Monthly Archives: April 2016

What do you do when go to the situation you’re facing overwhelms the resources you have to deal with it? First, you decide not to feel bad about yourself. All of us, at one point or another, have found ourselves in the middle of a mess. Sometimes we’ve made our own mistakes or poor choices. Other times we encounter dysfunctional people who specialize in making messes for others.  Regardless of whose fault it was, what matters is that there is a way out of the mess for you. You deserve to live a happy, healthy life. Free from abuse, oppression, or bondages that limit your future. God created you to serve a special purpose that only you can fulfill. For Him. For the rest of us. That sacred opportunity and duty that you have is priceless. Don’t let anyone rob you of it. Realizing that you’re worth the work it takes to turn your life around is the key to your success.

The next vitally important step is to fully face the reality of the situation. Square your shoulders, lift up your head, and look your situation right in the eye. Stare it down if you have to. Don’t flinch or cower. You’ve got what it takes to deal with the truth. Remember that even if something was your fault, you’ve decided to make a change and move forward now. That’s an honorable choice.

Next, figure out where you want to go. What have you learned from the situation? How can you improve? Even if you’re the one who made poor choices, how can you bring good out of the situation, for yourself or others? It’s never too late to do the next right thing.

Finally, find a reason to hope. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Most of us can recognize when we’re in a mess and come up with a plan to move beyond it. Hope is the vitally important bridge between where we are and what comes next. Maybe the odds are stacked against you, or you face a formidable foe. Acknowledge that, then find a reason to hope anyway. Hope gives you strength for the journey. Hope gives you the ability to make better decisions. Hope gives you courage. Be strong. Be smart. Be brave. You got this.

Today we are continuing our series on toxic workplaces. We can’t possibly solve something we don’t understand. Bad leaders create a lot of confusion about what is really going on in an organization. That dynamic is sometimes very deliberate. Some leaders operate in the shadows, making shady deals, telling lies, and pitting people against each other. If a leader can cause chaos among the troops, it diverts attention from anyone realizing that the root of the problem is the leader. This kind of work environment is exhausting and exasperating to deal with. Healthy people in these environments, who see the truth and speak up against the drama, often experience immense pressure to conform to the leader’s warped spin on reality. They are made to feel abnormal for being healthy. This has a corrosive effect on the individual, the team, the organization, and the stakeholders. Stepping back from the dynamics is essential to recognize where the problems are actually coming from. Everyone has experience of working in a chaotic office at some point in their professional life. It’s the sort of place where they refuse to get with the times and fail to use Filecenter document management software due to their archaic views on how an office should be run.

There are three sources of trouble at work: co-workers, leaders, or the system. In the interest of our own growth and maturity, it helps to take a look at whether or not we are playing any kind of contributing role to the problems, but for now we’re going to talk about when the problem is someone else. The popular theory that both individuals in a conflict are always at fault is false. Sometimes issues really are the handiwork of just one person, and those around them are victims of either circumstance or opportunity. While some offices and workplaces may not suffer from the actions of certain individuals, the office itself may be outdated and not conducive to productivity. A makeover of sorts, including new office monster furniture and supplies, may be in order to revitalize an office and make it practical and well-equipped for the modern age.

Co-workers. Our co-workers are a huge part of our lives. We spend significant time with them and their impact on us is inescapable. Our worst experiences are those in which our co-workers come to work unable or unwilling to do their part to create a healthy, productive work environment, and rob the rest of us from having that critically important foundation for a good work life. Dysfunctional people will cause disruption in the work environment to one degree or another.

Leaders. Impaired leaders destroy people, environments, and missions. Impaired leaders force their people to carry at least part of the leader’s burdens. This derails the missions and generates immense resentment among healthy people who are stuck with extra duties as well as having to tend to the emotional wreckage left in the impaired leader’s wake. read more at Leadership also magnifies flaws. Leaders have to be mature enough to become their best selves and bring their A game to the workplace everyday.

The system. Sometimes the problem is not difficult co-workers or leaders, but a system that is inherently predisposed to allow problems to arise and flourish. Examples include systems that greatly constrain or prohibit consequences for bad behavior, good old boys (or girls) clubs, a hierarchy that diffuses accountability to the point of irrelevance, or control that lies outside the organization. If the organization utilizes misconduct of any kind as a justified means to an end, that is a systemic toxic culture, bigger than just the everyday immediate environment you work in. Similarly, if the leadership is focused on hoarding power and resources for their personal benefit, rather than a shared vision to fulfill the mission of the organization, that is also a systemic toxic cultures. Those are only a couple of examples.

Next week we’ll talk about the #1 question to answer when you are faced with a bad work situation.

Today we are going to begin a series of blogs that will serve as an online workshop you can benefit from in the comfort of your own home. We will start with written blogs and add video blogs as we go along. I also offer a workbook that expands on the mini-teachings the blogs will provide. https://www.amazon.com/Taming-Toxic-Workplace-Workbook-Holland/dp/1530498961/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1474201170&sr=8-2&keywords=taming+the+toxic+workplace

I created this material to help employees learn how to deal effectively with the impact bad workplaces are having on their lives. My goal is to give you new strategies for dealing with whatever nonsense you are facing at work, and help you get your life back. Whether it be new ideas for better Hr Compliance implementation across the business, or ways to call out inappropriate behavior in the workplace that may be harder to spot than the usual suspects. Regardless of what position you hold in your organization, if you have someone above you, next to you, or under you who is robbing you of safety and health, what you’ll learn can make a vital and perhaps even life-saving difference.

