Detox work of poisonous people

If you have someone in your workplace who thinks the only good ideas are their own and makes sarcastic or hostile comments about co-workers, you may have a what two researchers call a "toxic personality" in your midst.

Not to be confused with a bully, a toxic personality can infect a whole team and bring down the company they work for, says Mitch Kusy, an American researcher due in Auckland next month to present a seminar on how to identify and manage toxic people.

Kusy says a toxic person can be hard to pick-up on - not least because they are often protected by what he calls a protector or a buffer person.

"The toxic protector is the person who allows the toxic behaviour to continue, usually because the toxic person is highly productive or has a special expertise," he says. "And a toxic buffer is the person who is well aware of the antics of the toxic individual but shields the team from their antics."

Elizabeth Holloway, who will also speak at the seminar, says it is hard to lay a glove on a toxic person because their behaviour can be difficult to define, so making a formal complaint can appear small minded, petty or unjust.

"Toxic people can wheedle away at their colleagues or the target on an ongoing basis," she says. "And often the people who are the targets can rarely point a finger to exactly what happened in any given instance.

"Toxic people have a predilection toward behaving badly, and when you have people in authority who work in a team, and they are allowed to have temper tantrums, be condescending - and they get away with it - their colleagues often feel silenced." Holloway says companies that have a toxic person on the payroll need to change their behaviour or remove them from the organisation.

Holloway and Kusy, who wrote the book Toxic Workplace! Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power, say one of the most common questions they are asked is how staff should handle a toxic boss.

"One of the strategies we recommend for organisations is called skip-level evaluation," says Kusy. "This is a way to safeguard individuals who have a toxic boss because we say everyone has a right and a responsibility for good leadership.

"Skip-level evaluation means that if a person is not getting the leadership they need - due to a toxic boss - they have a responsibility to go above their boss and talk about problem-solving strategies with the boss' boss.

"It is not about circumventing the boss, it is about helping problem-solve a situation."

Holloway proposes a 360-degree review of the whole team as a way to bring issues out in the open.

"So the whole team takes part, led by independent people who can report back on any issues," she says. "It is a way of highlighting issues and for the team to assess itself.

"With skilled facilitation, it is a way for the entire team to look at their strengths, and look at the problems they may be having. This is a procedure that will help single out a toxic leader."

But where does a dominant and assertive leader end and a toxic personality start?

"You have to look at the impact on the people around them," says Holloway. "If you are a team leader or co-worker, you are going to notice whether a person's ideas are offered freely or forced onto other people with a degree of aggression.

"One of the things we found during our research is that people with their pet project really engaged in team sabotage around any project other than their own."

Kusy says a good barometer is to look at who is leaving an organisation: "One of the things we recommend is that exit interviews be done 100 per cent of the time. And that any trends or themes be reported back to senior management. Often, the data from exit interviews are not reported back up the chain.

"We know from our research that 12 per cent of people quit their job to get away from a toxic person. So, an exit interview is a wonderful way to look at what is going on. To see if a number of people are leaving because of one individual."

Holloway says toxic people can infect other people, and turn an otherwise happy and productive team into a poisoned environment.

"Once you have one person who is toxic, other people start to behave badly because they are in survival mode," she says. "Sometimes they take on complementary behaviours.

"During our research, we interviewed people who said they survived by becoming people they didn't like. A toxic personality spreads like a virus, from one person to the team, then the team starts to fragment."

Kusy says the recession has created the perfect storm - it has caused people who are scared of losing their job to take it on the chin from toxic co-workers and bosses.

"People are worried about their jobs and whenever anxiety increases so do a range of countervailing forces, such as road rage."

So when the recession is over, will people's behaviour become more civil?

"No," says Holloway. "It is pretty unlikely unless measures are taken to counter it. Once you have a culture of nastiness then it isn't automatically just going to revert back to everyone feeling good without some kind of intervention.

Kusy says: "What we have found is that most organisations do not have values integrated into their management process. So that is another reason why it won't get better immediately.

"I favour a situation where there is a 60-40 split when it comes to performance reviews. This means 60 per cent of the reward is based on task work, and 40 per cent on the values work. But in most organisations, it is 90 to 100 per cent based on task work.

"If the values really mean so much within an organisation then they need to put their money where their mouths are."

Holloway says: "If you change the culture by changing the criteria for the performance appraisal to include things such as interpersonal behaviour, then you can start to change some of those unwanted behaviours."

For details of the course at the University of Auckland, see: www.shortcourses.auckland.ac.nz/courses/365/.

THE FIGURES

Of those people who work with a toxic person ...

* 48 per cent will reduce their work effort.
* 47 per cent reduce their time at work.
* 38 per cent produce lower-quality work.
* 68 per cent decrease their performance.
* 78 per cent reduce their commitment to their employer.
* 88 per cent worry about what the toxic person will do next.

Steve Hart is a freelance writer, his website is at www.SteveHart.co.nz