Archive for category Toxic Environments

Nothing Like Inspiring the Team

I sat in on a business meeting yesterday where a department head was giving a report on what his team had been up to during the past year.  The meeting’s focus was team building and information.  His intention was to share changes and build confidence in his team so that other departments would have more confidence in the team. When he was done with his 20 minutes, the only thing I was confident of was that I’d never want anything to do with that team.

In 20 minutes, he managed to insult the team 8 times (and insult 2 other departments once each).  That’s one insult every 2.5 minutes.  The GarbageFactor™ in full force!

These were so bad, I had to write them down.  Ready for the groaners?

Regarding the mission statement “I’m not saying we’re actually doing these things.”

“We’ve had some challenges there, we’ve made some mistakes, but we’re improving.”

“We weren’t hired to be creative.” (The teams work involves about 70% creativity)

“We’re not smart enough to do this by ourselves.”

“We weren’t doing our job in the past.”

“We have to get better at it.”

“We’re struggling with quarterly updates.”

We’re going to continue to make mistakes.”

He then referred to one department as “obstacles to communicating with clients” and another department as “the big Gorilla.”

You can’t make this Garbage up!

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Meeting at 1 pm – Topic: Why we’re not Meeting Goals

A Tweet I saw earlier today got me thinking.  Take a read and see what comes to your mind.

@The_Troy_Show “We will continue having meetings, everyday, until I find out why no work is getting done.”

This so clearly summed up what happens in many organizations.  Meetings are scheduled because it’s the way things have been done, but no one stops and thinks about whether the meeting will be effective and efficient or whether there may be another way to accomplish the task(s) at hand.  Organizations also don’t evaluate past meetings to see if they’ve met the same effectiveness & efficiency standards.

There are many books and experts on managing time and meetings (@chucbarnes is one of my favorites). So why aren’t people using this information?

I’ve always decided whether or not to attend a meeting by which of my body parts needs to be present in the meeting.  It’s simple, if my mouth & brain need to be at the meeting, I attend, if only my ears need to attend the meeting, I check notes from someone else who attended.

That’s easy enough for me, I manage my own schedule.  But why don’t managers show respect for their employees’ time by giving them the same rule?  If employees don’t want to attend a meeting, then they don’t see the value, or something else holds more value at the time. Managers need to make sure the meeting has value (and don’t use spin…employees can see right through it).  Many meetings do impart valuable information, but when there are too many meetings on the schedule, people have difficulty discerning which ones are important.

Meetings need to be assessed for effectiveness the same as any other activity within an organization.  Listen to employees.  They can probably tell you which meetings are the good ones.

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BCC:

Why do people use BCC?  I’ve used it in the past, most often BCCing myself so I have a file ready copy of what I’m sending.  But occasionally, I’ve BCCd someone to keep them from being blindsided by something that I’m confident is going to end up on their desk (but not completely sure).  Many of us have been on the receiving end of a note that was BCCd to someone else.  Most of the time, we don’t know about these, but everyone once in a while we find out.  I don’t know about you, but when I have found out, it’s put a major dent in the relationship with the original sender.  This is mostly because BCC in these cases really meant “Because I’m Covering my Career, and I don’t care about yours” (with the emphasis on the second part).

Which now makes me wonder, is BCC a way to encourage people to be passive-aggressive with their communication?  Is a BCC really necessary?  Why not move the BCC to a CC, and get it out there in the open?  And, why have we still not acknowledged that there are at least two generations in the workplace that have never seen a real “Carbon Copy” of anything?

I sent a note out yesterday and moved what may have been a BCC to a CC.  I’m 99.999% sure it’s going to end up on her desk anyway.  Might as well let the person I’m communicating with know that I’ve already taken care of it for her.  Now if I can just get her to let go of her other passive-aggressive communication habits.

How do you feel about BCC?

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You can not create a collaborative team if you do not have a team of equals.

You can not create a collaborative team if you do not have a team of equals.

If people are not intellectual equals, resentment will set in.

If people are not attitudinal equals, resentment will set in.

If people are not commitment equals, resentment will set in.

If people are not value equals, resentment will set in.

If people do not equally respect each other, resentment will set in.

