Tips
According to HR Zone, the following situations are signs of a toxic leadership style:
- Focusing on negative things. A good team should focus not only on the negative, but also on the positive things that have turned out well and will also work in the future. If team members and even the manager themselves spread only negative ideas and thoughts, something is wrong.
- Coalitions inside the team. A team should always work as a single unit. If "coalitions" appear within the team and these then fight one other, this is a sign the team lacks a sense of unity.
- Badmouthing, bullying and aggressive behaviour. These intolerable types of behaviour very rarely appear in a team that is led in a good and positive way. A very bad situation arises if this behaviour is displayed or supported by the manager themselves.
What should be done?
If any team is led in a toxic way, the situation requires the intervention of top managers and the HR department so that order is restored. Support the manager and team members in achieving the following goals:
- Tolerance and respect. All team members should be shown tolerance and respect, both on the professional and personal level. Managers have to listen to every team member, ask for their opinions and take their thoughts into consideration.
- Diversity. A team should be heterogeneous. It is of course ideal if members get along with one another, but this cannot be achieved by putting together the same types of people. For the functioning of the team and good results, it is paradoxically best to combine members of various demographic, age and opinion groups.
- