Divorcing The Problematic Relationship Between Work Culture and Toxicity
While the divorce rate may be up in marriages, there are other relationships that need separation in the workplace.
If you have worked at a variety of different workplaces and industries throughout your career, you likely have a good sense of good and bad workplace environments, Whether it’s the physical environment or the co-workers or management in it, negative spaces can wreak havoc on the good employees trying to stay above it all and make it out with as much of their sanity intact as possible.
Workplace culture is very important to the success of any workplace. If people don’t want to be there, it’s hard to get them to work towards a mission or company goal. If the balance between good managers who improve morale and lead by example and bad micromanagers who kill morale and break thriving teamwork framework, a business is sure to lose in more ways than one. But change doesn’t come easy. It can take just as much time as it took to improve workplace culture as it did to ruin it.
You can have all the motivational speakers, pamphlets, Diversity and Inclusion staff, Meetings, Seminars, Webinars and Huddles but nothing will ever be solved if there is no accountability and real action steps taken to do so.
So where does the breakdown happen? Well, let’s start with some examples where toxicity and workplace culture become a couple.
-A toxic employee is allowed to bully and run off other employees simply due to their tenure with the company because management won’t act and just wants to let them glide to retirement on their own time.
-Some who is qualified on paper is a horrible manager in action and micromanages their team to death or on the other side does not manage at all by not being available or giving attention to anything they feel is not worth their time. Usually, their staff rarely sees or gets feedback from them or when staff does seek out help, they are not able to provide any valued assistance or resources.
-A toxicity of targeting or bullying behavior often disguised as regular work behavior. For example, Katy borrows a laptop from IT at least three times a month. Katy has been informed several times that she needs to go through management to do so and that this should not be an ongoing occurrence. Yet Katy continues to leave her work laptop at home and present to IT for the laptop, which she is given between she is a Senior Leader at her company and the IT staff is not only tired of having the exact same conversation each time but tired of the negative vibe they get when they say now.
-The employee who is threatened by new talent and trains all new hires to do things one way while she does them another to create friction. For example, John trained Alice that they cannot print out full benefits manuals for employees, yet he does it when asked so it looks like she is just saying NO to be indifferent versus it being a policy.
-Low-Performer Joe does not carry their workload or do a good job in general causing tension with his co-workers who are high-performers. Joe is also late every single day. Management is aware of this but does not manage it. Joe gets the same generic evaluation saying he is meeting standards that his manager gives to everyone and refuses to hold Joe accountable or get rid of him during his initial probationary period.
-Brandon has been reported several times for speaking aggressively and unprofessionally to staff that he manages or works with. His team feels like he talks down to them even though most of them are several years his senior in age. They describe him as a bully who runs a “my way or the highway regardless of company policies” style management system.
-Jillian is the new CEO who, while claiming to have an open-door policy, does not encourage staff to communicate and is shielded by her admin team from any real interaction.
-Nathan has to prove himself strong and to him that means stepping on as many as needed to prove his worth to the company. But he developed such a negative reputation in the process that by the time he was up for a promotion, the negative feedback kept the review committee from being able to seriously consider him for the position. Yet, nothing was done about his negative behaviors, and he was never given any feedback.
If you have been low on the totem pole in a workplace, you surely have some workplace culture horror stories.
Learning to coexist with other staff peacefully is a skillset and it does not always work. Being quiet or keeping to yourself outside of work concerns will not work everywhere. Why? Because people who struggle on the other side will not leave you alone. They feed off attention and the approval of others. Some people simply feed off negativity, bullying others or operating on entitlement foundations built on the foundation of their title and the power they leverage.
With the pandemic and so much focus on mental health reforms, people are all about protecting their peace, doing their job, and staying off the radar of the Negative Nancys and the Demeaning Donovan’s. Work can be stressful, toxic, and downright morale draining.
Even if you love your job, there are going to be days where you are going to experience stress. Many people allow stress to get the best of them, but you do not have to. You can learn to cope with workplace stress so you can use the stress to move you forward instead of holding you back.
A Look at Workplace Stress
When you are stressed out about your work, you may feel like you are on an island all by yourself. Of course, it isn’t the case at all. Did you know that as many as a quarter of the people you work with right now feel as though the workplace is the biggest stressor in their life? It is also thought that three quarters of employees feel as though they have more on-the-job stress than their parents ever did.
On-the-job stress is not something unique to you – everyone experiences it! Sometimes just knowing this is enough to help you get through to the other side so you can start feeling happy and healthy again.
Thankfully, there is something you can do to reduce workplace stress in your life.
Workplace Stress Solutions
Some solutions to workplace stress include:
- Letting the little things go, it probably doesn’t matter anyway
- Proactively balancing work and family life
- Creating a support network of friends and family, or even co-workers
Letting Things Go
The fact is, when you allow yourself to take a more relaxed and positive outlook on the world, it will suddenly become a lot more relaxed and positive. When you choose to have a positive approach in life, you’ll likely find that the things that would have stressed you out before will now roll off your back. It’s not that you won’t feel stress; it’s just that you will have a more positive way of interpreting things so that stress is not necessarily such a bad thing.
Finding Work-Life Balance
When work takes over our lives, that’s usually when we become stressed out at work and when we cannot cope well. You should make sure that you engage in daily activities that do not involve work, even if this is simply reading a chapter of your favorite book or picking up the phone to call a friend. When you allow your work life to consume you, stress will consume you too. In turn, you’ll become less efficient and effective at your job.
Relieve Work Stress with Quality Family Time
Make sure you spend time with your friends, family, or even your co-workers outside of work. We often allow our home to become an office away from the office. That’s no good! Make sure you have a support network of friends and family members who will remind you that there are plenty of things to do that aren’t related to your work in any way. It’s also helpful to have this support network so that when you are stressed out, you’ll have someone to turn to. Oftentimes a support system helps keep us grounded when we would otherwise be tightly wound with work-related stress.
It’s true that stress is a part of life, but that doesn’t mean it needs to consume us. Stress will come and go, but coping is something that needs to be ongoing so you can live a great life inside and outside of your professional life.
