I happened
\nto us all, so many times…On our way to the office, we felt our ankles were
\ncuffed in manacles and we could barely take on step after the next. Once we got
\nat the office, we activated a mode of behavior which, more often than not, prompted
\nus to ask ourselves who we really were, the ones at home or those on the job. Sometimes
\nwe’re scared, some other time we are super-techy, we count down the hours and the
\nminutes left until it is time for us to leave. After that, we activate a
\ndifferent behavioral mode, that of decompensation, where we release our
\nfrustrations as we run into our folks at home, or we simply are too hard on
\nourselves. We do that only to go back to square one, the following
\nday. But what happens, actually? In fact, we work in a toxic environment that
\ntakes its toll on our being as a whole. From a purely human point of view, there
\nis that saying, leave your job worries on the doorstep of your house, but, in
\nearnest, that doesn’t work at all. We take our job toxicity with us, everywhere
\nwe go. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andra Pintican is a career counsellor and a HR expert. We sat down and
\nspoke to Andra about the toxic workplace. So how do we detect toxicity in our
\nworkplace? <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andra Pintican:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here are some of the toxic environment indicators. We have very authoritarian
\nmanagers, who perform some kind of micromanagement, they do not allow freedom
\nand autonomy to their employees so the latter can meet their set targets and
\ngoals, there is no safe psychological space, we are afraid to express ourselves
\nbecause we dead positive that if we tell all what our opinion is, repercussions
\nare about to follow, we do our job because we have to, even if we are aware a hundred
\nper cent of them are wrong, so we absolutely stick to what we were told to do
\nbecause our opinion in the organization does not matter, we do not have
\nmanagers or people who are willing to take responsibility when something goes
\nwrong, instead, they play the game of whose fault it is, rather than find a solution,
\nwe do not trust anybody. In a toxic environment, in fact, I think that is the
\nmost serious problem, that we do not trust each other and we always have the feeling
\nthat somebody will do us harm and that is the first and the most important aspect
\nto be taken into account, because, the moment someone has that fear deeply engrained
\nin his mind, that he is in a place where he is not safe, they will always keep
\ntheir defensive systems alert, whereas in a survival fight there will be no
\ntrue performance.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
These
\nare trying times we’ve been going through, and we are willing to make huge
\ncompromises if we want to put food on the table for our folks. Taking the heat
\nof working with a toxic manager has become, these days, the only way of
\nworking, at least in some organizations. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here is Andra Pinctican once again,
\nthis time telling us how to recognize the toxic boss and how to thwart his
\nbehavior. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The moment you have a toxic relationship with your manager, I want us to despise,
\nfor a little while, of the idea of having a boss, which is totally out of place
\nin 2023, first of all you need to detect that. You need to realize that
\nsomething is wrong there and that is very difficult, as we still think several types
\nof behavior are normal. So no, no one can yell at you, telling you that you cannot
\nhave your vacation because there is no one to replace you, you have rights
\nwhich must be respected, you also have responsibilities and it is your duty to respect
\nthem, that’s for sure. A toxic boss will have an inadequate type of behavior
\nwith you, he will not respect your work standards, he will not respect your
\npersonal space, he will text you when it is totally inappropriate, he will ask
\nyou to ruin your personal life at the expense of the professional one and most
\nlikely he will have you do a lot more things that what is included in your job
\ndescription. The moment you have to confront such people, you must learn to set
\nand make your work standards known, to be familiar with your job description,
\nyou need to know what the things are, for which you are actually responsible,
\nof course, you need to do your job and fulfil your contract responsibilities,
\nyet at the same time you need to ask the man who is responsible for you to respect
\nyou all along. Let him know how you want him to address you, tell him, the
\nmoment he yells at you or when he uses inappropriate words, that you do not
\naccept such a professional cooperation relationship, you also need to speak clearly
\nabout how you want him to work with you, so things can go perfectly fine because,
\nrealistically speaking, people cannot have a supernatural vision about what you want. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The
\nwork standard, Andra Pintican says, is an idea that needs to be reiterated at
