From Toxic to Positive
A recent client came to chat with me on working in a toxic environment and as a leader, how he could action some change before he went “totally insane!”
We looked at four different elements of leadership in the workplace; culture, positive communication, positive meaning and positive relationships.
When looking at the culture in the workplace, leaders need to address private concerns openly with the team but being respectful of confidentiality. In order to encourage positive teams, it is important to encourage everyone to look out for each other. This can mean being mindful of what is happening in each other’s’ lives and without oversharing, show interest and compassion. As a leader it is so important to look out for practice that is not genuine or authentic as this is totally counterproductive. Leaders should be understanding, clarify expectations and support staff learning from mistakes. Be sure to acknowledge the mistake but celebrate the opportunity for improvement. Gratitude is a positive leader’s power tool! If you are authentic and specific in your praise, staff will recognise that you are noticing what they are doing and are openly acknowledging it. Making ‘gratitude visits’ (still retaining your authenticity), being appreciative and grateful, gives staff a boost of positivity which, research tells us, raises their performance by a significant amount! What we know about gratitude is that employees feel better about themselves, are more optimistic, higher levels of alertness and energy, work better in a team, more connection and higher performance.
Positive communication means being mindful of the communication across the workplace, including policy documents, advertising, verbal and email content. Notice if the communication is written or spoken in a positive manner and if not, change it. If your policies are written in negative terms eg “Staff will not use resources without permission of the Supervisor” turn it into the positive eg Staff will seek permission from the Supervisor if requiring to use resources.” In many workplaces, emails are prolific! As a positive leader, try to find opportunities to talk to people face to face. This provides connection and the ability to share information and notice intonation, which is lost in emails. Yes, it may take longer, however face to face communication can often provide more information than you were expecting plus the connections made are invaluable for a positive and productive workplace. Also try to have all conversations in a Constructive Active manner. This means actively engaging in the communication and finding the positive aspect of the topic. Making eye contact, and ensuring the other person is convinced you are listening, understand and care.
Positive meaning is about working with staff to remind them of why they are doing what they are doing. Exploring and embracing the meaning in their work, the importance of it and why they chose to work there. It is about making their work a ‘calling’ rather than simply their ‘work’. A good leader will always find what inspires their staff and ensure that they have those opportunities to undertake that which engages them. If employees are working in meaningful and valued tasks, feel they are making a difference, the workplace will have positive outcomes.
In any and all workplaces, Positive relationships can make or break the team. If you have a broken team, you will have negative outcomes. It is so very important to work hard on the relationships. With my client, I asked him to map his networks. Link each of the staff to each other and the leadership team. Consider the energy between each of the team members and identify if the link is positive, negative or neither. He was able to then identify where the issues were and he focussed on improving those relationships, working hard to make them positive. His aim was to work towards having a team that mainly had positive energy links.
After many, many weeks, my client was able to identify improvement in culture, communication, meaning and relationships across his worksite. With a real push on the positive, being upfront and open about this push, working on staff embracing the concept, he was able to see real movement. He believed that his toxic workplace had become a much better place to spend time and this meant, high productivity! That’s got to be a win:win! He still has a way to go but now sees real changes and a clear path to achieve his ultimate goal.
