How To Survive A Toxic Workplace.

Once you’ve diagnosed if you are working in a toxic environment — see my last post — there are a number of ways to deal with it:

1. Leave.
2. Stay and move to another team/department/division/location.
3. Stay and endure.

It’s that simple. Choices #1 and #2 deal with the situation most effectively, they remove you from the environment and allow you to begin anew.

Today, let’s look at choice #3. At least for the short term (hopefully!) you need to stay where you are and contend with the forces making each day painful.

Step One — It’s Not Me, It’s You.

You need to get your head wrapped around the idea that it’s not you. You are not incompetent, crazy, unprofessional, or whiny. It’s the situation around you. Acknowledging this first step will be a major change in your demeanor.

When we are in a toxic environment, we tend to constantly question ourselves. We doubt our decisions, actions, management, interactions, communications — everything.

A toxic workplace’s first rule of order is to get you to doubt your abilities. Why? You become passive, you don’t fight, you give in and ultimately, you start questioning your abilities and ultimately feel like a failure.

Also, you feel that you can never leave, because you don’t have the chops to make it anywhere else (for the same amount of money). That's a form of 'golden handcuffs'.

Step Two — Develop An Action Plan

As I always say to my clients, get it out of your head and down on paper. You need to think clearly about yourself and your situation. Once you’ve come to the conclusion that ‘it’s not you’, you need to document what elements of your environment ARE toxic.

Is it your boss? Is it your peers? Is it management? Is it another department that is asking outrageous requests? Pinpoint the WHO and WHERE. This will allow you to define the specific influencers causing the toxicity.

Then under each one, define WHAT do they do. For example, you can write, “My Boss — she is condescending whenever I’m around and adds snarky comments to whatever I do.”

Then define HOW you will diffuse the toxicity of their behavior/attack. This leads me to:

Step Three — Choose a Judo or Jujutsu Technique

What is Rich talking about? Let me define each one:

Judo - Immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver or force an opponent to submit by joint locking or by executing a strangle hold or choke.

Jujutsu - Manipulating the opponent's force against himself rather than confronting it with one's own force - "gentle, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding."

I want you to execute your action plan. When they encounter you — be prepared to either:

Engage (Judo) Stand firm with your position and explain its merits. Don’t back down. If you’ve done your homework, you know the who, where, what and how to diffuse them. Hold your ground — you are the strong one — they are the incompetent one. If it is a boss or other management, hold your ground and then at the last minute, do the Jujutsu sidestep (below). If you do this on a regular basis, they will know that you are a force to be reckoned with.

The phrase 'Ask forgiveness rather than permission' works well here. If the toxicity is at a high level — do what you need to do (ensure that it is the right thing to do) and then ask forgiveness.

Sidestep (Jujutsu) Use the person’s force/weight against them — give them enough rope and then pull the rug out from under them by using facts. They might try to fall back on emotions (“This is how we’ve always done it!”) — but you’ve done your homework. This works especially well with peers.

Bottom line — these tactics work in the short run. Again, you need to either leave the department or leave altogether. If the toxicity is endemic — you will never win.

What other tips/techniques have you used in your fight against toxic environments?

3 Clues You Work In A Toxic Workplace.

Many years ago, I worked for a short time at an organization who slowly tapped my energy, subsumed my enthusiasm, and drained my confidence. I’ve worked for many companies — large, small, corporate and family-owned. This organization was a real winner to experience. In retrospect, there were many reasons why it was such a huge sucking force of negativity:

• Management had no clue what they were doing (inept).
• All levels of management changed hands frequently.
• Middle management (my peers) ran around like chickens without their heads.

I can go on for hours.

Bottom line — it was a dysfunctional atmosphere. But it paid well — so like an idiot, I stuck around. I think there are many people today who do the same thing — put up with a highly abnormal environment, try to stay normal, and slowly get dragged down by the insanity. They start to question their own abilities.

It’s like being the only sane person in an insane asylum.

So here are three major clues you can use to diagnose your 'toxic' situation:

Every man/woman for themselves.

This is a natural by-product of a toxic workplace. You feel that you have to justify every decision multiple times because everyone is questioning where to go and what to do. Instead of declaring a single destination and developing a plan to get there, everyone is spinning off in multiple directions.

Your boss can never give you a straight answer — they might give you clues, but will never commit to a rational line of attack. Meetings are so fun to attend/host, because there will be one (or more) attendees who will attempt to sabotage the proceeding for their own ends.

Power is held in abnormal areas.

In a normal organization, authority flows from the top down. And the top gets their marching orders from the marketplace. Toxic workplaces tend to have power centers in areas that try to guide the direction of the company that best suits them, not the company; it’s kidnapped and along for the ride.

Upper management might feel that they have the reins, but they really don’t. It might be the manufacturing arm (the people that make the stuff) that runs the show. It’s like the manufacturing arm of GM or Ford delivering what they felt the marketplace needed without consulting with Marketing, Customer Service, the Dealers, or Finance. They just pumped out what they thought the cars should look like.

The problem is that these power centers direct and position the company to suit their goals — and it might not be in the best interest of the rest of the company. If you are trying to run your department and division, you'll constantly run into their abnormal decisions because you expect the company to run normally.

Black is white — up is down.

This is a big one — no real adherence to a strategic direction. They might decide on an overall plan of attack — but halfway through the charge down the hill, they radically change course, veering left and right and even contradicting what they said a number of months ago. The kicker — they give no reason — they just do it.

And if you get caught in the crossfire — protesting that the vision was to go in a certain direction, you get ridiculed for going that way. It’s as if everyone was wearing Ugg Boots one day and when you purchased them and wore them to work, everyone said they were passé.

There are so many more — but these three clearly exhibit a toxic and dysfunctional organization. If you have one, you might be able to still stay sane. Two or three, I would suggest looking for a new home.

It’s not worth damaging your career, confidence just for the money.

What other areas contribute to a toxic workplace?