Yearly Archives: 2016

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!

As my business model has evolved into a part-time online ministry, a clear vision and cherished set of values has emerged. Since you’re following me, it’s only fair you know what my ministry is all about. I’m bold enough to claim the promises of God and set my sights on making a significant contribution to the world. We all have a ripple impact and I want mine to be as positive as possible. The workplace is my mission field and for the first time in my life, I don’t just feel appointed, I feel anointed for this honored task.

My vision is nothing less than:

• Saving lives
• Restoring health
• Healing marriages
• Preventing child and animal abuse
• Bringing people back to God
• Freeing people from the oppression of bad workplaces
• Helping people break strongholds and bondages in their life
• Equipping people to fulfill their purpose, find inner peace, and become an asset to their families and communities

My values are:

• Relentless passion to connect people with a positive message
• Providing meaningful opportunities for engagement
• Unwavering respect
• Impeccable integrity
• Spirit-led decision making
• First-class leadership
• Unceasing maturity
• Deep love of people and compassion for their individual stories
• Multi-dimensional health and wholeness
• Being an awesome steward of the trust people place in me
• Giving back to the community

I think we’re off to a great start!

We need to make an important distinction between acute, temporary issues and dysfunctional ways of dealing with life. Everyone has a stress threshold. We all have a point at which the situation we are facing exceeds our resources for coping with it. Someone facing difficult circumstances is not defined as a troubled individual. That is a stressed individual. People who are temporarily overwhelmed are typically not toxic. People with chronically entrenched maladaptive ways of navigating the world are almost always toxic. When you are trying to figure out what’s going on with someone, this is an incredibly important distinction to make.

There are many kinds of acute stress. Loss of a loved one, marital struggles, financial problems, health issues, and other unavoidable aspects of being human can weigh any of us down. Take a good look at the history of the individual, especially within the context you share with them. If they have always been respectful and professional, and suddenly they seem easily irritated and difficult to talk to, that’s a sign of an acute stress of some kind. It doesn’t matter if you ever know what the stressor is. What does matter is that you realize that you are dealing with someone who is temporarily overwhelmed. Reach out to them if that makes sense for you and just let them know you care. Then support them while they resolve their situation and return to their normal, dependable behavior. You can offer support in a number of ways, depending on the individual and your relationship with them. They may just need someone to talk to so that they can share their burdens, or they may need advice on things that could help with their stress, such as marijuana (in which case, you could show them https://www.canadacannabisdispensary.co/product-category/thc-e-juice/). Some people may not want your help at all, but knowing you care could be enough.

There is one category of troubled individual that is also not necessarily toxic. People struggling with mental health challenges may be otherwise well adjusted individuals. What’s important to identify is whether or not the person is having issues in just one area, or if their problematic behavior is pervasive across environments. The difference looks like this. Someone may have trouble communicating in situations at work that have an element of pressure to them. For example, a person may become uncharacteristically defensive if they are unexpectedly criticized or corrected in a meeting full of other people. In that situation, the person has been triggered to act in ways that don’t represent their norm. That behavior cannot be considered toxic. It is explainable, is causing an issue in just that one area, and can be handled effectively through coaching/mentoring.

Isolated situations in just one area are in sharp contrast to someone who is having the same problem in every aspect of their life. Take the scenario of the work meeting. The toxic person isn’t triggered to react unusually, they disrupt the meeting with the same defensiveness and aggression they normally display at work, at home, and out in the community. Their behavior is dysfunctional no matter who they are with or what setting they are in. Moderating and correcting their behavior requires professional treatment. Getting help requires self-awareness, which this type of individual often lacks. They think the problem is everyone else, and fail to see that they have the same type of issues everywhere they go.

Toxic people have behavior that is distinctly abnormal on an ongoing basis. Despite all the other people or outside circumstances they blame, their toxicity can be traced to what is wrong within them. These types of people are notorious for what is called projection. That means they literally pretend that the other person is doing the behavior that’s wrong, not them. This is a highly destructive mind game they deliberately play to cause damage to their targets. In the worst cases, the perpetrators act like they are the victims. They manipulate situations and perceptions to evade responsibility. They typically refuse to even acknowledge the reality of the situation. These types of individuals are not just dysfunctional, they are dangerous.

After you have taken a good look at whether or not the special situations of acute stress and/or mental health problems might be in play, there are four other categories of trouble that are invariably going to cause toxicity in the work environment. In these categories, the problem is also pervasive across environments and it doesn’t just disrupt a workplace, it can destroy it. The categories are: addiction, criminal activity, drama stagers, and immaturity. These issues are so important that we are going to take them one at a time in the weeks to come. Until then, be safe, be healthy, and be strong!

For those of you who have not yet read the work of Dr. Alan Godwin, I highly recommend his book “How to Solve Your People Problems” (published 2011, dralangodwin.com). Dr. Godwin teaches us skills for dealing with people who truly do have a bad intention towards others, or who are simply so wrapped up in themselves they do not care what the impact of their behavior is. His work goes way beyond dealing with difficult people, and is an invaluable addition to the resources available to help with our toughest situations. You can read Dr. Godwin’s work for the details, but for now I am going to add my contribution to the conversation he so eloquently started.

Drama stagers create particularly crazy making environments. Their behavior differs from people who grew up in addicted families. When adult children learn the telltale signs of how their addicted family impacted them, their life suddenly makes sense in a brand new way. They are generally grateful for the information and strive to overcome the effects of the past. For them, there was always a sense of something being not quite right but never really being able to figure out what it was, or why life wasn’t working for them. It is a relief to realize the problems can be fixed.

Drama stagers however, are well aware of their behavior and they coldly calculate using it to gain an advantage at the expense of those around them. They may have grown up in an addicted family, they may have grown up in a healthy family. They may have an addiction issue, they may not. They may or may not have mental health issues. Whatever their background is, the defining characteristic of these people is that they choose to continue acting in destructive ways because of the benefits it provides them.

Drama stagers can be merciless and have no problem sacrificing other people and what is important to them. These folks have an inflexible narrative about themselves and the world. They will do anything to preserve, protect, and defend that narrative. They constantly scan for threats, challenges, or violations of their narrative. They also assign the rest of us roles to play in their drama. We are almost always unaware of our role, but still get punished when we don’t play our part.

If you have more than one drama stager in the work environment, and their narratives serve one another’s purposes, then you’ll see even bigger and more chaotic scenes play out. In order to keep the drama going and keep everyone in an uproar so the focus is deflected from their own bad behavior, drama stagers attack people not problems. A lot of healthy people make the mistake of thinking that if they just solve whatever the drama stager is screaming about, it will fix things and there will be no more drama. Drama stagers exploit healthy individual’s kindness and other values. Drama stagers don’t want things to be fixed. They want their narrative to be reinforced. Spinning people in circles is the point. Actually fixing things is not. Drama stagers are weapons of mass disruption in the work environment, creating upheaval where there had been none before. Work is a theater for them, a stage upon which their emotional needs can be fed. Actually earning their paycheck and being a productive member of the work society is the furthest thing from their mind.

Next week we will take a look at the fifth and final major category of troubled co-workers / leaders: immaturity. Until then, be safe and stay strong!