How Do You Mitigate Toxic Situations?

How Do You Effectively Mitigate Toxic People, Situations, and Workplace Environments?!

The answer is good job relations…!

A toxic workplace is a workplace that is marked by significant drama and infighting. A place where personal battles often harm an organization’s performance and effectiveness. Toxic workplaces are often the result of toxic employees who are motivated by personal reasons and use unethical, mean-spirited and sometimes illegal means to manipulate and annoy those around them; and whose motives are to maintain or increase their visibility, power or status within the organization. Or their motivation is to divert attention away from their own performance shortfalls and misdeeds. !

Toxic employees do not recognize a loyalty to the organization for which they work or their co-workers in terms of ethics or professional conduct toward others. Toxic employees establish relationships with co-workers they see as unaligned with the organization and vulnerable to influence. Through these relationships they build coalitions of people who are more loyal and respectful to them than the organization itself. The toxic employee then manipulates these people to create disruptive situations which require attention and resources.!

A good first-line leader knows the toxic person in their organization. The first-line leader knows how the toxic person functions, the situations they can create, and their impact on the organization’s performance and productivity. But, most important, a good first-line leader understands that the toxic person’s power and influence comes from their relationships with their co-workers. Thus, a good first-line leader is aware that everyday in the workplace they are in a constant struggle with the toxic person for the worker’s trust, respect, cooperation, and loyalty. Every interaction with an employee is important because it is an opportunity for the first-line leader to develop either a productive or counter-productive relationship with the employee. Through Job Relations first-line leaders learn how to make these interactions productive every time and, as a result, mitigate the influence of the toxic employee.

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