Crayons, scratched down to a stub: emotional learnings from a toxic workplace

The below is a summary of my reflections from a workplace which was, for me and many others, toxic. This is based on my personal experience, as well as (too) many conversations with friends and peers about their experiences in similar places. I share some ideas about what was missing and what leaders can do differently to bring some humanity to workplaces.

This is written through the lense of emotional intelligence in the workplace, which should be a part of a well-rounded leadership approach that employs proven HR/leadership structure and strategies.

Communication

When it comes to relationships, communication is crucial to developing a mutual understanding and trust. Without this, we dance around in assumptions, projections and uncertainty that erode trust and nurture misunderstanding. This is as true for a 1:1 relationship as it is for a some:many relationship, such as that between a leadership team (or company) and their staff.

From my experience, all of the below elements play a role in how communication can impact on the relationships mentioned above:

• Type of information that is shared
• When and how information is shared and whether this is universal or siloed
• How people are consulted and whether they are given an opportunity to provide feedback
• When people provide feedback, how this feedback is treated
• If there is conflict or disagreement, how this is handled

In a workplace where communication is limited and information is restricted in order to control people and outcomes, there is no understanding and there is no trust. The impact of this is disempowered people, who don’t trust their leaders and constantly feel stuck and unsure of what’s to come.

When conflicts arise, leaders need to show humility and have respect for their staff, in allowing a platform for discussing and resolving the conflict. When staff are denied this opportunity because leaders lack the emotional maturity to entertain a discussion or choose to hold a grudge, it leaves them powerless to move forward. When people don’t feel safe to speak honestly, they retreat and condense into themselves, stifling their true self and the value that you are seeking from them as an employee.

Boundaries

Relationships need boundaries. Boundaries help us to define what is and isn’t included and expected in an exchange, relative to the nature of the relationship.

In workplaces where boundaries are violated by leaders as a matter of routine from the get-go, staff take on too much too soon and find themselves on the losing end of a power struggle.

Without boundaries to tell us what is expected and appropriate, we can feel depleted, taken advantage of and taken for granted. While it may take some time to show externally, a lack of boundaries can quickly lead to resentment, hurt, anger, and burnout.

Blurred boundaries create unnecessary tension and uncertainty in relationships, particularly when it comes to the line between personal and professional.

Upholding healthy boundaries in relationships requires respect and empathy for others where they are. Particularly where there is a power dynamic involved in a workplace, boundaries help people to feel safe to do what feels right for them, without pressure to say yes to others.

Examples of boundaries in a workplace:

Physical boundaries

• not everyone wants to hug in the workplace. People should ask before they touch you and keep it relative and appropriate to the relationship
• commenting on another person’s physical appearance is not always appropriate in a professional context, regardless of whether its positive or negative. This should be relative to the relationship. Receiving a compliment on your perceived weight loss, particularly when you don’t receive feedback on your professional performance, is not flattering - its insulting, potentially harmful and misguided
• with the COVID-19 pandemic changing the nature of in-office work in 2020, some people are genuinely uncomfortable or unable to be physically located with others

Emotional boundaries/psychological safety

• Feeling safe to share as much or as little of your personal life as you are comfortable with. This is relative to the nature of your relationships and the extent to which is affects your work performance.
• Feeling safe to express emotion in the workplace without shame, particularly because of gender (i.e. females may be more likely to show emotion — this isn’t weakness)
• Feeling safe to not have to divulge or justify the reason for your emotion to others
• Feeling safe to express an opinion or idea without being cut down, belittled, shamed or degraded, publicly or privately
• Feeling safe to ‘bring your whole self to work’ without it being used against you
• Feeling respected and cared for in a work environment, genuinely.
  Actions speak louder than words on this one.

Professional boundaries

• Tasks that fall outside of the scope of your role, should not be yours. Most concerning are personal tasks that deal with family matters, health, personal finances etc. Roles and responsibilities should be clearly defined and agreed upon (it’s called a position description!)
• Your time outside of work hours belongs to you and your family. If it’s needed from time to time, most are happy to do what absolutely needs to be done but no one should feel obliged to continually put in overtime to get things done. If this is happening, there is a workload issue. How much the founders/senior management choose or need to work is their choice, and not an employee’s obligation to match.
• Feeling pressured to join in on extra-curricular and social work outings in your personal time is uncomfortable and unfair. There is a power dynamic at play here that leads to my next point. Leaders should maintain boundaries and a personal life outside of work that give them social outlets outside of people who are on the payroll.

