NMCJ - 7: The Toxicity Saga (Part 1)
Lessons from spending over a year in a toxic work environment
Happy Friday everyone!
Hope you’re all geared up for the weekend.
This time around, I’ll go over my experience from having worked in a toxic environment. It was a year long period but A LOT went on during that time so I have loads to share. I have, thus, decided to divide this piece into two parts and will continue the story in the newsletter next week.
This is the story of what I experienced at one of my previous employers. I won’t name them here but, to make it easier to follow, I’ll refer to them as ‘TOXICO’ from here on.
Let’s go…..
It all started with an announcement out of the blue. The Venture Capital (VC) firm that held a significant stake in the company was going to bring in their own management, replacing the existing one. The new management was going to have a ‘reorganisation’ mandate and the idea, overall, was to cut costs.
I had a great relationship with the existing management team and things were going well overall (from my perspective anyway). With the sudden announcement, things gradually started going south. An environment of fear sprang up.
Here is what I learned from that ordeal:
Get your alarm bells ringing the moment you start experiencing poor communication
Soon after the announcement was made, signs of poor communication became a regular occurrence at TOXICO. With the entire management being replaced, the whole process flow structure of the organisation was broken. An entire compendium of tasks and projects existed with no one to take charge or responsibility. In short, the handover was handled in the worst way possible.
With the uncertainty came apprehension. With apprehension, people started getting insecure. A culture of throwing each other under the bus started to take hold. Everyone was wondering who the next person to be shown the door would be. Furthermore, the market overall was shaky. The anxiety around having to find work in an uncertain market added to the sense of fear.
On any given day, I would send out an email to a colleague for help on a certain task that had recently landed on my desk. I would reach out to the person I thought best qualified to help as the reporting lines (post reorg) were completely blurred.
That person would then copy 2-3 others and those copied people would then start copying others subsequently. All of a sudden, a blame game would get triggered and then someone from the senior management would be copied in to handle the situation. 9 times out of 10, this ‘senior’ person would end up berating whoever started the chain, hardly ever acknowledging the lack of proper guidelines.
When such chaos becomes a regular part of your work-life, it’s important to take a step back and figure out your next steps. I still hoped things would get better and they might have if appropriate steps had been taken but I should have already started devising a plan to jump ship as an insurance policy.
Multiple changes in reporting lines are hardly ever a good sign
Over the span of a year, my reporting line changed four times. Essentially, within 12 months, I had reported to 4 different people. This a tell-tale sign of a confused management team and, well, if they aren’t willing to offer stability regarding who you report to, that essentially means they don’t consider your work significant.
Furthermore, there was no proper explanation given around why the reporting lines were repeatedly being shifted. While one of my Line Managers was asked to leave, another was just asked to change departments and the third one had barely just joined the company. There was no explanation offered and there was no effort made to check-in on me or my colleagues around how we were doing. The confusion caused often left more room for blame games to get triggered.
A break in reporting lines essentially means a break in how an organisation functions and, trickling down, it meant a break in the how and the what of whatever it was that I was working on. The fear of being berated for raising my hand and asking questions was also running at the back of my mind as I had sat through some colleagues being dressed down for doing just that. Shifting reporting lines is a major red flag that we all should take note of.
Keep an eye on how the company is doing
Within a month or two of TOXICO’s new management taking over, there was a noticeable negative trend in how the company was performing. I had the benefit of being able to track business activity, given I had a BizOps role. I noticed, for instance, that new sales were declining and that the company was increasingly relying on renewals of existing client arrangements. This was one reflection of the constant reshuffling within the ranks but also of poor communication which trickled through to the client, pissing them off.
I also noticed a strange trend in company-wide KPI (Key Performance Indicator) briefings where, month-to-month, you would see certain KPIs being tracked and then taken completely off-the-grid. That gave rise to even more suspicions.
A spiral took hold. Poor management gave rise to toxicity and that, in turn, dented performance. The experience ingrained in me the sense to think beyond the ‘fluff’ and never to overlook KPIs. KPIs are the most obvious reflection of things either already at rock bottom or about to go south.
