Am I Becoming A Toxic Boss
By John Reily Baluyot
I’ve always believed that people are inherently good. That in the general scheme of things, as leaders, we tend to lean towards the positive in influencing others towards a certain goal. I remember one of my friends, Coach Lippy, telling me, “John, wala naman atang tao na pagkagising ng umaga, ang unang ma-iisip ay maghasik ng lagim” (Translation: John, I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning with the intent of spreading doom).
So why then are there toxic bosses?
Have you ever found yourself in a constant irritable state because of unlimited deadlines and constant troubleshooting? Have you been feeling that space when you just feel tired, sleepless and binging because of too much stress and demands of work that sometimes a single mistake of a staff can quickly set you off? Have you, at times, felt that guilt of not reaching out to your team because you have the impression that they may be too intimidated by you? A variation of these conditions point to what researchers call the Sacrifice Syndrome. This is a mental, emotional and physical state of constant stress resulting from heavy responsibilities and pressure to get results (Mckee, 2005). While we aspire to generally become positive leaders, we also have our limits in taking in demands and pressures and when we reach that point too many times, it becomes harder to get out from that dissonant state. When leaders collectively fall in this trap, organizational culture tends to be more susceptible to toxic cultures.
Why is knowing more about toxic bosses important?
Apart from the obvious reason that no one wants to be branded as one, toxic bosses create toxic cultures. Here are some of the effects of toxic cultures in organizations:
Toxic cultures are 10.4x more likely to contribute to employees quitting
Increased level of burnout, depression, and anxiety (Rasool et al., 2021)
Toxic workplaces also create low employee engagement, fear-based cultures, and absurdly high turnover and absenteeism costs
So are you becoming a toxic boss?
Self regulation is key in ensuring that we do not fall into that perpetual spiral of becoming a toxic leader. And the first step in that process is self awareness. Here are some questions that you could ask yourself:
1.Do you have the capability to plan strategically?
Most leaders suffer from a circuitous pattern of troubleshooting work because they do not have proper capability to strategically plan for their team’s direction. Being able to forecast external changes that could affect the team in the next months and years, being able to envision a engaging long term goal, and crafting strategies with sound basis-- these are skills that have helped most positive managers. Try to imagine the leaders in your workplace. Aren’t the most admirable and respected managers the ones with the best, well-executed plans?
2. Do you delegate and cascade tasks effectively and positively?
I believe it was Ken Blanchard who once claimed that the most effective leaders are those who are able to adapt their influence based on the context and situation. These are the leaders who know how to read context, size up their subordinates well and choose between directing, delegating, coaching and supporting in the right moments. Knowing the difference across these forms of leadership cascades make us more effective in producing results because resistance to our influence would be significantly less as we become more respectful of the challenges and situations. Can you think of a leader in your organization who is like this? Can you then imagine how they make you feel?
3. Do you inspire growth and positive change within the team?
Ever wondered why 70% of Fortune 500 companies have a Mentoring program? It’s because leaders who inspire growth have more tendency to create more sustainable positively deviant outcomes (Beheshti, 2021). A study done with Sun Microsystems have shown that both mentors and mentees in their program have five times more likelihood to progress in their careers. Some evidence even suggests that 91% of workers who have good relationships with their mentors are satisfied with their jobs (University of Massachusetts Global). Have you ever had a mentor who you look up to a lot? Or better yet, do you have mentees who are very vocal about having you in their lives? That’s how the thirst of constant aspiration and inspiration for self improvement feels like. The feeling and motivation also help temper toxicity in ourselves!
4. Do you know how to monitor performance while recognizing and rewarding appropriately?
I still can’t forget Peter Drucker’s words, “If you can’t measure it, you cannot improve it”. The old school definition of management mostly alludes to that process of using company resources to create order and consistency in results. New age management, talks about a more positively deviant approach. That management now is more about an upward trajectory of consistent performance. This is why our organizational targets year on year will always have a %-increase from previous year. This is mostly an after effect of a more competitive landscape that everyone has to fight in in order to survive. So if you know how to plan, organize and influence, could you then measure results and recognize good performance when needed? Dopamine-powered generations are not myths. The digital age has transformed the human psyche to require acknowledgement of performance in closer intervals in the same way that we wait for likes, reacts and comments from our social posts everyday. Purpose and meaning are not just buzz words anymore. They are workplace realities. And without the capability to measure and recognize good performance, it’s almost as bad as not appreciating it. When was the last time you were acknowledged to have done a good job, in front of your peers, with strong data and illustration of what you exactly did? For some of us, that means the world. Can you imagine adding more into that vibe in the workplace? Pretty amazing thought right?
If you noticed, a lot of these questions are capabilities-inclined. The less yes’s we have for these questions, the higher our chances of turning into a toxic boss. That is because the amount of toxic stress we feel generally comes from the gap between our capabilities and what is expected of us. As managers, expectations on us are, more often than not, very ambitious. Less often, we have little control over how those are made. What we have more control over is our capabilities. As we increase the right ones, that closes the gap with what is expected of us, which makes stress more manageable -- to a certain extent, even engaging and fulfilling. If we play the stress mix well, we then have a better chance to become transformative positive leaders than the toxic bosses that we dread dealing with at work
Positive Workplaces is offering a course on Positive Management this March 2022 where John Baluyot is one of the main facilitators. Learn about leadership, management, positive cultures, and enroll in the course HERE.
About the author: John Baluyot is an alumnus of Monash University, Australia with a degree in Master of Leadership specializing in Organizational Learning. He also finished his MBA from De La Salle University, Manila and his Behavioral Science bachelor’s from University of Santo Tomas, Manila. He has almost two decades of experience in strategic management and human resources from multinational and local companies. He was also the 2020 President of the Philippine Society for Talent Development (previously known as Philippine Society for Training and Development).
REFERENCES:
Beheshti, N. (2022, February 9). Improve workplace culture with a strong mentoring program. Forbes. Retrieved February 23, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2019/01/23/improve-workplace-culture-with-a-strong-mentoring-program/?sh=697046e576b5
Boyatzis, R. E., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant leadership: Renewing yourself and connecting with others through mindfulness, hope, and compassion. Harvard Business Press.
Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing human resources.
Rasool, S. F., Wang, M., Tang, M., Saeed, A., & Iqbal, J. (2021). How toxic workplace environment effects the employee engagement: the mediating role of organizational support and employee wellbeing. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(5), 2294.
Robinson, B. (2022, February 9). Toxic workplace culture 10 times more likely to drive employees away, study shows. Forbes. Retrieved February 23, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/03/toxic-workplace-culture-10-times-more-likely-to-drive-employees-away-study-shows/?sh=407760241386