When cliques and FOMO > professional recognition, genuine belonging

Start-up culture is fun, just be careful of the kool aid.

Socialising and bonding with like-minded peers is one of the great perks of working in a business where everyone is roughly the same age and generally enjoys a drink and a fun night out.

But, when the culture of a workplace revolves more around drinking than professional structure and recognition, we have a problem.

When this is the culture and the leaders are involved, professional relationships can be coloured by personal and social interactions, which put pressure on people to become part of the crowd.

Brene Brown has some really insightful thoughts on belonging and fitting in.

She talks about our desperate need to belong as part of our human DNA.

When we feel that we don’t belong or we are not wanted, we’ll do anything to make ourselves feel that we belong.

The result is self abandonment, disempowerment and loneliness.

When we abandon our personal values to go with the flow and feel safe in a place that we are made to feel we don’t fit into, it can make us sick.

This is crippling to our mental health, our sense of self and our confidence.

When a workplace culture fosters this need to belong, especially in a social context, people are driven by FOMO. We see people being recognised and prioritised professionally because of their personal and social relationships and, depending on our own personal strength and trust, we can be easily swayed into following this treacherous path.

Professionally, we should be free to share Ideas and opinions. After all, it is our diversity and uniqueness that can deliver new and creative solutions to business problems. People are hired because their talent is needed and recognised, but once in the door of a business where new ideas aren’t celebrated, they can find themselves quickly belittled and disempowered, if their views don’t fit with those of the higher-ups.

True belonging comes from the ability to stand alone in our values and beliefs, and doesn’t require us to be inauthentic or change who we are. When we find ourselves in an environment where our values clash and our true self isn’t welcome or safe, socially or professionally, loneliness can take over.

When we meet this challenge, we end up on one of two paths — self-abandon to survive or exit. Both paths ultimately lead to turnover and mental health issues, the former being a substantially more painful and protracted event.

Leadership driven by ego, shame and a lack of vulnerability

Leaders are only human and it’s a tough gig.

But, when you take on the responsibility of employing staff, you take on their professional development, health and happiness too. It’s a heavy burden, but it is one that leaders just cannot ignore. In honouring this responsibility and treating your team with care, empathy and respect, you unlock the potential of your people and improve your business.

As a leader, you need to know yourself and be able to drop your guard. Your people know you’re not a robot, they would prefer to see your human side.

In a culture where leaders are caught in ego, they use their position to control their staff, which creates an imbalance of power. Ego-driven leaders make bad decisions, blame others and hoard control. For everyone’s sake, including your own — take a step back and watch what happens.

Tips for leaders about ego, power and control:

• Ego assumes that you know-all, but you don’t. Even the smartest people cannot be experts in everything. You employ people for their talent — use it!
• Ego drains you (which builds resentment) because you can’t relinquish control. Find the humility to trust the people you employ.
• That resentment makes you feel that you’re not celebrated as you deserve. As a result, you claim other’s success or overlook their talents. Open your eyes to be grateful and understand what others are bringing to your business.
• Ego wants to be right, all the time. You defend your decisions or blame others, projecting your issues onto them. Learn from your mistakes and those around you.
• Ego stops you from engaging with the skilled, because their success threatens you. This feeds into the earlier notes on cliques and favouritism, with leaders who are threatened by success choosing those who have chosen to follow them, as their teachers. This doesn’t teach you anything!
• When you control others through ego, you’re disempowering them and limiting their success. This compounds your doubts and exhausts you because they don’t achieve. Let go and delegate to let others succeed.

In removing the ego from leadership, we also need to embrace vulnerability and empathy, to make work a happier, more productive place. The absence of those two things can contribute to a team that is disempowered, miserable and under achieving.

This is Brene Brown’s area again — vulnerability and shame.

Shame thrives in a culture where communication is limited, relationships are blurry and ego drives leaders to judge and blame. Shame is the voice that says, “you’re too much”, “you’re not good enough”, “who are you to do that”, “you are not a X”.

