Organizational Toxicity

Conceptual Overview

Painful emotions, arising from events such as unexpected and disruptive changes and difficult interactions with bosses, colleagues, and customers, are ever-present in organizations. As Frost has noted, such pain is not in itself toxic but becomes so in the face of others' harsh, insensitive, or indifferent responses to it. As a result of these responses, individuals who are hurting may infer that their feelings do not matter to those around them and may begin to disconnect from their work and work-places. Because they focus on the pain they are feeling and its perceived sources, their energy becomes channeled away from work issues, affecting their commitment and loyalty to the organization. Over time, the vitality drains away from these individuals and, as those around them are affected, from the organization at large.

Frost identified several sources of toxicity in organizations in particular, noting the seven deadly “ins” that are associated with some toxic bosses. Intention describes the role of malice in generating toxicity, seen in managers who intentionally create pain in others, seeking to degrade or undermine them. Incompetence in dealing with people is a second source of toxicity. Managers who are indecisive or unpredictable, or those with a very high need for control and who micromanage their employees, are likely to create toxicity in those who work for them. Third is infidelity. The manager who betrays others by breaking confidences or promises is a significant source of toxicity in organizations. Other managers suffer from insensitivity, lacking empathy for others' feelings and awareness of how their own emotions affect other people. A fifth source of toxicity is intrusion, in which the constant demands and high expectations of a charismatic boss whom employees wish to please intrude far into employees' nonwork lives. Sixth, toxicity can be generated by institutional forces: everyday company policies that are at odds with everyday practice or organizational practices that are dishonest or misleading. Frost calls his seventh source inevitability, referring to unavoidable organization events that cause emotional pain. These include the basic work of leaders as they carry out the necessary requirements of their role, generating toxicity by failing to attend to the pain inevitably created by their actions.

Toxicity in an organization may be rooted in several of these sources at once, generated not by a single incident or relationship but through the recursive interplay of certain actions and negative emotions. An example of this was described by Maitlis and Ozcelik in a study of toxicity-generating decision processes. Here, managers' incompetence in the face of certain institutional forces, displayed through their hesitation to enact a painful performance management policy, combined with their insensitivity toward the affected employees, generated widespread and intensely felt pain in the form of feelings of anxiety, apprehension, anger, indignation, fear, pity, and embarrassment. Although in this case and many of those discussed by Frost, toxicity stems largely from the attitudes and behavior of management, pain can also turn toxic through the actions and inactions of a variety of stakeholders, including customers, board members, and employees at various levels in the organization.

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