A box underneath the table

The strict and difficult manager noticed that the suggestion box was missing from the wall beside the time clock. He began to ask around to see who knew what had become of it.

“You!” he yelled at one of his employees. “Where’s the suggestion box?”

“I don’t personally know, Sir,” the employee responded.

“But the office gossip is that it’s under your desk, wired, and ticking.” There is a time bomb ticking, and all set to go off with toxic leaders in the workplace as they are about to lose their good people because they are no longer willing to take the abuses.

In the US, “The Great Resignation,” as it is called, describes some 41 million workers walking away from their positions, many in search of better conditions. So, employees have decided mainly to stop taking it. No longer are they content to tolerate bad bosses and the toxic environments they propagate. The only problem here is that the wrong people are leaving. It’s the bad bosses that should be on their way out. Unfortunately, for the most part, they aren’t, despite massive numbers of resignations because of them.

Why is it too difficult to understand that companies with good leaders always perform better than the ones with abusive leaders? “Destructive leadership significantly decreases employee job satisfaction.” Why do these awful executives manage to keep their jobs? Until now, it’s been a question that most have been content to treat as rhetorical. How many times have you heard a typical conversation, like: “He (she) is such a difficult person to deal with, but it just so happens that this person is a High Performer. This boss is dangerous, and we do not trust him. Everybody hates him, and most people fear him (her).”

The reality here is that you can buy some time with this high-performing jerk of a boss, but that shelf life is short. These “toxic geniuses” (As Simon Sinek would call them) cause high attrition and lose their good people at least or create such a toxic culture that decreases the business’s competitive edge or, worse, would see the deterioration of its business. When this happens, even the toxic genius’s performance will decrease. These “boss jerks” will begin blaming others and call them inefficient staff who are not up to their standards, which would explain why business is slowing down. The problem is that the immediate leaders know who these toxic geniuses are, but they deal with the devil as they focus more on their high performance and ignore that they are losing people to the competition. You may be asking why this is happening. That the higher-ups are “ignoring” the issue? Perhaps it’s mostly a courage problem or, at the very least, one of conflict avoidance. The usual justification is: “I want to confront them and let them know their faults. Perhaps send them to training or even remove them, but if I remove them now, it will be too much of a shock to the system, and I am not going to do this, especially now that the economic landscape is so uncertain.”

In my experience, however, there is hope. Many “difficult leaders” have been sent to leadership training. They may have been hesitant at first. But after going through the program, they realized their mistakes, reformed, and improved the situation. The same people are coachable and willing to change and improve. When they do, things become better.

In many cases, the same “boss jerks” who need the training would resist it the most. The standard excuse is, “I would rather be selling and making more money for our business than waste my time attending these useless seminars,” to the dismay of the HR people or the senior executives wishing they would.

There has to be a managed process to bring this about and generously help people do their job efficiently and work with dignity. Business organizations should have a plan for managing the process. A program that would not allow the propagation of toxic culture brought about by toxic bosses: perhaps every company should conduct a “values audit,” to point back at the company values advertised on their websites, corporate office walls, or on LinkedIn pages about “teamwork, collaboration and integrity, etc.” to ascertain that companies operationalize their values into observable behaviors that form part of their performance system.

This is a critical initiative your company would want to embark on this new year. Reallocate your funds for your other company activities and put your bet on your leadership development training program, as it would yield better returns on your investment. Build a better culture and remove toxicity. After all, culture is defined as “The way the leaders behave.”

(Francis Kong’s podcast “Inspiring Excellence” is now available on Spotify, Apple, Google, or other podcast streaming platforms.)