Toxic workplace is a place that no one wants to be at. However, when you work in a real toxic workplace, you suddenly see that most things you thought were toxic were not toxic at all. Bad leadership creates the ‘weather’ at the workplace and often directly contributes to toxic culture, and that’s why you will see a lot of points related to the leadership behaviour.

Below are the signs that your workplace became really toxic, and honestly, the way out might be the best option.

Signs of toxic workplace

• It starts with bad leadership and trickles down to organizational culture, processes and people. It happens when people who unfit to be in leadership end up in leadership and then everyone suffers. Bad leadership is when leaders do not take accountability and blame their staff (or their staff’s ‘incompetence’) when they get questioned. It is wrong because a) good leader stands up by their staff b) leadership makes all final decisions. It is their responsibility to review everything before signing and approving so if they do not catch mistakes I personally do not think it is fair to blame the staff that often has less experience than leaders.
• An opposite example is also a sign of bad leadership – when experts are not listened to when making decisions
• Bad leadership is when the direction given is not consistent and often changed.
• Bad leadership is when the workload given to staff is unreasonable and yet no support of any kind is provided.
• Bad leadership is when the only way to deal with the workload is to work overtime, regularly. Super bad leadership is when you are not allowed to do that or claim the hours spent working.
• Bad leadership is when your manager does not have time to talk to you or check in with you regularly.
• Bad leadership is when tasks are assigned instead of the actual work. People no longer are engaged to work as there is no control over work deliverables, only specific tasks. Even worse when these tasks are micromanaged about how they need to be approached and in what format they need to be delivered.
• Bad leadership is about inconsistency – when the leaders are nice one day and then turn around and question you the next, or sometimes even at the same day. It is about the atmosphere of mistrust where everything is formal and official and there is no flexibility on leadership side towards the people while having an expectation of the staff to have the flexibility.
• It is about having too much work and unreasonable timelines. But worse yet, completing the work and delivering quality product is not acknowledged but instead results in staff being challenged about what took so long. In other words, timelines are prioritized over quality of work
• It is about having very formal processes for how the work should be done and having HR or Unions or other external parties involved on regular basis to resolve conflicts
• People are isolated and feel micromanaged. There is no team and everyone is for themselves
• It is about double standards when it comes to communication, political acuity or even being late. Basically some people and/or leadership are allowed to do things while others are challenged and questioned for doing the same thing. For example, if one can be late to a meeting for half an hour or cancel it altogether while another person being called into a meeting while being late for two minutes despite being at another meeting. It is about showing that some people’s time is more valuable than theirs
• A sign of toxic culture is a low employee engagement. Employee engagement is not about pizza lunches or free coffee, it is about being able to succeed at work by being given a clear direction/vision of priorities, having autonomy on how they approach their work and ability to make decisions about their area of work without being micromanaged. It is about people having access to the right tools to do their jobs and being given adequate time to complete their work. It is about empowering people to do what they think they should do at work and how they think they should do it.  If employee engagement is low it is a sign of toxic place because it takes time before people disengage and get vocal about their negative experiences. And when several people report this it becomes a trend and overlooking it creates higher levels of disengagement and mistrust of people in their leadership and organization. It is the same as if kitchen chef being aware that his stove is not working properly – from burning food to undercooking and yet doing nothing about it and continuing being in business and sending underdone or overdone dishes out of the kitchen. People coming to this person’s restaurant will question the competence of this chef giving his choice to ignore the problem. Same thing with organizations – people are the heart of any organization and them being disengaged is like a bad stove that makes it impossible to deliver any good products or deliverables.
• Toxic culture – where people turn on each other and throw each other under a bus (not literally), as they get questioned and blamed often. Just like a positive workplace brings the best in people such as collaboration, innovation and creativity, a negative toxic place brings the worst in people. The people working there are on the edge most of the time, rotating between feeling angry and resentful to not carrying about the outcomes of their work by completely dissociating. It is a coping mechanism – everyone reacts differently when stressed. But the common theme here is that most people working in this environment are stressed. The stress is very damaging and a lot of people bring it home with them, spreading the impacts of stress beyond the workplace. It affects their health, their relationships and other areas of life. This is why toxic culture should not be supported or even tolerated, as its impact has a very negative effect on people. Stressed and unhappy people more often engage in negative or self destructive things or can abuse alcohol or drugs as ways of coping. Unhappy and stressed people are not responsible citizens who try to help others as a lot of their energy goes towards just functioning.

As you can see, working in a toxic place creates a lot of uncertainty and contributes to high levels of stress, taking a toll on the people’s health. It is important to be aware if your workplace became a toxic place as the first step towards ‘recovery’. It helps because it allows you to stop from reacting to daily issues and take stock of the bigger picture. The issue with toxic workplaces is that it is no longer tied to one person, it is when the toxicity travels to lower management and the team and processes and culture. So it takes several steps and requires targeting different areas in order to improve things. Essentially, when the workplace gets really toxic it is getting the situation to the breaking point – big changes (good or bad) are about to happen. I am drawing a parallel to the Mean Girls movie, where the chaos in high school got to the point that everyone started physically fighting with everyone. This is a “movie version” of getting to the lowest point.

I will talk about what to do if you find yourself working in a toxic environment in the next post.