Welcome to the new Manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well. I will tell you that this episode is coming a little bit later than planned. Sometimes that happens, you have a plan, and then other things happen and then you have to respond and continue forward in a way that you hadn't intended. So that is what's happening right now.
And while you're hearing this episode, not on Monday when I tend to release, but on a Tuesday instead. And the other thing is that OK, so over the weekend I was in a training for developing my skills as a coach. And the particular training was in organization and relationship systems, which I find to be very interesting because so much of the work that I do, especially in leadership development and working with managers is helping them in the relational skills of
work. Like so much about being a manager is about relationships, how you manage up, how you manage your humans on your team. And that is the part of, you know, this work that I find to be really interesting and that I really like helping my clients with is how to get better and feel more confident about that part. So in this training that I did, one of the tools and resources they pointed us to, I thought was really, really good. And I immediately thought to bring it to you to share it.
So that is what our topic is today. And today we're I'm going to be talking with you more about how to recognize toxic behaviors at work. And this is coming from work that has been done for years and years at the Gottman Institute. And they have done a lot of work studying couples, studying relationships and what makes good relationships and what gets in the way. And they've identified these 4 categories of things that tend to show up in relationships that go bad.
So if you want to know, like what happens when relationships go bad? What, what is it that undermines trust? What is it that gets in the way of connection and compassion and understanding and goodwill? These are four things that do that. There's a great application for this in the workplace, even though the workplace relationship is different than in your, you know, personal relationships in your private
life. But the thing that's the same is that you're a human and the people you work with are humans. And when we're thinking about how do I build relationships that will effectively allow us to work together to make the most out of the resources that we have, to face challenges together, to do complex and difficult things.
Even when we don't have ideal resources, we don't have ideal circumstances, we are in the face of change and we have different personalities and different priorities and different communication styles. I think when we take a step back to realize how much of what happens in the workplace is facilitated or undermined by our ability to create really great relationships, it begins to change the focus of how we can improve. Not just the work outcomes, but
also the quality of life. You know, like the quality of life that you have every day as a person working with other people. I, you know, have had a couple of clients who had very bad experiences in the course of their career and workplace, just either working in environments that were not designed for them and it was very, very taxing, or working with people who were very unskilled at managing or that just didn't care honestly about the human part of it.
And, you know, it's taken some time. If you've had a bad experience like that, it can take time to feel trust in a new work environment or trust with a new manager. And learning how to feel OK when things are going good might be part of your journey. I know it is for some of the folks that I've worked with. And if you're someone who's like, you know, and I always want to be considerate of my team and I don't want them to have bad experiences. That's amazing.
And it's great that you're asking those questions and thinking about what are the skills that you can bring to make that happen, to make that be true. So part of what I want you to be thinking about, especially as we're coming into the end of the year, great time for a reflection is I want to share with you these four toxic traits so that you can Start learning how to recognize and identify these toxic behaviors in relationships that you see at
work. And at this point, we're not trying to solve anything yet, you know, like it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but I just want you to feel more equipped to be able to recognize and identify something as, oh, that seems like that matches this, this toxic trait or this toxic, toxic behavior. Like it's a behavior that is going to undermine trust. It's behavior that's going to interfere with our ability to work well as a team. Oh, like that's OK. I see what's happening there.
Sometimes things will happen. And you might think that feels weird, but I'm not quite sure why. And so my hope is that this will give you some vocabulary and a gentle framework for organizing that experience and for understanding it in the context of work relationships. So for toxic traits, the first one is criticism or blame. And this looks like, you know, verbal attacks. So it's not, you know, attacking or, you know, or, or, or criticizing like somebody's work.
