MISBEHAVIOR CAN BE AVOIDED

Manage high-risk employees and eliminate problems before they arise

“Pull out the thorn that is hurting your foot. If it’s hurting you, take it out right now. Don’t let it inflame, and be careful that no piece of it remains inside you. In other words, insist on continuing like this, and there will come a time when you can no longer take a single step forward in your life.” (Marcello de Souza)

I have probably written about ten articles on toxic and abusive relationships. This topic, no matter how explored, always returns to the discussion. Not surprisingly, this week I started a project with a new client who is suffering from the harmful effects of a culture contaminated by toxic people. Therefore, taking advantage of this case, today I want to present a perspective that I hope will help employees and leaders who have been dealing with toxic individuals and environments.

It is worth noting that since the traditional management schools, at the turn of the 20th century, there is no shortage of examples of large companies, governments, politicians, and businessmen and their various criticisms of toxic management. Just to refresh your memory, recent scandals of toxic leadership include figures like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, Jeff Bezos, among many others. Many managers who were once admired and even authors of bestsellers on leadership have been in the spotlight in various news stories for being toxic. Whether in the private or public sector, leaders worldwide in various fields have served as subjects for the study of leadership, organizational culture, and human behavior, mainly to provide examples of what not to do as a manager and leader. Not convinced? Just do a brief internet search, and you will quickly find examples of famous individuals who seem to genuinely enjoy contaminating the work environment with their toxicity.

The fact is that any toxic leadership is related to toxic relationships and can happen anywhere and with anyone. Whether between couples, at work, in the family, among colleagues; it happens in many ways – verbally or non-verbally, physically or mentally – and results in making the other person feel diminished, not good enough. A toxic person has a denialist profile, tends to complain about everything and everyone. They find problems where they shouldn’t; judge, criticize, complain, get jealous, have possessive ideas, acting as true emotional vampires, but they rarely realize their actions. Bringing others down. A toxic person harms self-esteem, self-compassion, and the recognition of one’s own values, as well as distorting the image that others have of themselves. In these relationships, the toxic person becomes a hindrance preventing the other person from being themselves, directly affecting personal and professional growth. Their impact extends to both physical and mental health, leading the person to develop psychological disorders such as stress, depression, panic disorder, phobias, anxiety, substance dependence, burnout, among others.

This is why there is a great concern about workplace toxicity. The seriousness of the issue has been incisively presented in the media, signaling the urgent need for cultural redefinition in the workplace and the implementation, by organizations, of continuous analysis of their employees, new processes, and new behavioral training.

Those who are subjected to toxic leadership lose over time their sensitivity to their own principles and become unable to perceive the conditions of the environment, no longer able to measure how this will impact the health of the business, project, or even personal life and social well-being, especially in the medium and long term. This is certain because, like a virus, a toxic leader contaminates not one or two people but a whole team. Over time, toxic leadership establishes itself in the company’s “DNA,” and a toxic environment is culturally formed, becoming an opportunistic and overwhelming system. Infecting everyone. The consequences are silent, intangible, and rarely perceived. Like metastasis. In the end, reality manifests in the worst condition it could be, almost impossible to cure. Those inside it can hardly see how contaminated they are. Some because they identify with it, others because they allow it (for numerous personal reasons), and there are also those who do not perceive and adapt to it like a contagion. In all cases, at some point, the devastating impact on physical and mental health will occur.

It is true that leaders and managers cannot afford the costs of maintaining the status quo when the environment and the company’s culture are already contaminated. But before any action, they need to understand the problem, and that is not as easy as it seems.

Toxic leadership is always followed by a form of dysfunctional behavior in the workplace that often begins with small groups, sometimes with leadership itself, and other times it becomes part of the organizational culture—it is a chronic phenomenon with a long history. The great difficulty of a toxic environment comes from the moral blindness it creates in people who are already part of the environment.

Research indicates that more than 70% of professionals have experienced toxic workplaces, and in many cases, these individuals simply left the job without confronting leadership. One reason is that talking about a toxic environment is rarely understood, and other times, it is difficult because of the leadership itself. To further complicate the issue, toxic leaders do not accept this condition and, to avoid being questioned, tend to promote fear and insecurity among their subordinates.

In search of insights to assist with my work with some clients, I identified three stages adopted by some companies that knew how to deal with the toxic environment, preventing them from contaminating the company’s culture. I believe this can help you as a leader to build ideas to adapt it to something similar and effectively prevent toxicity in the workplace. It is worth noting that this proposal to help companies is based largely on social and behavioral psychology. And the key to my model is the focus on employees who already exhibit toxic behavior.

It is also worth noting that most organizations have relatively few of them. Based on my research and my previous work, I estimate that 1% to 3% of employees within organizations have the potential to deviate from behavioral norms, propagate their toxicity, and become dysfunctional or dangerous. Although it is challenging to monitor this profile in the hiring process, it is possible to identify and deal with them within a certain environmental condition before they pose a threat to others.

