In last week’s topic, I looked at what to do with a toxic employee from a position of leadership – and made reference to a couple of examples where isolating the negative employee was what kept the team together to mitigate the spread of their negative attitude.
On social media most of the comments were people who identified with having been in similar circumstances as a fellow employee or co-worker. Several gave specific examples of how one employee’s actions destroyed team morale. One other spoke (presumably) from a managerial perspective and cautioned that the offending employee should be counseled first as they may not know the reach of their destructive behavior. Overwhelmingly though, no one commented on whether they raised the issue to managers at the time.
Which leads to this week’s installment on how the team reacts, and if they speak up or not. Also this week, there’s another fantastic article from HBR.org by Francesca Gino, Why It’s So Hard to Speak Up Against a Toxic Culture. Admittedly, Gino’s article speaks to more egregious behavior such as sexual harassment which I purposefully have excluded from my discussions. However, Gino does raise interesting points on why we, as co-workers, don’t speak up or act when we are a part of a toxic culture, and despite the differences in examples, there are a lot of similarities in the reasoning.
For starters, the risk of speaking up, especially if no corrective action takes place or the offending employee isn’t isolated or removed. For example, I worked as part of a senior team at AOL where one of the members was arguably the most difficult person I’d ever worked with. She was crass, self-centered, often publicly dressed down employees, interrupted meetings – and crushed her numbers. It was a mystery to me why so many senior leaders who worked hard to cultivate positive relationships struggled or got by, and this leader was the “anti” in every best practice leadership sense of the term, and yet her team performed. They were miserable and didn’t mind saying so in the break room or after-work happy hours. Yet, they all needed their jobs and loved their bonuses which were their comments immediately after, “I can’t stand her.” I bit my tongue and accepted the rationale that our mutual boss couldn’t be that blind and that he must be tolerant of her behavior because of her team’s performance. I feared speaking up, and suspecting nothing would be done, would just lead to my own demise and make things worse for my team.
Another reason the team may sit on their feedback to the boss is what Gino referred to as, ‘the bystander effect.’ In other words, we all sit silently because we assume someone else will be the one to stick their neck out, or we just feel it isn’t any of our business to intervene.
What both examples indicate is a culture of compliance. If the boss (and their bosses) have not made it clear to report or otherwise bring forward toxic behavior, then the offending behavior is either assumed to be normal or that any contradictory commentary will be met with some form of reprisal. In all instances, leadership should make it known what the standards for acceptable behavior will be and that anyone, at any level, is empowered to speak up to help set things back on the proper course. In my time in the US Army, it was standard practice for anyone in a leadership position to have an open-door policy. In my time at AOL, I would routinely hold skip-level meetings and open forums with employees seeking to understand morale, and to make it clear what I believe constituted acceptable behavior for myself, my managers, and our employees.
If you have an example of either speaking up or staying silent you’d be willing to share, please drop it in the comments below or message me on social media. Speaking of – why don’t you connect with me on LinkedIn by tapping the button below!
