Someone just referred me to Seth Godin’s blog entries about toxic employees and toxic bosses.

Spot on.

These posts reminded me of some long-term management training I did for an organization in the Midwest. It was a rather large production plant – more than 500 employees. The HR manager pulled me aside and asked if she was going crazy. Apparently, the executive running the show was famous for jumping chain-of-command and pointing out problems and mistakes to whoever was standing closest to him at the time.

When the HR manager approached him on this, she also inquired if he could also start pointing out things that were going well.

According to the HR manager, the exec said, “It’s not my job to point out things that are going well. Only things that need fixing.”

<sarcasm>There’s real encouragement for you.</sarcasm>

Additionally, this guy saw nothing wrong with jumping chain of command. He thought nothing of chewing out an entry level worker who’d been on the job just a few weeks. He didn’t seem to care that it emasculated his top lieutenants … and his second lieutenants, too.

Godin is spot on when he says “Because bosses are often able to define reality, at least for those in their sphere of influence, they can cause whole sections of an organization to go off the rails.”

Waaaaayyy off the rails. During another visit to this business I was approached by a management intern who was publically chewed out by a department head when the intern said something in a meeting that the department head didn’t like.

Eyewitnesses who were also in the workshop backed up the unbelievable story of how the dept. head stood infront of the intern, shaking his finger in the intern’s face and yelling.

These are just two of the dozens of wonderful stories I heard . . . . This must be what people mean when they say they put the “fun” in “dysfunctional.”

A Consultant’s Dilemma

For the consultant, having people confide these things to you can be akin to going for a walk on thin ice. I struggle between suggesting to the abused that they looking into filing a hostle work environment claim, having the person confront the offending manager, have the person just report it to HR, or …. me personally confronting the ___[enter favorite descriptor]___ managers and leaders who are missing the common sense gene.

My decision-making has revolved around “doing the right thing,” but sometimes no matter what the action, the offending parties are in such a state of denial that they create a negative consulting environment—and start discrediting the consultant!

Ah, the toxicity of it all. Someone could make a fortune if they created a “manager’s detox center.”

PS.  A couple of extra thoughts:

1. If toxic managers would start thinking like trainers they might actually stand a chance of seeing things from someone else’s point of view.
2. Off topic, but you might also enjoy reading my post about Seth Godin’s Workplace Wisdom.

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Filed in Motivation, Management, Leadership, Teambuilding, Workplace, Train the Trainer, Corporate Culture, Retention