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Don’t forget the “d”

Just read a story about a woman who works with a manager that screams, storms around, disciplines & mocks people publicly, and frequently uses threats as part of her management technique arsenal.  Apparently upper management and human resources have been made aware of this garbage.  I don’t know their excuse, but it sounds like this manager doesn’t know the difference between “shrew” and “shrewd.”

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Bad Attitude in Three Short Stories

I just found these stories.  I’d saved it under a title that I’m sure made sense at the time, but upon recall, it made me think it was a different document.

Background – all three of these encounters happen the same morning, in the same building, for the same organization.

Scene 1 – I arrive to teach a seminar about Flex Spending Accounts.  My mood is set, I feel great because I’m speaking and training today.  I’m especially pumped because I love the thrill of applying my inspirational approach to financial matters that people expect to be boring (I have a financial services background).  I enter the building and check in with security.  A guard takes me to my first encounter.

In introduce myself to the leader who looks put out.  She starts by treating me like I am a criminal or have done something wrong.  Angrily she says:  “I don’t know who you are!”  She didn’t hide that she was annoyed and put out.  She next challenged me as though I was lying “who sent you here?  Who are you supposed to see?  I thought this was Insurance, nobody told me you are here!”  What’s flex spending?!

Scene 2 – The insurance rep and I (we’d both been invited by the main office) were in a conference room to answer questions one-on-one.  The first employee that the Insurance rep (we were both scheduled for the day) had to deal with wanted the rep to make the changes for her.  The rep didn’t have a laptop with her and the employee got snippy “your website doesn’t work!”  The rep tried to verbally get the woman to come back to find out what the problem was.  The woman was determined to be a snot and turned her back on the rep and walked out ignoring the pleas of the insurance rep to try to identify the problem to fix it.

Scene 3 – It is lunch time and I am in the employee cafeteria.  Across the table from me is a woman who’s just sat down with her lunch.  “This is a hamburger without the bun!!!”  She was angry, you could tell she felt cheated.  “They call this a patty melt!  What the hell is that?!  It’s a hamburger without the bun.  By law this is a hamburger with no bun, everybody knows that!”  She slams her food around looking hateful and angry.

This is the GarbageFactor™ in toxic doses.  This whole building needs to be wrapped in a quarantine tent and a dose of attitude adjustment pumped in.  Seriously folks, I’m sure many of you have worked in an environment like this, but what makes me so passionate about this one is that it was an elementary school.  The “leader” was the school principal.  The other two scenes were with teachers.  This is crazy.  No one should have to work with people with attitudes this bad, never mind subject our kids to it.

I have an assignment today.  Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are behaving like one of these people.  If you are, find out what the cause is.  This is beyond bad attitude, this is toxic behavior.  If you need to get out, find a new job as fast as you can.  If you need a break, take it.  If you need to learn how to deal with the problem, take a seminar.  If you need a shrink, find one.  Whatever you do, take some positive action because everyone around you is being infected and you won’t be able to break the cycle of negativity until you do something different.

If you’re working in this kind of environment, your solutions are the same.  If you need to get out, find a new job as fast as you can.  If you need a break, take it.  If you need to learn how to deal with the problem, take a seminar or read a book (mine is a great pick http://shop.marianmadonia.com).  If you need a shrink, find one.

Whatever you do, take some positive action because everyone around you is being infected and you won’t be able to break the cycle of negativity until you do something different.  If you are in a leadership position and this describes your environment, don’t go it alone if you’re not trained in turning this type of situation around.  Bring in a consultant who specializes in workplace relationships (I know a few, so let me know if you need a referral).  If you think a seminar or program would help, that’s my specialty (check out my video’s at http://youtube.com/marianmadonia).  And if you need it, contact an arbitrator to help resolve conflict in specific relationships.

We all want to work in a job that has as little garbage as possible.  What can you do today to reduce it?

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Keep ‘em in the dark & don’t give ‘em raises

Not long ago, I met Charlie, an employee of a large manufacturing firm.  Let’s just say we all grew up with the food product his company makes.  I talked with Charlie about the company’s work environment, and he told me that the company was in bankruptcy, that he hadn’t gotten a raise in 3 years, and that the only information that he got on how the company was doing was what he was able to get on the news or over the internet.

This is nuts!  What is this management team thinking?  Do they ask themselves about the impact on staff or are they so overwhelmed by company problems that they can’t see past themselves?

