team so they didn’t feel so isolated in, so they had peer supports.

[JAMES]: And people who, with similar levels of responsibility that they could work together as a team and work through some of these challenges. But it also like one of the key things that we had to do, you talked about, you know, we set new expectations. We also enshrined those new Expectations and the new measurements for success in their job descriptions. Right. We, we had to change the KPIs because not being only being measured on the productivity outcome. Yeah. I, I understand how easier that is to measure and how you as an organization, you want to make sure that your productivity targets are being met. But it’s a short sighted, easy answer that led to this situation becoming very damaging before we were able to resolve it.

[COBY]: Yeah. And what was great though was by putting these clear expectations in, by making sure, by, by supporting the, their, this middle manager’s boss and the other people about, about being consistently with how we talk about these things, how we handle these things, how we check on these things and by coaching this person in the and the other middle level managers, we actually saw that this was quite treatable. They actually were like, oh my gosh, I actually can show up and know what’s expected of me. I know what I can do and what I can’t do. And I know and you know, and I got, when I pick up, when I need it, when I need help, I can pick up the phone and call someone and I’ll get the help or if I need to talk things through, I’ve got a peer to like they were like, wow, this is actually.

[JAMES]: I’m not on my own anymore.

[COBY]: Yeah. And, and that realization was something that they were, they, they really changed where they found satisfaction from their job because part of it was they hated going to work every day.

[JAMES]: Yeah.

[COBY]: Because they hated the culture they had created themselves. But it was the only way that they knew they could keep their job because it got them the results they’re looking for. They, and, and it just became the path of least resistance. Whereas support, you know, training, clear expectations, you know, like solid policies consistently applied, gave them a much better employee experience and they were able to thrive with this, with these new things surrounding them.

[JAMES]: Yeah. I wanted, there’s a couple other, where I know we’re entering as usual, very talkative on the podcast. but there’s a couple other scenarios that I want to get to because this one struck me when we first encountered it. So yeah, the next piece that I want to talk about is at the very top of the leadership level. And so over the last few years we’ve been doing more and more and more and more around and supporting not just our corporate clients, but also in not for profit and municipal settings. And we have encountered toxicity not only at the employee level, not only at the manager level, not only at the rainmaker level or linchpin or leadership but at the very like the governance of the organization and ah, like it really wherever people are present you’re going to find toxic behaviors. what’s so interesting about this scenario is we have gone into, and I’ll keep this one fairly brief because I want to get on to the next one. But when you have a governance board or a ah, council that is responsible, that is empowered to make decisions for the organization, it does not take much to derail that. It doesn’t take much for one person to dominate the conversation or to take the entire team down an unproductive path. And we’ve gone in and part of our work has been to help to kind of rebuild and strengthen the governance structure of organizations as well. And we’ve flat out we’ve had to remove terminally toxic board members or count like or at this leadership level because they have derailed the entire organizations.

[COBY]: A lot of these groups, a lot of these boards, a lot of these councils are not supported in the way that they should, that they’re not clear about what they should be doing, when they shouldn’t be doing. But it’s hard to get groups like that to know this isn’t normal and you need to do something otherwise it’s going to end badly. So often we have to, we have to talk about the nuclear option with them which is about, about legal liability, about financial risk and everything else like that too and paint the like self destruct. You were on the path of self destruction and you were, you were going to be impacted and we’re going to lose, we’re going to hit bankruptcy, we’re going to hit all, we’re going to hit potential legal, legal challenges and everything like that too or legislative issues or you know, lawsuits if, if we don’t act now. Sometimes we have to go that severe for people to actually shake off the status quo and the complacency and actually know the stuff is serious.

[JAMES]: Yeah. And last thing I’ll say is in the non profit world there are not enough supports, there are not enough resources, there are not enough, there’s not enough training. You get people who are, I don’t want to diminish it because it is a volunteer service in many times especially in the not for profit area. But you get people who have no real leadership training, leadership, even leadership capabilities but who are passionate about one or two particular issues that this organization works with. There needs to be more, we need to do better to support non profits. We need to do Better to provide training to board members on expectations on how to actually govern an organization. And when we walk into many of these situations, what we often start with is making sure that people actually understand what the role of each position on a board actually entails.