It's actually more like criticizing or attacking them as a person. That one that shows up, unfortunately, quite a lot. I think that's why it's first on this list. But the tendency to criticize, the tendency to blame others, you know, the tendency to make it about who a person is, like who they are not, you know, not the quality of work. It's, you know, if you've ever had someone say like, what the heck were you thinking? Like, are you an idiot? Like, are you like, why would
you do that? That kind is of response, not helpful. And that's the kind of thing that can create this chilling effect, a hyper perfectionism where people are so afraid to make a mistake that it just creates like lots of anxiety and lots of tension as opposed to someone saying, OK, like we need to talk about this. This did not go well. This did not go as planned or oh, like the agreement that we had was this and that didn't happen. You didn't do that.
Let's talk about why there's so many ways to offer feedback and to be constructive as opposed to being like personally attacking and bringing a destructive element into the space. So that's the first one. Pay attention, look for criticism and blame. The second one is contempt. Contempt. And that's where we see behaviors like, you know, somebody ridiculing or mocking somebody else. Eye rolls, that kind of gesture can be an expression of contempt.
And it's the kind of thing that can also happen in a very subtle way. So if you're on the receiving side of it, something might feel really weird or bad and you're like, I don't like, what is that? Like what, what, what just happened? And it could be that this person is demonstrating contempt in one of these kind of subtle ways. And it erodes that sense of trust. It erodes that desire to work together. And it can feel just really,
really bad #3 defensiveness. This is the one that I describe as puffer fish mode. So some folks that you work with, they just might get defensive really fast. It's like all of a sudden, poof, they puff up in these spikes and you feel like you have to handle them like super, super delicately because they just get defensive. In my own lived experience, I found that defensiveness and blame go very close together. So first someone gets defensive. What do you mean? Like, this isn't about this.
This wasn't my fault. And then all of a sudden they blame, you know, it was this other person's problem. It wasn't me. It's because of XY and Z. Like, what do you expect? And they can loop really, really quickly. The 4th 1 is stonewalling. And this one is more like the passive aggressive behavior. The person who kind of shuts down or disengages or just, you know, never contributes, never says anything. You might even ask them like, hey, how are things going?
Is everything OK? And they're going to say, yeah, things are fine. And you can sense there's more under the surface. And I think they're not being truthful. I think they're not being candid with me, and they're just telling me something to make me go away. Or this is just a way of being passive aggressive. Like something feels very chilly right now. And I don't think it's the temperature of the weather. It's more like the atmosphere in
this conversation right now. And one of the tricky things too, right? So we've got these four toxic traits, criticism and blame, contempt, defensiveness, or my, you know, you can think of it as that puffer fish or stonewalling that that passive aggressiveness or that shutting down, that withdrawing. And one of the things that I think is important to remember too is number 1. So we have different communication styles.
So sometimes something that seems a certain way, we might want to ask and get a little more information to find out like is my read accurate? Can I, you know, understand more like can I connect with this person and see what's going on?
And the other thing is that if you're working in a distributed team or in a hybrid or remote team where you are relying more on asynchronous communication, like you know, you're in different time zones, or because it's through written communication, whether it's e-mail or direct messages or Slack or chat messages. There are also lots of ways that we can have different reads of what those words mean.
You know, so much of, of being able to communicate effectively is not just in the words we use, but it's in the whole package. It's in the facial expressions, it's in the tone of the voice, it is in the way that we're conveying not just the language, but all of those other unspoken qualities. You know, that's why we use emojis is to add that color to what we're saying to signal whether something is, you know, light or warm or heavy or serious.
So communication is a very, you know, complex and multi dimensional skill that you have and it's all what you know, you're always communicating and you're always receiving communication and understanding what it means. So I wanted to mention that too because the last thing I need you to do is go around saying, OK, you're toxic For these reasons. You're toxic for those reasons.
I don't think you would do that. But I like to be explicit and clear, but instead think about these 4 qualities and just be curious as though you were a visiting scholar to your workplace. And if you had to notice, what is the level of criticism and blame I'm observing here? What is the level of contempt that I noticed in the relationships or communication? What is the degree of defensiveness that I can observe in this ecosystem? What is the degree of stonewalling that is present
here? Start from that place of curiosity, of just observing your environment, noticing what, if any, of these qualities show up. And I can probably guarantee that through the course of your career you're going to encounter these elements to some extent. So it's not bad if you encounter them.