Shame is heightened when leaders publicly berate and belittle people, throw blame and put people down. In these places, civility goes out the window and people are degraded at the expense of the leader’s ego, because these leaders opt for causing pain instead of feeling it. Leaders who feel shame, shame others, it’s a painful cycle.

Brene Brown’s answer to this — empathy and vulnerability.

Empathy says: “me too”, “I’m with you”

Empathy seeks to understand how someone is feeling and believes their experience, as they experience it (not how you might feel in the same situation).

Empathy prompts difficult conversations, stokes curiosity and leads to inevitable connections.

Vulnerability shows people that you are human too.

Vulnerability tells you to lean in and listen.

Vulnerability chooses courage over comfort.

Brene Brown’s concept of rumbling with vulnerability is a conversation defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to be fearless in owning our parts.

Empathy and vulnerability need to be embraced genuinely, and not used by leaders as a trick or tactic to manipulate people into trust.

If more leaders did this, work would be a much safer place.

Mental health

There is a terrifying reality to the mental health impacts of experiencing all the above, in an environment where you spend almost a third of your life.

We make a commitment to our work.
We forego other opportunities.
We spend time away from our families.
We give a piece of ourselves to the job, the place, the people.

In a workplace culture where survival means self-abandonment, many people are not doing well mentally. Leaders can rationalise individual cases away to personal circumstances, without truly considering the direct cause and consequence of their company’s culture and their leadership.

Brene Brown links shame to addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide and eating disorders.

Self abandonment leads to loneliness.

Trauma and manipulation, witnessed or experienced, are scarring for even the strongest of souls.

When you spend 40/50/60 hours a week in a place over a period of years, the cumulative effect of this culture is seriously concerning. That’s just the sheer exposure of time — the emotional layers go much deeper.

You pour your heart into it.
Your sense of self is diluted.
Your confidence diminished to the point that you no longer see your own light.
You get so lost in it all, that you might not see it for years.

You see others treated poorly but you abandon yourself and your values in order to look the other way, to survive.

Getting out

When you finally see the light and realise that the workplace is not the place for you, it’s common that you’ll be bullied, belittled and disrespected out of a job, out of a safe place.
You’ll be ignored and your contribution and your value will go unspoken.

You’ll keep showing up for a time because you committed to this.
You’re building something here.
It’s your livelihood and your family’s security.
But your health and happiness is worth more than any salary.
Your dignity is priceless.

If ego is on the table, they’ll shame you and imply that your personal circumstances caused you to be unwell. They won’t ever look in the mirror. They definitely won’t acknowledge their responsibility.

They’ll also degrade your professional performance, spin a narrative that paints your choice to leave as something they’ve designed — “a good result”.

You’ll start to see how others before you barely made it out with their lives.
That’s not hyperbole. This is serious.
For those who experience the worst of this toxicity, inhumanity and manipulation, the path can become very, very dark.
Leaders are playing with people’s lives.
Taking everything from you, as though it’s nothing…like crayons, scratched down to the stub.
Discard, start again.

You’ll be so much better off on the outside - it’s their loss.

Businesses like this watch good people and great talent walk out the door, over and over again because they’re unwilling to change. This treatment of people purely as resources is inhumane, but it’s also not smart business. This type of turnover is costly and causes reputational damage that can’t be undone. Eventually, the pool of people willing to work for these places dries up.

To whoever is reading this..

If you’re a leader, open your eyes and look in the mirror.
Are you hurting your people and your business?
Are you protecting others who are doing the same?
If you cannot be the leader that you need to be and if you’re still learning to embrace empathy or vulnerability, you need to create space and separation from your people using HR strategy and structure. Try trusting people to do what you pay them to do.

And don’t hide from your humanity — journey inward to discover WHY you are this way. Keep trying, you cannot move forward personally or professionally without emotional growth.

If you’re a person who works for other people, trust your gut and never forget yourself. The only safe journey through a place like this is probably out. Keep your eyes open and once you see the light, plan your exit.
I hope that you avoid it altogether.
If you’ve experienced a toxic workplace and are still healing, know this — you are now and have always been so much more than a used up crayon, colouring in someone else’s ego.