Over the years I’ve had the pleasure to meet lots of great people who have survived working in a toxic corporate culture. A toxic company culture takes its toll on individuals and bottom line results.
 
Just like with environmental toxins, some work place toxins get to you quickly, others take more time to cause harm.

I remember interviewing a very capable woman who was enjoying her new job in a company that had a very constructive culture (achievement, encouraging, friendly).

As a side note it’s always interesting to me that more progressive and constructive organizations, or those that aspire to be, are the ones who bring us in while the really bad workplaces never have the time or money for coaching, training or development. Hmmm.

She shared with me that in her previous job, she was known as the evil office witch. I was quite surprised because her demeanour was quite calm and relaxed. She shared that her previous employer was a tyrant and the only way for her to succeed and stay employed was to emulate his behaviour. After a while it became “normal”.
 
Her previous employer went out of business (not surprising!) and she landed her dream job. She admitted that she was going through a detoxification of sorts. She had to battle her ingrained reflex not to trust people, not to share information and not to bark out commands.

Don’t be Fooled
 
Just because people don’t leave your organization doesn’t mean the culture is constructive. In high-paying, benefit-rich industries employees can feel obligated to stay even though they are dying on the inside. Instead judge your culture on the level of sick days taken, the enthusiasm with which employees conduct themselves, the amount and pace of change and innovation. If these areas are lower than you like, chances are your corporate culture is sapping the life out of your employees.
 
If your culture shows signs of toxicity, now is the time to take action. It starts at the top and it requires determined leadership to root out the workplace poisons.
 
If you have a constructive culture, give yourself a pat on the back. You are in rare territory. Keep a watchful eye for potential negative impacts caused by a bad hiring decision at a senior level or bad promotion decisions into supervisory roles.
 
Reflection Questions
 
Is your culture toxic or tremendous? How does your leadership team contribute to the problem or success? Have you become toxic?

Action Items

1. You could conduct an Employee Attitude Survey and measure the level of satisfaction and then take action to make improvement. This can be helpful if the senior leadership team is in denial and thinks everything is wonderful.
2. Chances are that your gut will lead you to see the likely sources of culture problems and they could be scattered from the executive suites to the front line leaders.
3. You could skip right to the likely root of the problem – leadership and recognize that a constructive leadership team from the top down is the best way to turn a new page and build a constructive high-performing organization.
4. Avoid flavor of the month initiatives as they act as window dressing and all smart employees see right through them.
5. Recognize that depending on the current level of toxicity, the time it takes to fully make changes could be 2-5 years.
6. If you see yourself as part of the problem, you can get some executive coaching. If the team needs help, perhaps group training makes sense.

Like many problems, admitting you have a problem is the first step to fixing the problem. Let me know how I can help.

Do you have some employees or co-workers who think of themselves as extra special, indispensible and untouchable? Their superior attitude often ticks off the people who work with them. So today we look at the right and wrong way to deal with prima donnas in the workplace.
 
Dealing With Prima Donnas at Work
 
Employees and co-workers with superior attitudes see the world revolving around them and expect everyone else to bow down and kiss up (or kiss butt) to get something done. While saying “pretty please with sugar on top” might be nice, it really shouldn’t be necessary to get the person to do their job.
 
A misguided view: Often the prima donna forgets that his or her job function exists to support another job function. A classic example in a manufacturing plant is that the maintenance department will act as though they are doing production a favor by fixing something that is broken down. In fact the maintenance department’s customer is production. They are supposed to keep the line running and improve flow and cycle time.
 
In the office, a prima donna might work in accounting, reception, engineering, sales, marketing or quality. The prima donna is often a good performer who has let his or her special talents inflate the ego instead of focusing on serving others.
 
Managers are reluctant to address this behavior because they are lulled into a sense of complacency and fear a backlash. Plus the manager likes the work done by the person. Overall performance is usually less than it could be because the prima donna doesn’t share information or expertise very well, preferring instead to use it as a competitive advantage.
 
Reflection Questions
 
Who are the prima donnas in your work group? How does this behavior impact you as the boss or co-worker?
 