That's kind of a normal thing. We just want to start organizing your thinking around them so you can be more deliberate, strategic, more intentional in the way you choose to work within that environment and how you want to lead others yourself. The other part when you start understanding the different ways of identifying these behaviors is you can then ask yourself, of these four, which is my favorite? Where do I go to when I am looking to, you know, express or exert a sense of power or
control over something? Do I tend to do more of the stonewalling? Do I tend to get more defensive? Do I become really frustrated and do I kind of drift into that criticism or blame space? Is it more of contempt? Like do I just not really respect people that I work with? And maybe it comes out as contempt sometimes you want to also be aware of, as a human, which one of these is most familiar to you as something that maybe you do from time to
time. And we're all human, so these are all within us as well, and different situations and circumstances can activate them. And what's nice is that once we start understanding kind of how this all works, then it allows us to become more responsive, less reactive, right?
And then the other thing, if you want to get really good and kind of, you know, growing your leadership skills, if you want to get better at addressing these things, then we are going to need to talk about developing your capacity for conflict, which I know it can be so uncomfortable for so many reasons, but it is part of the skill set. How am I with conflict That will help you then find ways to address this. The last thing I'll mention is there is this whole kind of lens of power.
So depending on what positions of formal power people have, that is also something to consider As you're making decisions for your own self, for your own team, and you know, the environment in which you're working. It is important to consider, you know, like what behaviors are are you observing and where in the power structure do people sit? Because that will also inform you know your options and your choices. So that is what I wanted to share with you today.
Just bring this as kind of a lens. Be curious about noticing things. It will also help you if you're able to take things less personally. This one I know is really hard, especially if you are feeling on the receiving side of someone else's toxic behaviors. But when I say take it less personally, what I mean is you're kind of observing someone and it's like, oh, that's interesting. It's interesting that they're choosing to behave that way towards me, towards other people.
It's also helpful to remember that if someone is treating you with blame, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling, you are probably not the first person that they have treated that way. Like the reason they're behaving this way to you is because they have behaved this way before to someone else, to others. Like this is one of their patterns, one of their choices. There's a reason why they think this is going to be a successful strategy.
And you might be on the receiving side of it, but it's not personal in the sense that like this didn't start with you. You're just the the person kind of in the line of sight right now. And what I found is that when we're able to have a little bit of that depersonalization, it then becomes much easier to find ways to address what's going on. And we kind of take it less to heart and it becomes less internally absorbed and less toxic and less draining.
So, you know, that's what I want for you. If you happen to work in an environment where there's a lot of this, we want to really care for and resource you for 1st so that you're not suffering unnecessarily or being unnecessarily drained and kind of caught in the teeth of this particular dynamic. So that is what I wanted to share with you. I mean, it's very interesting,
very exciting stuff. And I'm looking forward to teaching and coaching more on this as I've been gaining so much insight and learning more for my own self, my own skills. So if you want to learn more, if there's, if there's more help that you want, there are two ways to work with me right now.
You can work with me for one-on-one coaching and that starts with a conversation that we have about what you're looking for and how coaching works and what your goals will be. And, and you can do that by reaching out to me through my website or message me on LinkedIn. Links to all of that are below in the show notes, my website iskimnickel.com. Or you can join one of my group programs and I've got 1 coming up on communication strategies for managers.
That one will start in January of 2025, just around the corner. So sign up for that. If you want to learn in a group environment and you want more of a structured learning, that one is going to be a lot of fun. That one too. With the course, I include office hours, which are time for just open Q&A. And then there's the class time where I bring more like curriculum and there's more teaching and it's. Something that I teach live so we get to have a conversation. We teach live.
And yeah, like try it out. Come check it out. Links below to that. Links to that below, also in the show notes. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. I hope you have a great day and I will talk to you next time. When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your life, and when you're happier in your life, you're more effective at work. I can help. Go to my website, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.