Toxic Workplace: Are your colleagues ready to eat you?

Disclaimer: no IA inside. Article 100% written by a human. Enjoy it while it lasts.

There's a movie currently trending on Netflix: Society of the Snow. It’s based on a true story: the crash of Flight 571 near the border between Argentina and Chile in 1972. To be completely honest, I haven’t seen the movie, but I have read “Alive” by Piers Paul Read.

What can this story tell us about your company?

The people on that ill-fated plane were no ordinary passengers. It was a special flight carrying members of the Old Christian Club rugby team along with their families and friends. They were young, strong and disciplined. If we think in terms of values, these boys were some of the best you could come across at the time.

They valued sportsmanship, they were friendly, they went to church, they didn’t take drugs… we are talking about very decent people here.

But after the plane crashed, they started eating corpses within 3 days. In other words, as decent as they were when they boarded the plane, they were only three days away from eating human flesh.

How long would it take you to reach this point? How far away are you from it at the moment?

Would you eat human flesh in three days if the conditions were right?

These passengers were not cannibals. Without the accident that brought them to this harsh environment, none of them would have had the idea of breaking another person's skull in order to eat their brains as sorbet during the Argentinian winter.

A similar dynamic governs relationships in toxic companies. People come there to work. They are all decent. They have partners, children, pets, and they work hard to provide for them. Still, the dog eats the dog.

In the right company, decent people become monsters. They stab colleagues in the back, betray their trust, lie and cheat to get to the top or to stay afloat. They are not meant to do that. They may even despise what they have become. It goes against their values, but survival in this environment forces them to leave their humanity behind.

There is no attempt to portray people as irresponsible drones who are merely controlled by their environment. We have chosen to be selfish, just as we have chosen to eat human flesh. But we must not underestimate or dismiss the influence of the environment of the company itself.

There are many top 10 lists on the internet about what makes a corporate culture toxic. They all overlook the elephant in the room. If there is toxicity, it means that toxic employees are rewarded for their behaviour. As a rule of thumb, if you discover two or more toxic leaders in a company, it means toxicity is embedded in company policy. It is not accidental, but intentional. The same rule applies to dishonesty. We can accept that one dishonest executive is there by accident. If there are two or more, it means that we are in a dishonest company and that dishonesty is tolerated and encouraged by top management.

The other causative factor for toxicity within the organisation is internal competition. There is no amount of it that can be considered healthy. Elite SWAT team members do not compete against each other. The same goes for football or any other game. Real Madrid players don’t compete against each other. We can’t imagine one of them deliberately sending the ball too high to his colleague just to see him not get it.

Similarly, we can’t imagine a member of a SWAT team withholding important information to make sure his colleague gets hurt or can’t rescue a hostage.

Answer the question for yourself: How many times in the last year has a colleague intentionally withheld important information from you?

Many companies create a culture of internal competition because some foolish managers believe it is good for productivity. It may be that two employees are working on the same project, but not in a collaborative way. For example, two sales people with overlapping territories. This leads to employees directing their competitive energy inwards rather than outwards. In other words, employees are not competing against other companies or the market, but against each other.

A company with too much energy directed inwards, is in a state of civil war. It bleeds money and it bleeds productivity.

Did you know that you can earn money with Toxic companies? Here's how: Read reviews on Glassdoor to find signs of toxicity. Once you have confirmed the condition, target that company as a recruiter. Everyone wants to leave. Their employees are always open to offers. If you are in Sales, you should be targeting their clients; displacement. They are fighting internally for survival of the fittest, and it will take them a while to realise you have taken their customers away. Bonus: You are helping humanity, because toxic companies do not deserve to exist.

We can also talk about finger-pointing, nepotism, cliques, deceit and lies… but you get the picture. Toxic corporations turn decent people into cannibals.

Watch you six.

PS: Many people share their horror stories with me. Here's my WhatsApp: +447729000058. All messages are treated with the utmost journalistic confidentiality.