How to Deal with a Hostile Work Environment

I've been thinking and writing about toxic work environments for a while. In September, I wanted to explore a few more scenarios that make work (and especially teamwork) feel sh!tty.?

1: Back Off

When I built the original framework of what makes a team toxic, horrible teammates were high on the list (along with toxic practices, culture, bosses, and customers). There is a broad spectrum of ways that co-workers can make life miserable. In Dealing with a Colleague Who Meddles, I took on the specific and all too common problem of colleagues who can't seem to mind their own business.??

2: Help Me Help You

Although toxic colleagues can make your work environment hostile, crappy bosses can be even worse. In Managing a Boss Who Doesn't Know What They Want, I provide tips and techniques to help your boss articulate what they want so you can get it right the first time.?

3: Twist and Shout?

I've been thinking a lot about how we should deal with emotions in the workplace. When I ask people which emotions are most distressing to witness, most people vote for anger. In How to Deal With a Colleague Who Yells, I urge you to think about anger as just another part of being human and provide the words and actions you can use to get someone to stop yelling.????

4. You Want What?!?

For the final post of the series, I focused on the?greatest workplace hostility of our time: unmanageable workloads. In?Coping With Unrealistic Expectations, I provide the steps to help you put a dent in?your boss' overwhelming to-do list (or?the dent it puts in you).?? I'm now feeling a little sheepish about starting back in September with a bunch of posts about the downside of work, but maybe the ideas will help you feel better about what you're facing this fall.?

Resource of the Month

Meddling Coworker

The normal and natural reactions to a colleague overstepping are to feel defensive, dismissive, or condescending.?

You can't inhibit those reactions (they're happening before you're conscious of them), but you can choose a mature and constructive way of moving forward.?

(Click on the image to download the tool.)

On the Tube

We passed 350,000 views on the YouTube channel over the summer. Hooray!?Here are a couple of videos that have been popular.?

The Ultimate Guide to Time Management. I dedicated a month to more effective time management and learned a lot in the process. Here's the overview but I encourage you to watch the series to get into strategies and also tactics for when your beautiful time management plan goes to the dogs.?

Steps to Protect Yourself From a Bad Mood. Emotional contagion is a huge issue and knowing the steps to take to reduce the likelihood that your colleague's sadness, frustration, or grumpiness will cling to you is important. Here are some strategies that will help.

Bookshelf

I was fortunate to receive an advanced copy of this gem of a book, which is out next week. Tamsen Webster does a great job of simplifying change principles into elegantly easy-to-follow steps to achieve your desired outcomes. It's one of the few books I've read about change that works in concert with our sometimes odd human psychology instead of in opposition to it.?

Sadly, I didn't get an advanced copy of this one, but I have been following Steve Pratt's work on creativity for ages. I preordered ages ago, so my copy of his new book on earning attention arrived yesterday. I can't wait to dive in. If you're in the business of marketing yourself or something else, I highly recommend you check out Steve's work.?

From My LinkedIn Couch

Rebel Yell

I put it out there on LinkedIn that yelling has outstripped crying as the source of discomfort at the office. I got wonderfully insightful comments in return. Here's a sample:

Diane Nelson commented, "This is an area where the Leaders need to lead. If a team is going to grow their emotional literacy, then the Leader will have to demonstrate it and lead by taking conversational intelligence courses."?

Henna Pryor said, "It's amazing to me that grown adults still do this. I will literally respond to them the same way I used to respond my toddlers: "I don't understand you when you're using that voice."?

Bhakti Karkare made a great point when she said, "If you are a leader, you have the choice to be more than a communicator in such moments and become a facilitator who can use the emotional energy in that moment to hold space for a dialogue." I couldn't agree more. When there are hot emotions in a room, there are values and beliefs being threatened. The leader's job is to find out what those are.

Thanks to everyone who comes to sit on my LinkedIn couch to share, debate, challenge, and learn together.?Here are some other discussions that took place on my LinkedIn couch recently!

Thank You, Thank You!

It's been a long time since I've said thank you and the list is too long. Here are some highlights:

Thanks to the awesome people at Accenture for inviting me to speak about building a high-performance workforce in times of rapid growth.

Thanks to Scotiabank and The Mearie Group, who invited me to give my new keynote The Great Reset: Enhance Accountability Without Eroding Empathy.?

Thanks to LumiQ and ICF Midwest for the invitations to talk about The Good Fight and how to use productive conflict for good in our organizations.

And to the podcast hosts who've invited me on, thank you! Here's my conversation about sales teams with Will Milano at Mental Selling,?my discussion about elevating joy with the KPI Institute, and my chat with with Kathy Andrews on the For Leaders By Leaders pod.

Phew! Ok, that was a lot to catch up on.?Talk to you soon!?