The Dysfunctional
Work Environment
by
Mitch Meyerson and Laurie Ashner
It took
Beth, a bright, motivated, 30-something manufacturer’s rep months to figure out
that what she was feeling wasn’t paranoia.
“I had to sell out of the showroom five times a month. I’d be with a customer and glance over at my
boss. He’d be whispering to the
vice-president. His hand was cupped over
their mouths. I stared straight at them, and they kept whispering. It was totally unnerving. How can you function with your boss walking
around whispering about you when you’re trying to work?
You
can’t. By some strange serendipity Beth
met a woman at an industry function who had dated her boss. They became fast friends. “You’re not imagining things,” the woman
said. “He once told me that the only
reliable management technique is fear.
One night he got totally drunk and passed out on my couch. Before he
went down he told me that his goal in life was to rip off every person who
walked into his showroom.”
Welcome to
the dysfunctional work environment--DWE, for short. Beth’s experience may sound extreme, but she
is hardly alone.
Kevin spent
nine years in another DWE. When he
didn’t get a memo and an agenda for the usual Tuesday morning meeting, he
didn’t worry. The department head was
new. Maybe the weekly meeting was going
to be a thing of the past. He spent the morning sifting through papers that had
been on his desk for weeks. He was
feeling good about himself when he looked into the hallway and saw his colleagues
coming back from what had obviously been the weekly meeting. It became clear that he wasn’t invited.
“Why wasn’t
I included in the meeting?” I asked my boss after a week of trying to get a
moment alone with him.
“To teach
you a lesson.” he said.
“A lesson? What lesson?” I wanted to know.
“If you
don’t know I’m not going to tell you.” He stood there grinning like the cat who
had swallowed the canary. I felt like I
was twelve years old and had left my new bicycle out in the rain.
“You hear
about these dysfunctional families where parents emotionally abuse their
children with their rages, unrealistic expectations, and addictions. Where do you think these people are from nine
to five? A good number of them are in my
office."
Claudia
Black, in her best seller, It Can’t
Happen to Me spelled out the rules of the alcoholic, dysfunctional family:
Don’t talk, Don’t trust, Don’t feel. She might just as well been speaking out
about dysfunctional work environments.
People who toil in them day in and day out know those rules well.
In the DWE,
employees pilfer paper clips pens, and legal pads and whatever else they need
to stock their home offices. They call
in sick, come in late, make long distance phone calls on the company phone and
Xerox a hundred personal copies when the boss is in the John. Why?
To reward themselves in an unrewarding environment.
In the DWE,
you’re not supposed to trust. Don’t
trust that you’ll keep your job, no matter how hard you work. As one man told us, “They make a big deal about
the fact that we signed a statement that we are employees-at-will when we took
our jobs here. You’ll have little
grounds on which to sue us if we abuse you is the take-home lesson. I came back from a business trip, and my boss
had moved my office into what used to be a closet.”
Don’t talk,
either. Don’t talk about anything that might possibly be an issue. Don’t talk about employees who quit and why
they quit. “They send a memo to the
shareholders about every change, every hiring and firing, all the news about
the bottom line and what’s really going on.
But employees never see that memo.
If you keep in contact with someone who left the company and got another
job, you’re digging your own grave.”
Perhaps the
most galling thing about the DWE is working with people who seem to thrive in
it. Certain employees capture the administration’s
heart. They progress no matter how
arduous the corporate ladder becomes.
The strange thing is no one else sees much redeeming value in the daily
work of these pets.
“There’s
some people here who always seem to take it all in stride, no matter how
ridiculous things get,” one woman complained. “I used to resent them. But now I realize these people have the same
success the physically or emotionally abused spouse has who is able to live in
unbearable circumstances, if you can call that success. They get hit hard, but
then they won’t press charges and make excuses.
Some people know how to duck the rages and take the punches when they
come. It’s peace at an enormous price.”
Clients
often dig in their heels when we suggest they leave their Dysfunctional Work
Environments. They have kids in private
school, a stack of bills to pay, a career in a field that is over-staffed. But sometimes something much deeper is at play. There’s a need to win over the disapproving
person, a continuation of the childhood struggle to overcome disapproving,
emotionally unavailable parents.
Add to that
the fact that the DWE thrives on the sketchy self-esteem of its employees. Just as the abusing spouse tells his or her
partner, “No one will ever love you if you leave me; you’re too ugly and
disgusting,” the DWE encourages employees to feel that if they can’t make it
here it’s because they just aren’t savvy enough for the job. These environments
keep their workers by preying on the normal self-doubt all of us experience
when trying to reach a goal. They try to
convince you that if you don’t talk, don’t trust and don’t feel, you’ll excel,
no matter how inept at your job you might be.
It can take several hours of counseling with an unbiased person to bring
you back to yourself.
To think
that you can’t find a better job is nonsense.
David is a case in point. “The
salon I worked for was part of a worldwide chain known for its innovation. Whatever haircut I did was never good enough,
even if the client jumped out of the chair and hugged you. To them, I could always do more. I did some
serious acting out in those days. I
worked hard all day and got drunk every night to escape the anger I felt. I didn’t realize it was part of the script
I’d been playing all my life. My father
was never satisfied. I always had to do
it again, and do it better. It was never
enough. I escaped him by hiding in my room. This job fit right in.”
“I told my
story to a therapist who said, “Your boss sounds controlling, manipulative and
unhappy.” I wanted to hug him. You really lose yourself under these
circumstances. I needed an unbiased
person, who could see the truth and bring me back to myself. I was so enmeshed in the whole environment
that I didn’t trust my own instincts anymore.”
David
bonded with several other employees and they left that salon to start one of
their own. It wasn’t as hard as he’d been taught to imagine. His salon is successful to this day, ten
years later.
You can
survive a dysfunctional work environment--but don’t expect to thrive in
it. It isn’t easy, and the rules are
never clear. Borrowing a platitude from
the twelve step programs, one needs to realize this: You didn’t create it and you can’t fix it. In
other words, the only person you can change is yourself.
Not
feeling, not trusting and not talking is the antithesis of creativity and
personal growth. Twelve step programs
teach that the only way out is through. It’s true.
The way out of dysfunctional work environment is through -- through the door.
Mitch Meyerson is one of the top
Business and Personal Coaches in the industry. If
you're tired of existing in a dysfunctional work environment,
set
up a consultation with Mitch to strategize your
way through the door, or if you want to share your Dysfunctional Work Environment
story. We can change the names to protect the innocent!
Just don't email it from work they may be watching
:) My
DWE story
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