Toxic Work Places | Toxic Lives

Editorial Comment

In November 2020 Boris Johnson gave a judgement when a complaint was raised about bullying in the Home Office implicating home secretary Priti Patel. We think it was wrong to exonerate her on the grounds that the leadership of any team\department are responsible for the mental and physical health and safety of all the colleagues in the workplace. The press at the time were describing a toxic workplace. As a leader Patel should have had the skills and experience to detect and manage fairly the behaviours which cause this, and not to become one of the actors. Boris Johnson as her boss should also have been able to make a judgement that was fair. He has access to expertise at the top level of academia who would have been able to dissect the behaviour and culture in an organisation and point out the roles of all of the actors. The fact this happened in the highest office in the land leaves the festering sore of toxic workplace culture to grow and flourish by providing a template policy for organisations to mimic. We think because the system that supports workers who are bullied is open to abuse, the guidelines that are applicable when making such a judgement should take into account proper investigative practice by qualified people.

In Britain the law allows for judgement at several levels: The employer, the enforcement agencies and the courts are all parts of the system.

What can possibly go wrong? Start with management and leadership training. Human Factors are an important part of leadership training and personnel selection. In any population people with various characteristics come together in communities and workplaces to form teams. We know from studies that the mindset of the population is diverse, for example 25% of people at some time in UK will suffer a mental illness. (Office of National Statistics). One study promoted by Crimewatch UK said that 54 percent of people like to get on with their neighbours. Not much is said about the other 46 percent but as many as 20% have a variety of personality disorders and 3% or so have some of the worst anti-social personality types.

A respected teacher in the field of information security described the world as a place where you meet many people and make very few friends. He said “The world population numbers in billions so the percentage of friends you make is infinitely small compared to the rest of the population. Friends are people you welcome and ask into the house when they come to your front door and who you can trust with your property and business. Everyone else you leave at the front door”.

Toxic Skills as a Risk

There is a high degree of probability, that when you meet someone they will attempt to exploit you. Normally if it’s for friendship, or business then consent will be part of the deal.

What harm does it do?

Toxic people exploit others in such a way as to cause them harm. To achieve this they take advantage of the target’s human characteristics. The most toxic people will be able to masquerade as friendly, while developing the ability to deliver a toxic blow at a time of their choosing. Sometimes it’s for money, other times it’s for sex and yes, once they’ve achieved contact and the honeymoon is over, they will be in control and will remain so until they have got what they want. Not withstanding Harvey Wienstien and Jimmy Saville, some recent examples of exploitation are listed here.

At the extreme end of the scale, Toxic people will kill you once they have had their satisfaction. In the workplace, more likely they will get rid of you, often using the back door route to cover their activity.

Exposing perpetrators is a risk. Mostly they strike for their own satisfaction and leave physical, psychological or financial damage behind. They will brag about you or humiliate you as part of the process. The type of harm inflicted by people with these behaviours, delivered in one or more aggressive incidents has been identified by Michael Linden in 2003 as Post Traumatic Embitterment Disorder (PTED) it appears as a branch of PTSD according to the National Bullying Helpline

Safe to say anyone deliberately indulging in bullying behaviour is intent on harming a victim for advantage.

A prosecution for bullying is a difficult thing to arrange because the legal profession are so hard to access, and the law is in the hands of people in power who probably don’t want to lose advantage.

Nobody wants bullying in their life, but when it happens it creates fear – a natural response in the human body to fight, stand still or flee accompanied by a release of adrenalin, too much of which is physically harmful.

The Antithisis of managing by Fear

Some people think a little stress is necessary for good leadership which is a myth. Good leadership practices reward performance, teach motivational skills and team building. These are the antithesis of toxic management. Motivational skills are based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Team building is based on Belbin’s team skills for example. Here we think bullying is a throwback to slavery.