Notice how the management treats your colleagues - even if you’re not in the firing line
At TOXICO, a wild-west kind of a situation set in. I already have mentioned how a blame-game culture took hold but a hierarchical dressing down culture also developed. There were some shocking incidents that took place. I remember one live meeting, for instance, in which one of my colleagues was yelled at with ‘I DONT WANT TO HEAR EXCUSES! EITHER GET IT DONE OR LEAVE’ and shown the door when he rightfully tried to explain how a client delivery had failed because of an issue he had raised earlier.
There were a number of times when problematic language, including racial slurs came up. Such stuff usually happened while the person targeted wasn’t there but I was privy to such comments being made and that made me feel disgusted. I remember imagining the same people making similar comments about me behind my back.
TOXICO’s management went all guns blazing for overworking everyone to a limit for some reason. I remember a US based (guy) colleague who came back to work within a few days of having a child and was loaded up with projects. With many of his colleagues being either already at full capacity or fired, most of the work fell on his shoulders. There was no concern for his evenings, weekends or, well, any time that he could possibly spend with his newborn. He was often attending calls holding his weeks old baby.
I never fell into the firing line like that but I was yelled at on a few occasions. I kept on feeling apprehensive pretty much every other day about when the moment for me being made a spectacle out of would occur. The thought of when my moment of being dressed down would occur was torturous and to anyone and everyone reading this, if you start feeling like that at your work place, recognise it’s not normal and you need to take steps to get out!
Micromanagement is a key red flag
Generally, micromanagers avoid giving decision-making power to their employees and are typically overly obsessed with information-gathering. Fundamentally, micromanagement signifies a lack of trust in employees and it effectively leaves no room for creativity.
At TOXICO this was pretty much the order of the day. I’ve already explained how the senior management ultimately had to be cced on pretty much every email you could think of. Similar practices became the norm and led to us, as employees, getting frustrated, increasing our anxiety levels and damaging any form of trust that we had left in the leadership.
We were discouraged from any kind of independent initiatives (or decision-making) overall. For my part, my confidence was shattered as everything I did seemed to be put under a laser focus and “corrected.” It gave rise to team-wide (if not company-wide) resentment and made us all feel dependent on further micromanagement to do our jobs properly.
If micromanagement becomes the norm at your workplace, take note of it and either raise it with your management (if it feels safe to do so) or recognise that it’s a sign of a lack of fundamental trust. For my part, I had lost all hope in the company turning a corner already at this point and realised that I needed an exit strategy.
Microaggressions are an even more serious one
I guess we’ve all (in some way, shape or form) experienced situations, at work or otherwise, when someone says or does something that feels offensive to a particular aspect of our identity. Such instances are usually referred to microaggressions.
At TOXICO, I began to experience such instances on a regular basis and the most shocking part was that the leadership often co-opted such behaviour. During one meeting, for instance, a senior C-Suite member joked about how another colleague isn’t really a true member of certain religious community because of his eating habits.
On another occasion, we had a Monday meeting and everyone was going over how their weekends had been. My direct Line Manager seemed to be making a big deal out of how he had hung out with his ‘gay’ friends on Saturday. His friends’ orientation had no bearing on anything he said before or after. He just wanted to flag it somehow.
It’s alarming when such behaviour goes unquestioned because then it becomes part of how a company runs. As a side-note, here is a great article for anyone interested in reading more about microaggressions and how one should deal with them.
As pointed out earlier, I’m dividing this piece into two parts so watch this space next week. Subscribe to receive the next part, as well as a lot more that I have planned, in your mailbox.
TO BE CONTINUED…….
Related/recommended content from fellow Substackers:
Great read and soo well expressed, once again !!! Its so hard to gain confidence again once one is subjected to constant microaggression and micromanagement. It actually becomes even more toxic and effects one more, when the management wants the employees to express agency and take initiative however, also wants to keep the elements of microaggression and micromanagement active. Almost feels like a trap is set for you and one really needs to think hard before saying or doing anything. Thank you for mentioning the red flags... eagerly waiting for Part 2.
A really interesting read and a very clear piece on workplace bullying and toxicity- and how cost cutting can be so counterproductive!