I’m curious, does management understand and recognize that many (if not most) employee’s would have a hard time staying positive, committed, and hard working under these conditions?  Is this management so deluded as to think that people “ought to just be happy they have a job in this economy”?

Unless they are in the habit of hiring saintly types, it’s not likely that too many people are going to be able to remain positive, committed and hard-working for an extended period in those circumstances.  I’m not suggesting that employees don’t have the capacity to do it, what I am suggesting is that it is unrealistic to expect it from employees because “it’s what they are paid to do.”

Employees are paid to do the job, but there are expectations that are unwritten that go along with the agreement to provide work for pay.  Though it is not in the job description, employees expect to work in a positive environment, they expect to be kept informed, and they expect to at least be able to keep their financial footing which means they will get raises equal to the inflation rate.  If these circumstances are not being met, management should consider that they are fortunate if they have positive, committed, and hard-working employees.

Oh, and one question: How many executives got bonuses during this same time period?

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Would you like to apply for your job?

Not long ago, I met a woman who’d been with her company for more than 20 years.  She was beside herself with stress because her company was restructuring and had asked her to “reapply” for her job.  She had no idea where she stood, what she was up against, what she’d done wrong (if anything), or what she’d done right.  She had no idea whether she’d have a job when all of this was over.

This is disgusting.  No employee should ever have to wonder where they stand.  If management is doing its job, then employees know exactly at what level they’ve been performing.  Performance appraisals are done on time, are weighted accurately, and reflect the entire performance period.  Performance should never be left up for interpretation.  Everyone wins (company & employee) when performance is communicated.

So what is this garbage about having to reapply for one’s job?  Who came up with this idiotic idea?  Who decided this was a great way to handle reorganization?  This is the wimp way out.  If companies would staff their leadership positions with competent leaders that have a backbone, then no one would have to take the coward’s way out and try to displace an issue onto an employee.

I’m sorry, but if leadership has been doing their job, then leaders already know who is a top performer and who is a poor performer.  And the employees should know because management has been communicating with them.

I realize that we all take actions hoping for a certain outcome.  Organizations need to take a good look at their actions and the outcomes they’ve actually caused when they ask loyal, hardworking staff to reapply for their jobs.  Likely more damage than benefit is being caused.

The employee in the beginning of my story did win her job when she reapplied.  She was suffering from a lack of confidence, not a lack of performance.  Unfortunately, trust of her company is now permanently destroyed.  She doesn’t feel valued and is job hunting.  Given what she brings to the table, I’m confident a competitor will bring her on board quickly.  Isn’t it interesting that her company is the one that encouraged this? After all, her resume wouldn’t be up-to-date if they hadn’t made her reapply for her job.

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No More Garbage Tip #2 – Stuck?

When you don’t know what to do, you won’t until you learn something new.  Use a lack of answers as a trigger to go learn something new so that you can find the answers.  Don’t know how to pay for your kid’s education?  Learn everything you can about financing college.  Having trouble with a relationship?  Learn everything that you can about dealing with people and communicating.  Having trouble with a boss?  Learn how to deal with difficult people.

If you can’t wait to hear all 90 ways to deal with garbage, you can always order the book.

Book "No More Garbage: 90 Ways to Deal with Change, Challenges & Chaos

Book "No More Garbage: 90 Ways to Deal with Change, Challenges & Chaos

Thank you for being a fan of the GarbageFactor.  Get $2 off “No More Garbage” by using this special coupon code,  garbage09.  It will ask you for the code at the end when you enter payment info.  Here’s the link to get the book: http://shop.marianmadonia.com/product.sc?productId=1

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Toxic Garbage Alert – Not for the faint of heart

This is not the most visually exciting video on YouTube, but the language is shocking.  This is a video of a guy’s answering machine as he plays a message his boss left for him.

Warning: Rated R for language.  This “boss” has no restraint.  Do not click on the video if you are easily offended by bad language, crazy bosses, or out of control ranting.

This is pure toxic garbage.  There is no excuse for anyone to ever be subjected to this.  Companies need to establish a zero tolerance policy for this type of behavior.  Why was this “boss” promoted?  Why was this “boss” allowed to stay in a management position?

I suppose this company is wondering why they have high turnover or poor employee engagement.

Come on employers, if you want to improve employee engagement, then stop subjecting employees to toxic bosses like this.

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