Toxic Management

Toxic Skills include the ability to control, deceive and manipulate others. The ability to persuade and network with like-minded people are well developed in toxic minds. What your toxic co-workers and your toxic bosses are discussing between themselves about you will be hidden from view. If you ask what was said or to be included in conversations, you will be lied to. Any copies of conversations requested will be legally redacted. (Only the justice system can expose that). Tactically toxic people will deny any allegation and make out the victim is the guilty party to cover themselves.

One senior NHS manager told us what it was like to keep up with the demands of what his toxic boss euphemistically called objectives. It exhausted him.

When he could no longer fulfil his role in a professional manner due to continuous interference, aka micromanagement, he left. The problem was he could no longer focus on really important work while being pressurised into trivial tasks. Nor could he delegate without his decisions coming into question above and below him in the management chain. He said ‘After saving the NHS a significant six figure sum and lowering its carbon footprint I had been further engaged by the finance department of Kent and Medway NHS Trust to run up a project worth millions to the NHS and which would revolutionise patient care in Kent. (This didn’t go ahead).

At the same time my team was rolling out hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of IT. I realised when I was pressurised into making a business case to justify a three thousand pound security system for this job that my boss was keeping me busy, trying to get rid of me. As I left the job the CCTV fell into disuse and £60K went missing. At this point his attitude compromised my professional standards and it was time to move on.

I had already complained about his management style after years of abusive supervision. Prior to this incident a bodged job by one of his sycophants left a help desk and my team without a computer network for several weeks. As I fixed that I spoke out.

I was under threat for two years or more before during and after that and had little or no support from my union, Unite. I had to deal with it on my own. in the end my replacement(s) were already briefed and I was about to be side-lined and demoted. Occupational Health and HR weren’t interested, the union claimed they couldn’t support me.

It ended my career early and cost me 2 years in lost wages. It wasn’t just the continuous micro aggression. The objectives he set were usually blocked and managed to maximise my workload.

This meant I had a high degree of challenge and no support. He knew this. before I left I gave the trust the opportunity to change its toxic culture in 2016 shortly after the Frances Report came out. It chose not to.’ (Given that this organisation is responsible for treating the victims of toxic people, it opens yet another Pandora box.)

Investigating Bullying

To successfully investigate workplace bullying, an investigator would need to be; independent, knowledgeable about the characteristics of toxic bosses and co-workers, have training in leadership, be able to expose lies, and to ask meaningful questions of the victim and assailant, also to find witnesses or evidence to corroborate with the victim’s complaint and the power to protect witnesses from intimidation.

The language that can record and accurately describe incidents of bullying which are aimed at the emotions is not well known. Complaints present as a weakness.

Toxic Workplaces cost more. They are hard work and Time is money. Workers in toxic situations are faced with maintaining work performance, while simultaneously struggling to decode and describe the behaviour which affects them. This manifests itself in various ways; low performance after loss of sleep over a long period of time are a gift to the toxic boss who can use it to fire the victim.

Non-toxic managers will have an obligation to protect employees but will be conflicted by culture and policy rigged in favour of the toxic culture. This presents a further challenge when it comes to following up or raising a grievance. HR will appear to be part of the problem and will be complicit due to Rankism. See here for a real life example where a senior doctor has had his job and reputation destroyed by a toxic manager using what is a standard technique employed by NHS managers in collusion with HR.

Given the presence of threat and fear, victims are usually reluctant to name witnesses and witnesses don’t speak, presenting a wall of silence.

In the toxic workplace, investigations usually have only three official actors: The perpetrator, the victim and the investigator. Audit is absent. In these circumstances the likelihood that an investigation will produce a positive result for the complainer when an aggressive boss by asserts his “right to manage” and the investigator doesn’t know the difference between aggression and assertiveness. When this changes, workplace bullying will be on the road to becoming a thing of the past.

Conclusion

For this reason we are supporting Alan Shawcroft to raise awareness of toxic work culture as a means of management. We also support the national bullying helpline who are advocating change in the light of PTED to the Legal and HR community.

