With people today spending more than half of their lives at work, and actually more than 2 thirds of their “awake” lives working, it is so painful seeing a great number of employees living their lives struggling to survive a toxic work environment.. The number of diseases and illnesses due to work pressure has rocketed over the past decade, with millions of people suffering from heart diseases, diabetes, thyroid, ulcers ..etc, needless to mention the psychological stress and break in family relationships due to work pressure..

This is probably one of the most important posts that a business leader can read, and one of the most important posts a talent should also read .. We will reflect on the reasons behind toxic environments, and how to clean it up, and how to survive it ..

1. The birth of toxic environment

Organizations consist of 3 big dimensions .. People, Processes and technology .. It all starts with people, as they are the ones who design, or stop processes and technology, so no matter what organizational analysts would say, having a toxic working environment always starts by tolerating toxic people on board ..

Almost every single business leader or owner I have seen in my entire career tolerating a toxic individual defends his situation by one out of two big reasons:

1. He / She is a great performer.
2. I can’t replace him/her now.

The above two reasons are exactly why toxic environments just grow, and never stop, despite it is very easy to kill a newly born toxic environment, leaders don’t take this seriously and allow it to grow further …. What will happen if you tolerate toxic people and bad attitudes? What does science say?

“Tolerating bad behavior is the same as training defiance and rebellion in the heart of your employees”

Tolerate this one single bad behavior employee and you will silently grow 10 more in the background. Human beings are smart creatures, and they will learn, in their eternal attempt to survive, that this behavior is their way to stay strong in the organization .. They will learn that those employees go places, get incentives, get salary raises, and have special places in the hearts of the top leaders .. Very soon, the 10 will becomes 100, and depending on the size of your organization, you will not be able to stop this huge gang-fight that will occur in the organization when gang leaders have a conflict ..

Where is the performance of your organization at this stage? Probably in the trash!

You will turn your employees into mercenaries and they will deal with the organization as a vehicle to achieve victory over their rivals, while performance will not be a focus at all.

2. Cleaning the toxic environment

Cleaning a room full of toxins always start with a little spray in your hand .. Stay confident that you don’t need to burn the room in order to clean it .. the anti-dote is very simple .. Simply go back to your “VALUES”.!

So many organizations publish values and brag about them, but very little actually stick to their values, especially during hard times.

in 2013, and over 6 months, I carried out a 1 minute research and managed to collect 858 responses from employees representing organisations operating in 10 different industries in the Middle East. The Majority of responses were from healthcare (33.3%), Education (18.4%), Financial services (13.2%), Business Support and Automotive organisations (10% each). I wanted to discover if the organisationally-advertised work values are truly followed at work and if they mean something to employees. The results were surprising!

63% of the respondents agreed that leaders in their organisations were not role models of the values. They further agreed that leaders will not take actions if the values are breached (especially if the breacher was a good contact of the leader!). How true is this to your organization?

The surprising figure here was the significant agreement that organisations would compromise values for business results and the respondents’ comments gave an alarming insight that whistle-blowing is going to cost organisations a lot if they do not re-evaluate their work equation.. For example, One of the most frequently reported breached values was “Respect”. Stories of discrimination at the work place based on gender (perceived weaker females), age (perceived “young and doesn’t have enough knowledge”) and race (perceived lower grade brains) were reported by the respondents. Some employees mentioned that they have formally reported those incidents to higher levels of leadership and submitted formal grievance / compliance applications, but since the offender was a senior leader, they were asked to “forgive and forget”, as the leader “didn’t mean it”!

So if you, as a leader, are protecting bad behavior and asking others to forgive .. indirectly, what are you telling others? .. “This guy is protected”, “This behavior is OK, not as serious as I have advertised”, “I am not true to my values”! Isn’t that correct?

“Values” are actually “Values” because they will only show during hard time, and if you, as a leader, are unable to make a value-driven decision during hard time, then you are terribly weak, not ready yet to take the steering wheel and seriously need to sit and reflect on what truly drives you .. Most commonly in this situation it will be “Money” .. At least then you can stop bragging about “Values”, “Work culture”, “Best Employer” ..etc, and get ready to even lose the money factor after a while, once the organization comes into chaos and people start fighting .. Get ready for whistle blowing, get ready for scandals, get ready for market reputation destruction ..etc .. And if you don’t think this is possible, look at the major multi-billion dollar organizations in the world that suffered from this ..

3. Message to talents

Look, listen and learn .. but very silently! Don’t interfere in mercenary discussions and don’t try to survive the culture .. This will only teach you to behave in the same manner .. silently, calmly and confidently try to find a better place, and seriously consider starting your own business …. Rest assured that if you see your leaders not standing firm for the values, and not taking serious actions towards bad behavior that this will not change soon, .. If leaders are unable to act for the 2 reasons mentioned above then the verdict has been declared ..

Life is so short, so simple and so quick .. wasting your best years in life trying to survive a toxic environment is just too much risk to take .. Take risks in living your life the way you always wanted, risk some money, it shall come back .. risk some sleepless nights and efforts, and it will pay you off … Never ever trade your self esteem, happiness and very valuable time that you have .. those will never come back and will be regrettable losses that you will always remember through your life ..

A message to leaders … Be true to your employees …

A message to talents … Be fair to yourselves ……………

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher