Nat Dudley Head of Design at https://figure.nz. I also write things at natdudley.com May 28 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recovering from a toxic job [IMG] Source: https://xkcd.com/1216/ When I left my toxic job, I’d hoped it would be easy to put it behind me. After months of stress from working in an environment without [12]psychological safety, I’d been holding out for that finish line. I could see the promised land: the new job with the team full of people I adored and who respected my skills. What happened next surprised me. I got across that line, I celebrated, I started my new job, and then the months of pent up stress all hit me at once. I was exhausted, emotionally fragile, and entirely lacking in [13]spoons, and I couldn’t figure out why. I loved my new job and my new team, so why didn’t I feel great? Turns out that, like getting sick when you finally go on holiday, stress catches up with you and can have a profound psychological impact. When you finally get a chance to stop just existing from moment-to-moment, your brain has a chance to process the trauma and the toxicity you’ve experienced. In my case, there was a whole lot of processing to do. I went home and cried every night as my brain and my body let go of the stress I’d been carrying, and truly accepted that it was over. And little-by-little, the crisis feeling got better. I no longer felt burnt out and on the verge of depression. Fast-forward a year, and there’ve been many more things that have surprised me about the lingering impacts of toxic workplaces. Like emerging from an abusive relationship, I discovered that I’d internalised many lessons on interacting and communicating that don’t apply in a healthy environment. Most of these were driven by fear: fear of being yelled at, fear of [14]argument culture, fear of punishment if you've misunderstood or didn’t perfectly follow instructions, fear of social ostracism, fear of judgement for not knowing all the answers. 5 signs your toxic job is still affecting you Identifying, and then processing, how you respond to these things takes time. It also takes a supportive team and manager. I’ve collected examples from a variety of people about how toxic jobs looked for them. From that, I’ve identified 5 questions you can ask yourself to spot where you may have internalised lessons from a toxic workplace: 1. Are you comfortable saying “I don’t know”? In a toxic workplace, this looks like: Everyone is talking in a meeting. Someone throws out a bunch of complex technical terms. Everyone around you nods and makes sounds of agreement, but you’re sitting there going ‘What the hell is that? Am I meant to know? Does everyone else know?’. Rather than asking, you pretend you know too, and furtively Google it on your phone or when you get back to your desk. Or, someone asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, and rather than admit that, you blag and make up what you think is right and hope they don’t realise. You’re know that if you say you don’t know, people will judge you harshly. Your team and your manager won’t respect you. It might affect your chance of a pay rise or promotion. [IMG] Source: [16]https://xkcd.com/1053/ Why is this bad? Nobody knows everything. Nobody. Not even Google knows everything, folks. If we’re afraid to say no because we’ll be punished or judged, everyone loses. It’s a safe bet that someone else in that meeting didn’t know what they were talking about either, and instead of getting everyone on the same page, time was wasted because of the risk of saying ‘I don’t know’. In a healthy workplace, everyone shares knowledge freely, and saying ‘I don’t know’ is encouraged and even celebrated. 2. How do you respond to people questioning you? In a toxic workplace, this looks like: You’re working on something and you know you need to share it for feedback. Before you do, you go through every way it could be pulled to pieces. You marshal your defences, preparing a rebuttal for the inevitable ones that aren’t there to help, but instead just want to prove they are smarter or better than you, or that they just don’t like you. Questions are weapons, used to pull people down. Sharing work is accompanied by dread and anxiety. Collaboration is stressful. Why is this bad? Questions are one of the most powerful tools we have to gain a shared understanding. When they’re used as weapons, it creates fear, and a culture of hiding our work. We become less collaborative and less open to genuine feedback. In a healthy workplace, questions are genuine and without agenda. They’re used to prompt open sharing of information, and to ensure everyone has the same vision and knowledge of the work we are doing. 3. Does uncertainty cause fear? In a toxic workplace, this looks like: Your manager gives you a task, but the directions are incredibly vague. They don’t have the time or the willingness to give you more information. The worry sets in. If you don’t get it right, it’s going to be bad, but how do you get it right when you don’t know what they want you to do? You exhaustively research, both online and by talking to others to try and gain some control back over the situation, but when you present your work, your heart is in your mouth, not knowing whether you’ve done the right thing or all that work was for nothing. Uncertainty breeds fear in a toxic environment, and this seeps into every facet of the organisation, eroding trust. Why is this bad? Uncertainty is a natural part of every organisation, but the fear response is not. In a healthy organisation, our managers want us to succeed. They want us to ask questions to get the understanding we need, and they’ll either make time, point us in the right direction, or adjust the deadlines if they’re too busy. If they can’t do these things, they’ll understand why we’ve missed the mark and it won’t be a big deal — it will be an opportunity to talk about how we both can do better next time. This builds and reinforces trust and confidence. 4. Are you comfortable with taking initiative? In a toxic workplace, this looks like: You come up with a great idea that you just know could make customers happy, save money, or be a killer sales pull. You excitedly share it, and then the grumbling starts. People are weirdly resentful or not willing to collaborate. It doesn’t make sense, given this is for the benefit of the company as a whole. Slowly, your enthusiasm for your idea withers away. You give up on it. It’s not worth the grief. Insecurity created by the toxic environment means that other people see taking initiative as a threat, whether they’re your peers, or your manager. Why is this bad? Organisations thrive on fresh ideas. When no-one wants to put new things forward, it’s a very bad sign. Only the mediocre ideas which are agreed upon and designed by committee are implemented. In a healthy organisation, our ideas are met with enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, and encouragement. We collaborate on them and critique them in a healthy, respectful way, and we’re not scared of trying out new things. 5. Are you comfortable questioning authority? In a toxic workplace, this looks like: You see something going wrong. It’s scary-bad. Like the type of bad that could hurt customers or even endanger the company. But you know that questioning the decisions your superiors have made is not an option. Every time anyone’s tried, it’s immediately shut down. Often, the person is belittled for presuming they could possibly know more or have seen something senior management haven’t. Why is this bad? Seeing problems is not limited to your execs and managers. Often, frontline staff are the best people to see early warning signs. Refusing to acknowledge that, or letting ego or politics get in the way, is a fast way to a poor-performing organisation. In a healthy organisation there are clear and defined paths for all of us to raise a concern at any time, and concerns are always met with respect and consideration, regardless of whether everyone agrees. At Figure.NZ, our team knows we can [17]raise a paddle at any time. What do you do? Coming out of my toxic job, I realised I had unhealthy responses to all 5 of those questions. I was no longer in a toxic environment, but the responses I’d learned were so ingrained that I still feel the emotions. The fear and anxiety surface up, and if I’m not careful, I respond as if I’m still working in a toxic place. The first step is acknowledging the problem. Our team at Figure.NZ openly discuss how we prefer to communicate and how we respond to some of these triggers. We take and share a [18]communication style quiz that we specially crafted to help our team identify this stuff so we can overcome it. Once we know about the tricky spots for others, we talk about it, and we work on ways to help everybody get to a safe and strong place. Our team and I are still working on unlearning many of our responses, but we’re doing it in an organisation that believes in and tries to create a safe space for exploring this. Hopefully by this time next year, I’ll be able to look back on mine as a distant memory. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/ 13. https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ 14. https://kateheddleston.com/blog/argument-cultures-and-unregulated-aggression 16. https://xkcd.com/1053/ 17. http://tohu.figure.nz/internal/our_kaupapa/#raise-a-paddle 18. http://tohu.figure.nz/internal/working_together/#how-do-we-communicate-with-each-other