Just like everyday problems, the worst cases of toxic people rarely thrive unexpectedly. A chain of events or conditions almost always precedes them. Understanding them is crucial to cut misconduct at its roots. In this model, I address the three stages that generally occur when people with this profile tend to harm the environment:

Stage 1: In this phase, companies present risk factors or conditions favorable to toxic individuals, such as excessive centralization in decision-making, micromanagement of subordinates and teams, low-quality interpersonal communication, leaders and managers acting in an unexemplary manner, low skill with feedback, meritocracy, operating with double standards, along with routine negative attitudes, limiting beliefs, unnecessary disputes, excessive work hours, and unhealthy environments. All of these factors create space for the proliferation of this malaise. Thus, if there is no reaction from leadership to combat these factors, contamination occurs until a toxic organizational culture is established. These conditions do not mean that a toxic organizational culture is inevitable, but they increase the likelihood of problems arising and spreading. As a tip, one of the principles of behavioral psychology is to be aware that employees who act excessively respectfully in environments with more cultural restrictions may deviate from norms when their power and influence are not controlled or monitored. Beware, toxic people are great “actors”!

Stage 2: It is worth remembering that a toxic person’s characteristics include their manipulative ability, in addition to being very friendly, engaging, and seductive. Over time and with space, they gain trust, and then they begin to show their toxicity. When observing low-impact toxic employees (persuasion), using language and behaviors with toxic connotations, it becomes apparent that they have dialogues that are not rude, some are even welcoming and love to hear stories. However, beneath the surface, they are hostile, aiming to humiliate and put people “in their place,” present in their stories or in inappropriate jokes. These are also warning signs of a work environment where more intense toxic contamination may occur.

Stage 3: This is the stage of toxic attack, ranging from physical or verbal aggression, humiliation, disrespect, harassment, among other harmful behaviors, spreading victimization, negativity, and pessimism throughout the team. The longer these individuals provoke chaos in the environment with other professionals, the greater the chances of the team adopting harmful habits such as individualism, gossip, complaints, as well as a pessimistic outlook in the workplace. The mannerisms related to these cases can reach the systemic sphere and drain individual and organizational energy, time, and money. They should not, under any circumstances, be ignored or set aside.

When the behavior of employees reaches this stage, the cost will be extremely high. Companies tend to always lose because they can be held responsible for complaints, lawsuits, as well as high turnover rates, lack of empathy, individuality, inflexible leadership and management, lack of internal and external trust, resistance to change and innovation. In any case, direct costs include turnover, absenteeism, sick leave, low performance, and litigation. Indirect costs include a drop in motivation and morale and problems of dissatisfaction, as well as factors that compromise the quality of working relationships, such as distrust, disrespect, and animosity. Many people pay the price – the toxic environment negatively affects not only people directly but also horizontal and vertical management, c-levels, customers, suppliers, service providers, and other stakeholders.

WHAT TO DO TO PREVENT A TOXIC ENVIRONMENT

Next, I want to propose a set of interventions for each of the three stages. When systematically applied, such measures reduce or eliminate the toxic environment. The best time to intervene is undoubtedly the first stage, where the company’s initiative will have the broadest impact and help eradicate conditions that can result in misconduct:

Primary prevention of a toxic environment: This can be thought of as the fundamental structure of your policy. It is the foundation of all other interventions. It starts with clear action coming from self-management as well as leadership (everyone must be aligned) in all forms of toxicity and explicitly linking them to behavioral metrics as well as monitoring through conversations and feedback. The HR department should systematically track the company for warning signs, such as side conversations, direct or indirect complaints, analysis of the satisfaction level of the environment, turnover, or previous incidents in individual work histories. Primary prevention includes behavioral lectures, behavioral tests, comprehensive behavioral training, and education at all levels of the hierarchy, but especially in the first line of supervision. Middle managers and first-line leaders, when properly trained, can be the most valuable resource for companies to prevent the spread of toxicity. Therefore, they should be taught to create a culture in which all individuals are treated with respect and power is used in moderation. All managers and leaders should observe their subordinates’ interactions with colleagues and identify what may require corrective action.

It is important that everyone in the company, not just decision-makers, be trained to recognize signs and symptoms of behaviors considered deviant. The goal is to be vigilant about behaviors that may indicate that something is not right, as the diagnosis of any disorder can only be made by professionals from behavioral development. Examples of alert behaviors include treating those below with hostility and those above with kindness and flattery for convenience, which is a significant red flag indicating toxicity in the environment. Practicing harassment and bullying and humiliating in public are other behaviors potential victims need to be alert to in order to protect themselves. As for managers and HR partners, it is crucial that they are qualified to administer and interpret behavior assessments, personality tests, and team feedback.

