If you’ve ever worked in an organisation of any kind, you’ve probably experienced what we call a “toxic personality.”
Based on our research of over 400 leaders, we learned that a whopping 94% have had to wrestle with this problem. In this blog, we’d like to address one of the prevalent myths about toxic personalities — that you should give them feedback.
Some popular suggestions for feedback are ideas such as; letting them know how their behaviour is ruining their career, telling them that the promotion they so desperately want is about to be non-existent, or sharing how their behavior is affecting others.
Ever tried having one of those conversations?
Before we address this myth, we’d like to share what a toxic personality is. Any individual who demonstrates a pattern of counter-productive work behaviours that seriously debilitate individuals, teams, and organisations over the long term.
OK, so now back to the myth…
Give toxic personalities feedback = Myth.
Knowing that some toxic personalities are clueless about their toxicity, you can probably understand why feedback doesn't typically work.
There certainly are some contexts where feedback is going to be more effective. However, what we have discovered it that many leaders use feedback as the first and only strategy to change the toxic person’s behaviour even when it is clear that simply telling them what needs to change just isn’t very effective.Finally, most leaders just give up and put up with the behaviour.
But we have found that there are strategies you can use before giving up on feedback.
Obviously if the person is clueless about their toxicity and you have tried giving feedback and it doesn't work, you have two options.
First, make sure your feedback is concrete and behaviourally specific. For example, rather than saying, "Your attitude is really poor at team meetings," say…"I noticed that at meetings you interrupt a fair amount of the time, you attack people who don't agree with you, and you're on your Blackberry 25% of the time."
See the difference? It's much more difficult to argue hard data. Even more importantly, it's much more respectful to the individual to provide them with honest, direct feedback.
Second, you still may run into frequent roadblocks with the toxic person not accepting what you are saying by arguing and defending their actions. If this occurs, you may want to divert to a hard-court press, using a tight performance appraisal with all stakeholders involved or bring in an external coach.
It is a big commitment in time, energy, and money to invest in these solutions, so be clear on the goals that you have for the person and how they contribute to the overall goals of the organisation. In other words, make sure that the costs involved are well worth your investment in the person and their value to the company. Use whatever performance system you are most comfortable with, but make sure that it is behaviourally specific and addresses behaviors not just performance.
Even with the most careful language and approach feedback doesn’t often work because, according to our survey respondents, the toxic person most often sees that everyone else is to blame. In one situation with a toxic person, we gave very specific feedback and lots of relevant examples, but he countered us with: “I’m the only who has the guts to stand up to the leader….the only one who cares about the organisation…and the only one who has a team behind me…”
Uh, the team was “behind” him because they were scared to death of him of ever disagreeing with him!
This individual completely reframed the situation to point out what an asset he was to the organisation! Needless to say, the whole process was very stressful and not productive.
Now with all this being said, we’d like to invite you to share with us your stories regarding your success or failure with giving a toxic person feedback. In a future blog, we’ll share our remedies for making feedback work in toxic situations. We’d really like to hear about your experiences; successes and failures in giving feedback to a toxic person.
Dr Mitchell Kusy, an international consultant, has worked internally in several organisations including American Express Financial Advisors as head of leadership development. He is a full professor in the Ph.D. Program in Leadership & Change at Antioch University, and a 2005 Fulbright Scholar. Dr Elizabeth Holloway is a full professor and psychologist with over 25 years experience as a practitioner, trainer, and consultant with leaders worldwide. She has held faculty appointments at the Universities of California, Utah, Oregon, Wisconsin, and currently at Antioch University, Ph.D. Program in Leadership & Change. Dr Mitchell Kusy & Dr Elizabeth Holloway are both widely published individually and together they have researched and published Toxic Workplace! Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power (Jossey-Bass, 2009).
