…and what a bad effect do they have on the team.

”In an organization, toxic people are like a rotten apple, which will alter the others; some sooner, some later.

Some people will become as acid, dissatisfied, negative, sometimes unethical as the toxic employee; others will leave; there will also be people who will become increasingly frustrated to see that inappropriate behaviors are tolerated.

Eventually, the organization will suffer, the integrity of the manager who tolerates such toxic behaviors is at stake, and people will come to wonder what the toxic know about the company or manager if no action is taken.

“We have seen cases where the employer avoids taking action against the toxic person because they ‘have good results’. The numbers are good, but at what cost? In the medium term, if more people leave because of a toxic person, if people’s trust in management decreases, the price paid is not very justified.

Thus, the inertia and the fact that managers are paid for indicators of immediate performance, their inability to give feedback to the toxic, avoidant behavior, are factors that prevent people from taking action “, explains Georgeta Dendrino, coach, trainer and Managing Director at Interact, for StartupCafe.ro.

Because, yes, by tolerating toxicity at work, you end up staying with a team of great people but who, as they get frustrated, become less productive; or with people who are afraid to leave (wether they are at an age when it can be hard to find something else, or they have a niche job, etc.) or average people from a professional point of view, who are in the comfort zone, who can think that it’s the same everywhere.

The question is: do you really want to have such a team?

How can you discover a potential toxic employee from the job interview

Georgeta Dendrino also gives us some clues that someone might be toxic:

Talks nasty about his former employer;

Shows too much self-confidence, a great ego;

Small tolerance towards others, towards mistakes, delays, deviations can be interpreted as attacks on them, sabotage, disrespect;

Aggressive language, offensive to others;

Attempts to continually diminish others;

Too much self-centeredness, indifference to others;

Always complains, sees the straw in the other’s eye and does not accept the probability, at least, of the existence of the beam in their own eye.

Because the effects of toxic behavior at the team level can be very serious (a tense atmosphere within the department; poor collaboration; affecting team cohesion; decreased level of optimism, etc.), it is best to “cut the evil from the root.” – that is, to be able to identify a potential toxic behavior since the job interview, believes Ana Zafiu (Felegean), Human Resources Consultant at CareerInvest.ro.

How can you do that? Through questions and observation. And if you are not so good at recruiting, you can turn to someone specialized.

“For example, we can ask questions about how they related to colleagues or managers in previous jobs. In the interviews I organize, I ask the candidates the following question: If your manager from the previous job was present at this discussion and I would ask him to describe you in a few words, mentioning the main pluses and main minuses related to your behavior, what do you think would answer? Both the concrete, behavioral questions, which refer to the candidate’s behavior at previous jobs, and the hypothetical ones can bring valuable information “, states Ana Zafiu.

Thus, behavioral questions help us to find out how that person reacted in certain situations. In this way we can deduce if a behavior from the past can be repeated, in a similar context. Here are two examples:

What kind of people do you find hardest to work with? Tell me about a situation like this and explain how you handled it.

Tell me about a stressful job situation – and what you did to manage it.

Hypothetical questions help us to obtain information especially about candidates who have little professional experience.

“For example, by asking: How would you react if you thought you had been wronged at work? We can figure out how mature that person is. Most likely, a mature person would say that they would avoid reacting for a moment, would take time to analyze the situation, after which they would clarify it. On the other hand, a less mature person would probably say that would adopt an attitude from which the dissatisfaction would emerge ”, explains Ana Zafiu.

You also have an ace up your sleeve: recommendations from former employers. Thus, Ana Zafiu says that you can find out information about:

How the candidate was perceived by the team;

How the candidate was perceived by the manager;

What was the most inappropriate reaction they had at work;

What was a negative feedback they received.

All this is necessary in order to gather the necessary information in order to be able to create an overview of the pattern of behavior of that candidate and to help you make a first assessment of its toxic potential.

But, obviously, it is worth pointing out one nuance: we are all human, so we are subject to mistakes. Georgeta Dendrino mentions that it is important to know what toxic people mean to us and our organization; what determines us to hire them, to look at our vulnerabilities that sometimes make us attract such people; to identify them; to forgive ourselves if we make a mistake and to correct the mistake.

What else can the employer do to avoid creating a culture of toxicity in the workplace

Sometimes it’s not enough to spend a couple of minutes with an interviewer to realize that it can be toxic to your team. So, Georgeta Dendrino points out other actions a leader must take to avoid creating a culture of toxicity:

To be very clear to them what kind of culture they want in the organization, what kind of people they want to work with in order to have results;

To know their vulnerabilities: we attract people with problems, sometimes, to solve our own problems;

Make the decision to give up a toxic collaborator, with the lucidity with which a surgeon removes an unhealthy part of a body. That being said, it is essential to communicate empathetically, carefully, with the people from the team, to clearly explain the reasons for their decisions;

Be a role model for the behavior they expect from others;

To set the limits, the framework in which people operate, what happens when those limits are exceeded (like a traffic regulation, which provides the framework in which we move on the street with various vehicles and the consequences of deviations).

Last but not least, you need to not be toxic to your team. And how can you figure this out? The simplest, asking for feedback. This is also the advice of Georgeta Dendrino and Ana Zafiu. So, a possible approach could be a non-nominal questionnaire in which to ask your team what recommendations they would make to you to improve your behavior.

Finally, I once again ask: what kind of team do you want to have?”

via: Startup Cafe