Toxic workplace. Should I stay or should I go?..

Have you ever heard about the toxic environment? What is that? Cambridge dictionary says that toxic means poisonous, informal meaning – very unpleasant and unacceptable, causing you a lot of harm and unhappiness over a long period of time.

Toxic environment can be everywhere, even at work. The result of being surrounded by the poisonous people would not cause an immediate death or some kind of extreme radiation, rather it works as an invisible rays, making you sicker every day. A lot of people are finding themselves in the situation when some colleagues are extremely ignorant, rude, passive-aggressive, sexist, not recognizing the achievements or even diminishing and gaslighting them. This what is causing the toxicity at work.

You don’t need to be a trained Human Resource specialist to realize that people don’t want to work in such environment, they don’t want to physically show up at work, mingle with the colleagues or even continue to work at that particular place.

Why do I write about that? Some time ago I had a conversation with one of my friends and he complained that at his workplace the management is not appreciating the team’s effort, not seeing it or belittling the things being done and questioning the existence of the team. One must think: but maybe there are no results and the team is being paid for not delivering? On the contrary, the team is delivering, also, they are being a liaison between their department and the other departments, as no one in the small startup is covering these shady areas in between department’s teams. One little detail: it’s a small company, mainly consisting of the middle-aged Eastern European men and the team members who seem not to perform are young women. So I’ve asked my friend, do you think the behaviour towards them is because they are women? The answer was positive and my friends seemed to be frustraited about that and asked me what to do and how to help to defend these women.

I had an answer for him. Maybe that answer might be useful for you as well if you have recognised some traits or fully the picture of your company in my story. The company definitely needs a team coaching, an individual coaching for employees and an executive coaching with the top management. Why coaching? Executive coaching helps to bring to the surface and articulate some hidden biases, unrecognized thoughts and internalized patterns. The whole management style and the company spirit comes from the head. If management is toxic (willingly or not), they translate the values to the whole team. And if the values are not to value everyone equally – what is to be expected…
Team coaching can help to surface the conflict, unsaid thoughts, hidden wounds and to create a baseline for the new fresh start, create common rules and accepted behaviours in the company. As well as to allow the team to create a common goal and unite to achieve it.

However, this is the best case scenario. If the management is not willing to accept that something is wrong, if they don’t think that someone is misbehaving and some of the employees are being mistreated, nothing will chhange and coaching would not help either.
The main change would start when the management will see the problem and would accept that something should be done to amend it. Otherwise, my firm suggestion to all of you outhere, mistreated, gaslighted, not appreciated at work – before it’s too late and you’ve actually believed that you are worthless – find another job, create your own startup, go clean dishes just don’t continue working at the place you are not valued. Nothing ruins self-esteem faster than a toxic workplace and colleagues.

If you got interested in team or executive coaching – reach out to me to learn more. I offer individual packages depending on the diagnostics and the first 30 min session to get to know each other, to understand your pains and growth points – is for free.