\nthe work place all the time. Does my colleague know how toxic he is, for me ?<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A manager, a colleague, somebody who is toxic, in 99 percent of the
\ncases they do not know they’re toxic. And they do not know that because,
\ngenerally speaking, we, in terms of culture, do not know what toxicity is. We still
\nbelieve it is normal to shout at one another, it is normal to encourage through
\ndiscouraging or through terror. Fortunately, these things do not work anymore: unfortunately,
\nthey worked for a good number of years, yet things are changing, as we speak. Part
\nof the people are beginning to realize what a sound professional relationship
\nmeans, what it means to have a working professional relationship, to do your
\njob in as sound a working environment as possible – I still do not think we ‘ve
\nbeen going as far as to have very sound work relationships, but we’re heading in
\nthat direction – and the moment we have people with toxic types of behavior,
\nthey do not know they have that issue, nay, since we do not assertively address
\nthose issues they’re not likely to become aware of that either. Usually, it’s
\neither us yelling at them there, telling them look what you’re doing to me and
\nthey are on the defensive, and then we wrestle, or it’s us playing the role of
\nthe victim, telling them look what you’re doing to me, you make me suffer, and
\nthat’s what prompts them to maintain their behavior even to a greater extent. If
\nwe want us to snap out of these psychological games, as that’s what really happens
\nwith the work relationships, there are very many psychological games and we are
\ncaptive in a place of a professional drama, each and every one of us needs to
\nwork with themselves and balance the way they relate to the others and, which
\nis a must, we need to set our work standards, making them known constantly. We
\nneed to lay strong emphasis on the work standards, as they are an important step
\nin the process of improving the work relationships in Romania. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Let
\nus learn to respect ourselves and we shall witness magic in all the other aspects
\nof our life, the professional one included. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andra Pintican once again. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In most of the cases, resignation is not the solution to the problem, as
\nwhat we usually do is submit our resignation from a toxic workplace, but, mind
\nyou, the workplace is toxic, and the situation is toxic because we had our own contribution
\nto that. And we quit a workplace of this kind and we move to another workplace
\nwhere, most likely, we will make the same mistakes as we did before and, in two
\nor three years’ time, maybe less, we will find ourselves in a similar
\nsituation. The thing is that each and every one of us contributes to the
\ncircumstances we found ourselves in. We can say, look, the manager or my
\ncolleague aggress me, but the naked truth is that people do to us what we allow
\nthem to do. And, until we do not learn how to detect, even in ourselves, our
\nown behavioral patterns that simply nurture the others toxic types of behavior, we
\n‘re not going to snap out of that game easily, not even if we submit our
\nresignation. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And
\nthe organization itself may also feel the pinch of its toxic employees. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The long-term effects of a toxic environment are devastating. The moment someone
\ncomes to work in an environment where she or he feels they are at war, they are
\nin danger, they have no choice other than be on the defensive all the time, first
\noff, individually, while on the inside a lot of damage occurs, in our own
\nbodies. That state of being stressed out, which grows into chronic stress,
\ntakes its toll on our lives on multiple levels, physically, mainly, and we
\nreach the point where we cannot avoid the burnout. That is what happens individually.
\nAt team level, when we have a group of people, a team of people who suffer and
\nthey sometimes cannot clearly say that is what actually happens to them, that
\nthey are in burnout or in functional depression, the moment people suffer on
\nthe inside, the way they interact with one another is bound to be increasingly
\ntoxic. I think it doesn’t make any sense to have a debate on the extent of the ensuing
\ndamage as regards performance, the relationship with the client, innovation…When
\npeople are extremely busy to survive and save their bacon and be in competition
\ngames, proving they are the best, I do not think there is any focus on the client
\nor the organizational impact any more, but only on survival. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The trials and tribulations of doing your job in a toxic environment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":144496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42997],"tags":[34395,43933,29442,43932,41308,43934],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-144495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-today","tag-deal","tag-micromanagement","tag-resignation","tag-stress","tag-team","tag-toxicity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n