[COBY]: Absolutely. All right, let’s move on to the last one. So the last one we want to talk about is kind of the one that I’m sure people are actually wanting us to talk about which is the toxic executive, the toxic founder, the toxic business owner, the toxic leader.

[JAMES]: Yeah.

[COBY]: And again we did a whole episode we talked about resheltering toxic leaders and that’s. And the answer was yes. and that’s. So I’ll put that. Make sure that’s the show notes. But largely this is the fact that you know again is this leader’s behavior terminal or treatable is really the first place you have to start.

[JAMES]: This is the hardest one for us to provide any real tangible advice to you. So I’m gonna. Unfortunately it really comes down to there’s the crux of this issue becomes is there somebody who this leader is accountable to? Yeah. Because if the answer is no, if you are in a small business and you’re talking about the, the founder, owner and CEO is all mashed into one person and they are not accountable to anybody else and they are toxic and they are not self aware and the very fact of raising this issue may jeopardize your livelihood. The, the problem is you are not going to be able to address that. You’re not going to be able to affect that person’s behavior because or it’s very unlikely that you will be able to. and really the only advice that I have to you in if you unfortunately find yourself in that situation is that you need to start looking for other employment and once you have something else then providing some free and honest feedback in an exit interview or might be the, the route to go. But you need to recognize and this is a judgment call that you’ll have to make in terms of whether raising this issue may actually cause. You to lose your employment. Which is a very difficult situation to be in.

[COBY]: It is. But because the reality is yes if this person is not accountable to anyone or if it’s no one that you feel that you can share your concerns with who this toxic leader will listen to.

[JAMES]: Yeah.

[COBY]: Then there really isn’t anything that you can do about it. I mean like please don’t go on social media and make it. And make it a public cry. Yeah. You’re you’re gonna do so far more harm than good by doing that.

[JAMES]: But large, where we have seen this situation actually be able to be resolved is when there’s somebody, when there’s a number two or when there’s a trusted friend or when there’s a, maybe it’s the mentor or maybe it’s an owner who has that relationship that has that trust built with the, with the founder, with the leader who can address those situations. We’ve seen it with one client where the CEO was the owner, founder, and kind of their really good friend who they had worked with was the CEO and the CEO was, they were, he was getting ready to sell. And his mentality around selling the, and having the business be acquired was to, was focusing purely on the bottom line. And his focus on pure bottom line outcomes as the only metric for the valuation of the business made him, led him down a path of making a lot of decisions that negatively impact his staff. And the way this actually fortunately there was somebody in place, the COO who largely it was because of the relationship that they had with the owner, but also because this individual’s dedication to the employees, to the staff that had them be that buffer. They were able to take the concerns from the staff, from the employees and be able to articulate it in a way to the owner that was not accusation based but was relational that they could play on that all pre existing relationship to actually try to address some of these behaviors.

[COBY]: Yeah. And like I say it’s if, if you, if that situation exists then there’s a chance but really without that it’s, it’s largely, there’s not a lot that can be done without accountability without, without someone having self reflection or someone being, you know, there being a catalyst for them understanding the need to change. They often won’t. So that’s, that’s the tough thing when you have that, that toxic leader, CEO, owner sort of thing. Okay, so I think this has been a really good discussion. I think that kind of. I’m not gonna do a full on summary, just more highlight the fact that the thing with the, these toxic cultures is that they’re, they’re often coming at different entry points. The causes like the, the of this, of the symptoms. The symptoms may look the same when they kind of, when they fester but the causes can come from a lot of different situations and they all have to be handled in very, very, very different methods. Which is, which is the challenge by trying to have a one, one trick solution for all toxic cultures. But ultimately it comes down to are these, is the toxicity, terminal or the conditions can’t be reversed and you can only manage them until they collapse? Or are they treatable where they’re serious but, responsive and dedicated? Consistent intervention and care will actually turn things around. And that’s the thing. You really have to go into any organization that where the word toxic kind of comes up. You have to go in with that perspective. Otherwise you’re not gonna have any chance. All right, so that about it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access the video version hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.

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