Surviving the toxic workplace (2)

Surely, oppression destroys a wise man’s reason —Ecclesiastes 7:7 (NKJV)

The former boss I mentioned last week entered the premises of the company like a lord of the Manor, barking orders and very often, sacking people, including management staff, from the gate. I lost count of the number of times I heard, “Accountant, pay him off”. I have seen bosses curse out their employees, addressing them in the most condescending manner with unprintable expletives in a way that makes you think that the employee was on the job as an act of charity. Even a beggar deserves better!

Oppressive superiors make their subordinates feel inadequate, insecure, and mentally assailed. Oppressive managers always want to create an aura of invincibility and infallibility around themselves. If and when necessary, an insecure boss would throw a subordinate under the bus just to protect their own position and ego. Excellence and innovation never thrive in an oppressive work environment.

Status quo is the stability of oppression. You challenge it at your own risk! In an oppressive environment, everyone literally walks on eggshells for fear of putting the wrong foot forward. Fear rules because there is no security of tenure. For this reason, nobody in the organisation contemplates longevity. In the words of a Yoruba proverb, the death of your contemporary is only speaking to you in parables, as a way of letting you know that when it comes to the grip of the grim reaper, nobody is off-limits! If there is any loyalty in a toxic workplace, it is to self, not to the organisation. Who wants to tie the apron-strings of his life to an organisation that holds no promise for his future?

Toxic workplaces manifest a patent inability of the leadership to manage diversity and create a culture of inclusion. When leadership begins to function like a personality cult, you no longer have an organisation with a homogenous culture. What obtains is the divide and rule form of leadership that creates pockets of allegiances and cult followings with cleavages along ethnic, racial, religious, or political divides. Survival in such an organisation is no longer about performance or capacity but about which “group” you belong to and how “powerful or influential” that group is in the system. When a particular group assumes dominance because of the parochial hiring system of the organisation, it perpetuates its dysfunction through xenophobia that seeks to diminish the value and capacity of those who do not belong to it. This begins to choke out excellence or merit and enthrones mediocrity, elevating only those who are skilled at playing the ethnic, religious, or even racial card to upstage others, while relegating or making insignificant, everyone who is not so “privileged to belong” to the favoured class. Where xenophobia rules, you don’t earn your way to the top, you “belong” your way to it. When the trend is unchecked, the diversity that was supposed to be a form of strength to the organisation, becomes its albatross and eventually, its nemesis.

At this point, the organisation becomes implosive, manifesting a culture that can never produce progress. Since nothing stays static for long before the Law of Motion forces an external factor to act on it, certain abnormalities begin to manifest. Implosion is manifested in office politics that is played around self-preservation rather than the corporate essence. Purpose and the corporate vision become subordinated to systems and structures that graduate to systemic strictures. Organisations are bound to self-destruct when attention and focus are off the main corporate goal and diverted to maintaining a status quo that simply seeks survival at all costs. Gossip and confidential whispers fester unchecked because there are always listening ears. Conspiracy theories fly everywhere unchecked. Fantasy overrides facts.

Leadership spends more time fighting fires than preventing them. Reactionary leadership takes the place of responsive, visionary leadership. Trust jumps out of the window because only the paranoid finds it easy to survive in such an environment.

Left unchecked, there is a spin-off of other issues. Instead of a cohesive culture of teamwork and group dynamics, people begin to operate like silos, largely because they feel uncomfortable working with others, especially when they don’t know which “group” those others owe allegiance to. Everyone comes to work leaving a significant part of their real self at home while raising their suspicion antenna very high. Here, suspicion is native, trust is alien.

Staff turnover is naturally very high in toxic organisations. Talent attrition happens in two ways; the overbearing leadership fires people at will or people find it difficult to thrive in such environments and leave. I was shocked when I heard the Managing Director of a company say that high staff turnover was not a bad thing because it helped him to save money that could have been paid to people who could have stayed for promotion. Instead of training and promoting people as a way of encouraging them to stay, he frustrated them so they could leave, and he could hire new hands on the same salary or lower. I have never heard anything more myopic. The cost of high talent attrition to any organisation is far higher than what could be calculated in figures! The revolving door syndrome is arguably the most damaging phenomenon to any organisation. Because nobody stays long enough to perfect a process, every new hire has the challenge of having to master the ropes afresh because no workable system is in place. By the time the new hire is getting used to the system, he is also on his way out!

The only people who feel comfortable working in a toxic environment are those who themselves are products of a toxic background or upbringing and to whom toxicity is déjà vu or those who have endured the toxicity for so long that they have become conditioned by it. A toxic workplace, if endured for long, can become conditioning. Like the chameleon that reflects its environment, people operating in a toxic workplace can unconsciously imbibe that culture and replicate it when they get into positions of authority within or outside the organisation. Why do some victims of rape and abuse find it difficult to leave the environment that predisposes them to the horror? There are six key steps to negative behavioural conditioning. The first is resentment. The victim hates what is being done to him, wants out and is ready to put up a fight. When he cannot exit, he finds someone to report to or discuss the problem with. When that doesn’t seem to mitigate it, he learns to endure the situation, accepting it as normal. From acceptance, he begins to enjoy and anticipate its occurrence. Then, he finds the right words to explain and justifies it to anyone who takes him up on why he submits to such indignity. The final stage is when he personally assumes the toxicity and replicates it by becoming a carrier and dispenser of the same indignities that he once condemned. If you find yourself in a toxic environment, what you need is a detox… continued

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!

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