Everyone deserves a safe, healthy, productive work environment. Yet too many of today’s organizations aren’t even thinking about safety or health as an organizational objective. Too many of today’s leaders are untrained, dysfunctional, or otherwise compromised. Chaotic workplaces where there is no clear authority structure can lead to dangerous consequences. Some people even experience accidents in the workplace because of these sorts of environments. You might want to look for some injury law attorneys if you’ve had an accident at work that wasn’t your fault. Some employee’s personal issues can invade the workplace and wreak havoc, they might not realize themselves leaving boxes or potential trip hazards out for people to injure themselves on. Serious problems arise from compromised co-workers too. It creates a cycle of destruction in which one person’s dysfunction feeds the needs of another’s dysfunction until the mission is a distant memory and the bottom line lies in tattered ruins. With it comes the very real carnage of people’s shattered self-worth, family life, careers, and dreams. Not only that, but it can lead to an increasing array of accidents and injuries, usually needing the intervention of a legal team such as lamber goodnow to help put right, or at least on the path to mending. When a workplace reaches this state it is an entirely unacceptable state of affairs, and I am on a mission to change it. We must transform our workplaces from toxic cesspools of despair to places of victory. We all must be willing to change. While some offices and workplaces may not be dangerous, they may still be outdated and not conducive to productivity. A makeover of sorts, including new office monster furniture and supplies, may be in order to revitalize an office and make it practical and well-equipped for the modern age.

Weak leaders allow problems ranging from aggravating to dangerous, to run unchecked. They abdicate responsibility, refuse to listen, live in denial, and cover up misconduct. They leave people to fend for themselves, without the ability or authority to resolve problems. They send their best employees to workshops about how to deal with difficult people, rather than demanding accountability from the difficult people themselves. These kinds of leaders go to hire guest speakers to conduct what amounts to pep rallies to distract people from the reality of the problems they face. They will do team building activities to give the appearance of caring. They coerce employees into pretending with them that nothing is wrong. All of it is designed to restore the leader’s emotional comfort. It’s never about the team. It’s always about the leader. Some leaders are lazy and too emotionally stunted in their own growth to deal with the tough stuff. They will manipulate people and engineer situations for their own advantage, at the expense of the team. Those types of leaders do massive damage to their employee’s health and lives. Those profoundly negative impacts rarely make the news, but they fundamentally alter the course of people’s futures.

This series of blogs is going to teach you how to systematically work through a comprehensive assessment of the problems and their impact on you, and then shift into strategies for solving those problems and mitigating the damage. Even if you think your situation is so unique or so toxic that no one could possibly understand and nothing can help, hang in there. There is hope.

As we began discussing last week, addiction is a major source of trouble that invades every aspect of a person’s life. The individual may be addicted to a substance or activity. Or they may be involved in other people’s addictions. Or they may have grown up in a family that had an addict in it. Active addiction issues encroach on the work environment. The addict may be using their substance or engaging in their activity on the premises, at lunch, or on company time. Or they may keep the active use out of the workplace, but the effects still cause significant problems. The longer this addiction problem goes on for, the higher the chance of them having a tolerance to it. There will be many healthcare professionals in your area who will be able to help with substance use problems should you want to get your life back on track. But for some people, their addiction can carry over into their workplace. Signs can include poor attendance, lack of productivity, being preoccupied to the point of distraction, mood swings based on getting their fix, hostile interactions with others, lying, cheating, stealing, secretive behavior, and punishment for those who do not help cover the addict’s tracks.

In much the same way, people who grew up in an addicted family who have never dealt with those issues, also show classic behavioral traits that disrupt the work environment. This also can create a toxic undercurrent that erodes trust, productivity, and mission accomplishment. It also does a lot of damage to healthy people, in much the same way that a daily dose of poison would hurt a healthy person. There are some great lists online about the behaviors that are commonly seen in adult children of addicted families. We don’t have time to go into them in detail today, but in general, it comes down to a person living by rigid rules and roles, with severe consequences for anyone who steps outside that restricted world. The goal with every trait, rule, and role is to protect the addict from the consequences of his/her own behavior. The addict shoves off their responsibility to the rest of the family, and rather than taking responsibility for themselves, they force their family to take responsibility for them. It is crazy-making for people who aren’t actually responsible for something, to be required to take responsibility. There is a lot of hysteria about this. If someone doesn’t play their part, the addicted family acts as if it is a matter of life or death, when in reality if someone knows of a close one that is suffering from addiction, they should make it a priority to get in touch with rehabilitation services perhaps coupled with some form of treatment through a facility you can find if you to click here, as an example. However, if the family has been dealing with the addicted relative for some time with no signs of remedy, they will stop at nothing to make a healthy person look like a sick person. There is enormous desperation to hide the truth of their downfalls.

The addicted family creates a highly distorted world for everyone in it. It’s not always clear to the people inside that system, what is real and what is distorted. When the children of these families grow up and enter the work force, if they have never dealt with these issues they will end up functioning in their teams the way they functioned in their family. Leaders will end up creating workplaces that function like their addicted family. They will select a narrative for themselves, perhaps that they need to be taken care of (the this website victim). This translates to a mandate that their employees keep secrets for them so they don’t have to face any consequences for their behavior. If there is a staff member who grew up in an addicted family and never dealt with their issues either, they may leap to the defense of the leader at any cost (the rescuer). Healthy employees who have dealt with their issues, make good choices, and don’t buy into the sick rules or roles they are assigned are branded the enemy (the villain). What happens in these situations is that a battle develops between the healthy people wanting to do their jobs and being focused on the mission, and the unhealthy people wanting to stage a drama each day to fulfill unmet emotional needs within themselves. The “victims” send out distress signals to the “rescuers” and together they fight to vanquish the “villains.” They replicate in the work environment the same destruction that took place in their living room growing up.

Next week we will talk about the next category of troubled co-workers / leaders. Until then, be well, be safe, and stay strong!