As of 23rd February 2021 Alan’s Go Fund Me campaign has been unexpectedly suspended. We are happy to say we helped to conclude it on Alan’s behalf.

Stuart Dixon FRSA, MInstLM

Predicting Human Performance

Driving a workforce against performance targets can be a risky but rewarding affair but how can we gauge success with reasonable confidence, and equip people to succeed?

According to one model attributed to H. Sanford known as the challenge and support model, the factors that determine human performance over time are the scale of the challenge, and the amount (and type) of support available to achieve the task.

Growth

Performance outcomes are predictable. Of the four likely outcomes to any task predicted by the challenge support model, only one scenario leads to complete success and truly great performance. This is called Growth.

Death

Another scenario, euphemistically called Death, predicts breakdown and failure. Death is the consequence of too much challenge coupled with too little support. In the workplace, death is literally the end of the line for individual workers and can lead to poor health for many others.

In Death, stress, and burnout have regularly exceeded tolerable levels and have impacted on the person or persons assigned the task with predictable outcomes such as a high staff turnover, the potential actual death of a worker, and subsequent losses for the employer.

Team Work

According to Belbin, good management practice is to support people by building well developed teams. A well developed team comprises people with various personality traits in enough abundance to sustain the activity and provide support for individual workers.

Positive Team Skills

Belbin names the six positive characteristics of team workers. Both the challenge and support model and Belbin’s approach have developed into defacto standards in leadership and management and in combination they form the mainstay of modern leadership training.

Management Practice

Any workforce or team usually has an appointed manager, in a hierarchy of managers, He or she is someone who not only drives the task but who’s role it is to maintain a productivity and performance.

Job Satisfaction

Truly great managers learn to build teams and balance the level of challenge and support in such a way as to sustain a steady rise in growth. Happiness and pride in the product provide a degree of satisfaction.

Incentives

Work (used to be) incentivised in order to recruit and retain skills, From the workforce, managers were selected and trained to understand not only their job, but the additional skill and workplace psychology needed to manage people. The entire workforce benefited in the long term by development opportunities which included training, promotions and social improvement which secured the future of families.

Fairness

Truly great management is a mindset. It should be a satisfying experience for managers and workers alike.

It takes qualities such as empathy to bond people into teams, and to a job, and loyalty to retain them. Management is about supporting people and therefore depends on a particular mindset which in turn comes out in the selection process.

Alternative Management Styles

Managers nurtured in structured management systems, as described above, and people who come to work expecting to be treated fairly and have satisfying and rewarding jobs will struggle mentally in alternative management systems because of their different characteristics. Briefly one such alternative paradigm sustains growth by replacing burnt out workers from a steady supply of fresh, cheap labour who are disposable. In this unacceptable approach, the mindset required to manage people will disregard the human factors evidenced by the Challenge \ support model and Belbin Team skills and is more likely to mis-use them to get what they want. For the toxic mindset, satisfaction is something they crave – for themselves. This mindset brings different team skills into play.

Toxic management is the result of employing and idolising people who’s character traits align with the dark triad of behaviours and who don’t care for people – just results.

In the resulting tyranny, according to the late Dr Tim Field, anything goes as long as management gets what it wants. For example when a toxic boss doesn’t get what he or she wants – he or she will circumvent any agreed management process or contract and exploit fear backed up by increasing the level of challenge and removing support. According to Field, alternative management styles have a number of repeatable and highly offensive processes aimed at getting what the toxic boss wants.

This alternative management practice is prevalent, both in the workforce and the community.

What Works Wellbeing says its goal is to improve, and save, lives through better policy and practice for wellbeing.

A good starting point would be the policy that allows alternative management approaches to flourish. What currently prevents wellbeing from being realised is that power, in the form of budget and control is often in the hands of toxic managers and the results are hidden. No problem for a toxic mindset.

In the next article we will be outlining the criteria for fair management policy that supports wellbeing at work.

Stuart Dixon

Toxic Lives

Category Archives: Toxic Work Places

Toxic Work Culture