Written by Mike Verano
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[dropcap]As an Employee Assistance Program Specialist who routinely sees clients for work-related stress issues, I often hear the expression, “My work place has become toxic.”[/dropcap] What most people mean by this is that there is a person, or people, who are filling the workplace with negative attitudes and behaviors, and that this experience is contributing to low morale, high stress and the feeling that one needs to go through a decontamination process before returning home.Who are these people and, more important, is there something we can do to protect ourselves from the hazardous waste they leave in their wake? The short answer is “yes” there is something we can do. The longer answer is that doing something about this requires that we take special precautions, stay alert and, if necessary, have an evacuation plan at the ready.
According to Wikipedia, a toxic employee is “a worker who is motivated by personal gain (power, money or special status), uses unethical, mean-spirited and sometimes illegal means to manipulate and annoy those around them and whose motives are to maintain or increase power, money or special status or divert attention away from their performance shortfalls and misdeeds.”
Let’s start by being honest and admitting that all of us are “motivated by personal gain.” The difference between looking out for yourself and what the hazardous worker does, is in the techniques used to obtain these personal gains. Hazardous coworkers get ahead at the expense of others. While it’s possible that some people suffer from chronic pain-in-the-butt syndrome and are hard-wired to behave the way they do, most of these folks are made, and not born, this way.
Most of these people probably enjoyed their job at some point. The move toward toxicity usually begins harmlessly. A joke here, a sarcastic remark there, an explicit message left on the company bathroom wall. In time, the attitude becomes a primary defense mechanism for a person who has lost the ability or willingness to change. When they become the dominant force in a company, they can squeeze the life energy out of its workers. These are not necessarily evil people, they have just learned that expecting the worst makes life at work more understandable and predictable, and it requires less energy. It is far easier for them to point fingers instead of lifting them to help others. It requires much less energy to ridicule than to reason and in the end saying, “I told you so,” means never having to take responsibility.
When it comes to working with these people, we can follow the advice of those who work around actual toxic material and verify, contain and remove. Here are some tips for putting this into practice:
One. Verify: Make sure that you are actually dealing with someone who has become toxic. Simply having a “bad day at the office” and making a negative comment or two about the boss does not mean that someone is a danger to the work environment. Look for a consistent pattern of negative behavior and talk. See if others around you feel the same about the person, or people involved. Feeling like your personal boundaries have been violated whenever you interact with someone is another good indicator of toxicity, as is the feeling that the person has an insatiable need for attention.
Two. Contain: Maintain a healthy perimeter between yourself and the toxic person. If you must interact, stick to facts and avoid being drawn into personal conversations. Withdraw attention from their antics, rants and ramblings and never answer their question of “Want to know what I think?” with anything other than, “Look at the time, I have a meeting to get to.”
Three. Remove: Ultimately, only those in charge can take steps to remove a toxic person from the workplace. However, those affected by the daily poison can help in this process by speaking up for themselves and their work environment. Become an activist at work and avoid the passive response of coming to work in the emotional equivalent of a hazmat suit. Create a workplace Environmental Protection Agency and go out of your way to be positive, supportive and helpful. It is often the case that when other workers refuse to play in the toxic person’s reindeer games, the toxic person loses interest and seeks unhealthier pastures.
In the end, toxic workers are simply dysfunctional people who bring their negative coping skills to the work setting. Recognize that these antics are attempts on their part to exercise some sense of control over their lives helps us to stop taking their actions personally and helps us to practice keeping control over our attitudes and responses. In this way, even if the toxic person never cleans up their act, our days are not contaminated with harmful negative energy that we end up unintentionally bringing home with us.