How manager complicity is driving toxic workplaces
Workplaces can become toxic due to a range of factors, but employees believe it comes down to one defining characteristic: how their direct manager behaves.
About a third of employees who have experienced workplace toxicity say their managers have acted unethically and treated employees unfairly, like showing favoritism and ignoring feedback, according to a survey from INTOO, a career development and outplacement firm, including over 1,600 respondents.
Ultimately, over 70% of those surveyed said they’ve experienced some form of workplace toxicity.
It begs a question around complicity, and whether managers really are the bad actors or if their hands are simply tied. It also speaks to the role they have in shifting negative perceptions at their own workplaces, and what needs to be done to better support them in those efforts.
Those surveyed were asked to list their five top factors driving workplace toxicity, and three of those listed directly called out their managers — rather than the larger organization’s — actions.
That surprised Mira Greenland, INTOO’s chief revenue officer., though she noted that “tolerance levels have changed since the pandemic, just sort of people’s willingness to work in an environment where it doesn’t feel like they’re kind of being received as a whole person, I think has changed a lot,” she said.
“I actually think if it is a manager issue and not a true cultural issue, that’s actually in some ways an easier fix, because managers influence culture,” Greenland said.
It’s true that they’re often bound to the rules, policies and goals of their larger organization. “Organizations really established the systems that they use, and that really becomes the personality if you will, of the company,” said Christy Pruitt-Haynes, distinguished faculty for leadership and performance at the Neuroleadership Institute.
Hundreds of TikTok videos, many with upwards of a million views, help demonstrate what employees are experiencing when it comes to toxic manager behaviors. Some say their managers micromanage them, or lack compassion and make them feel unappreciated, while others say they’ve even been gaslit by their bosses.
One example is when they always turn your concern back on you. “This is another meeting where you have a concern or suggestion and you’re just seeming negative,” one creator says in her video acting out a toxic manager gaslighting an employee.
“The reality is for most employees, the people that they interact with most are their managers. So the people who really set the tone and who determine the sort of day-to-day feelings that each team member is the manager,” Pruitt-Haynes said.
This problem speaks to a wider issue within middle management, which is a lack of effective training, but also that many people end up in management positions they aren’t fit for.
“It isn’t just a natural thing to know how to lead people, particularly to know how to lead adults who are also very smart and capable and have their own ideas.” Pruitt-Haynes said.
But employers need to be paying better attention to this and finding ways to better train and equip managers to help clamp down on workplace toxicity. “It’s hard to put a finger on how you shift a culture, which encompasses a lot of things, but if managers are exhibiting behaviors like ignoring feedback or overworking people, those are all things internally you can train on,” Greenland said.
“Staff need to feel like they’re human and matter and just like talking and listening and reflecting back to people what you’ve heard, I think is a really important first step. It’s not a huge investment for an organization other than, you know, possibly training and literally, you know, teaching good communication skills to the leaders in that business,” she said.
At the same time, managers feeling complicit in their own workplace’s toxicity can take some matters into their own hands by seeking out their own programs and training opportunities to give them some tools to be better people leaders.
A major challenge for many managers is prioritizing, and clarifying what success looks like as a people manager and aligning goals with leadership’s expectations is a key task.
“What managers need to do is to understand that once you become a people leader, that is the biggest part of your job,” Pruitt-Haynes said. “When team members feel like their managers genuinely care about them, then they are going to be more likely to both follow what their managers say, but also give their managers a bit of grace in those difficult times,” she said.