What NOT to do

• Knock them down a peg. It really isn’t helpful to criticize or point out the person’s flaws or jump with glee when they make a mistake.
• Over inflate the ego. While it’s positive to provide praise, avoid use of the words, “You’re the best!”, “We couldn’t do it without you!”, “Too bad everyone else can’t be more like you!”

Action Items

• List the destructive consequences of having prima donnas in the workgroup.
• Recognize that low self esteem might be behind this behavior. The person may be compensating for a feeling of inadequacy by acting superior.
• Point out the specific behaviors (in private) that you want the person to stop doing. In many cases the person is likely unaware of how they are perceived.
• Encourage the individual to share his or her knowledge and skill with others and then provide positive feedback when they do that.
• Remind the individual who the customer is, their role in supporting the customer (internal or external) and that the overall success depends not on his or her individual talents but the overall capability of the group.

For some clients we have facilitated “team building” sessions to help groups realize that success depends on working together. If the prima donna is in a management or supervisory role then often one-on-one coaching is part of the solution.

Do your customers keep pressuring you to reduce prices by saying that they are getting more favourable terms from your competitor? It is in the buyer’s best interest to convince you that what you provide is a commodity. That way, they transfer more profit margin from your company to their’s.

Is what you provide really a commodity? Perhaps to some extent, however your company likely offers a bunch of value-added features to your customers, and they are willing to pay for it, but will take it for free if you give it away.

Purchasing agents get considerably more training than sales people. There are more professionally trained buyers than professionally trained sales people. And so the sales people can get slaughtered in negotiations, coughing up concessions and getting little in return.

Action items to justify value:

1. List all the features and benefits your company offers, that provide some value to your customer. These may include convenient location, no charge freight, expedited shipping, smaller order minimums, onsite merchandisers, consignment stock, informative sales people, helpful customer service, accurate billing and credits, flexible payment terms, industry leading products, in store point of sale displays, large selection, etc.
2. Determine which customers value these features and benefits the most. If your customer doesn’t value something you offer, you have a choice: Find customers who do value it; or stop offering it and reduce cost.
3. Communicate the Value: Sales people need to be able to articulate the value proposition to the customer and ask great questions that build the desire of the customer to want those value elements.

What if your competitor gives it away for free? If your competitor gives it away, chances are they are making it up with margin or volume or have found a way to offer the benefit without incurring cost. Or they may have given it away because everyone else was. That doesn’t mean that you have to.

• To get buy in from senior level decision makers, link leadership issues to the bottom line. Ask questions such as, “How much of that problem can be linked to leadership?” or, “It’s no wonder Bill is struggling, did we ever give him training on how to be a good supervisor?” 
• Confront the unacceptable leadership behaviors and offer either training or coaching. We’ve found that only a small number of leaders are unsalvageable. Most can be turned around.
• Measure your existing culture versus the ideal culture and develop a game plan to be more constructive. (We offer a great measurement tool from Human Synergistics to do this.)

Being the boss isn’t as glamorous as it used to be. For a little extra pay, a little extra flexibility and an elusive sense of control, managers take on the stress of being accountable for the performance of the workgroup and leave behind many of the activities that used to create job satisfaction.

One of the most frustrating parts of the manager’s job is balancing the need to get results with the unpredictability of human behavior. It turns out that human behavior is not that unpredictable.

In fact, the greatest epiphany we see in the managers, supervisors and team leaders we train and coach is that the behaviors (good and bad) of the workgroup often reflect the approach taken by the leader. After learning how to be more constructive, supervisors will say that employees are being more positive, helpful and accountable. The leader changed first – then the employees changed!

Reflection Question

How are you contributing to some of the employee behaviors that are frustrating you?

Action Items

• Tell employees what you expect as clearly as you can and be prepared to repeat yourself dozens of times until it sinks in.
• Be positive and in a good mood more of the time – it is contagious. A foul mood will spread to employees… and… gulp… customers.
• Build on positives. Seeing mistakes is helpful but focus on the gains being made in order to motivate for greater achievement.
• Encourage people to help them recognize their own strengths. A lot of employee misbehavior is caused because of low self-esteem. Build them up.
• Be approachable – smile more often and employees will bring problems to you more quickly, before getting out of hand.

Do these things for the next few days and let me know what the changes are.