Secondary prevention targets low-intensity forms of toxicity that should be suppressed before any serious harm is done: Secondary prevention focuses on identifying and eliminating disrespect, harassment, and bullying, for example. These negative behaviors often cause higher rates of absenteeism, lateness, accidents, and security breaches, so companies should monitor their data in this regard, along with leaders’ reports on colleagues and employees, for signs that people are not being treated respectfully. In an ideal world, everyone associated with a company—employees, leaders, service providers, and even customers and witnesses—would feel comfortable reporting any unacceptable behavior they observed. The company’s responsibility is to provide an environment that makes them feel this way. An important step is creating at least three secure reporting channels: one in HR, one in the legal department, and one in the employee well-being area. Trained professionals will be needed to help diagnose, assess, and triage more serious cases. Providing direct feedback to transgressors is crucial. They need to be reprimanded for deviating from the company’s code of conduct but also have the opportunity to apologize for their behavior and adjust. Individual training in interpersonal communication, how to respect others, and how to clearly communicate personal boundaries often corrects low-intensity cases. I also suggest intervention training for those suffering from toxicity; this can help prevent its spread, as proven by a research review I conducted. Company-wide behavioral training can also be a new opportunity to combat a toxic environment.

Tertiary intervention is necessary when primary and secondary prevention fail, and an incident of high-intensity toxicity occurs: Companies must be prepared for the worst and act immediately to minimize any negative impact or incurred damage, treating all involved parties fairly. We recommend a four-step approach:
Containment: Contain the toxic individual involved in the attack on the environment or colleague.
Care: Provide assistance to the targets and those who have been exposed to it, such as witnesses or colleagues close to the target.
Forgiveness: This does not mean absolving the transgressor or forgetting what happened. The idea is to forgive people for allowing the toxic occurrence. Forgiveness is essential for recovery after workplace harm or damage.
Resilience: The organization must recover from the evils of this person’s behavioral events.

It is worth remembering, as it is so common in Brazil, that management models based on fear and control and organizational cultures that encourage competition and reward for good results regardless of the methods used can contribute to the development and manifestation of characteristics of this profile, which typically have some degree of toxicity. Revisiting the organization’s values and making it clear to everyone what is—and what is not—acceptable, as well as the punishment for breaking the rules, becomes essential to avoid consolidating the mentality that the world belongs to the strong and the ends justify the means. The toxic employee destroys lives and leaves a long legacy of suffering. And a toxic workplace is an occupational health problem that does not arise in isolation. It generally results from cumulative events and, therefore, is predictable and can be prevented. The toxic employee in the workplace is not accidental and, with adequate surveillance and prevention mechanisms, can be completely eliminated.

I would like to leave here some complementary articles that address this topic:

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THANK YOU FOR READING AND SEEING MARCELLO DE SOUZA IN ANOTHER EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATION ABOUT HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Hello, I’m Marcello de Souza! I started my career in 1997 as a leader and manager in a large company in the IT and Telecommunications market. Since then, I have participated in important projects of structuring, implementation, and optimization of telecommunications networks in Brazil. Restless and passionate about behavioral and social psychology. In 2008, I decided to delve into the universe of the human mind.

Since then, I have become a professional passionate about deciphering the secrets of human behavior and catalyzing positive changes in individuals and organizations. Doctor in Social Psychology, with over 25 years of experience in Cognitive Behavioral and Human Organizational Development. With a wide-ranging career, I highlight my role as:

– Master Senior Coach and Trainer: Guiding my clients in the pursuit of goals and personal and professional development, achieving extraordinary results.

– Chief Happiness Officer (CHO): Fostering an organizational culture of happiness and well-being, boosting productivity and employee engagement.

– Expert in Language and Behavioral Development: Enhancing communication and self-awareness skills, empowering individuals to face challenges with resilience.

– Cognitive Behavioral Therapist: Using cutting-edge cognitive-behavioral therapy to help overcome obstacles and achieve a balanced mind.

– Speaker, Professor, Writer, and Researcher: Sharing valuable knowledge and ideas in events, training, and publications to inspire positive changes.

– Consultant and Mentor: Leveraging my experience in leadership and project management to identify growth opportunities and propose personalized strategies.

My solid academic background includes four postgraduates and a doctorate in Social Psychology, along with international certifications in Management, Leadership, and Cognitive Behavioral Development. My contributions in the field are widely recognized in hundreds of classes, training sessions, conferences, and published articles.

Co-author of the book “The Secret of Coaching” and author of “The Map Is Not the Territory, the Territory Is You” and “The Diet Society” (the first of a trilogy on human behavior in contemporaneity – 05/2024).

Allow me to be your companion on this journey of self-discovery and success. Together, we will unravel a universe of behavioral possibilities and achieve extraordinary results.

By the way, I invite you to join my network. As a lover of behavioral psychology, social psychology, and neuroscience, I have created my YouTube channel to share my passion for cognitive behavioral development with more people.

Please note that all data and content in this article or video are exclusive, written, and reviewed by Marcello de Souza based on proven philosophical concepts and scientific studies to ensure that the best possible content reaches you.

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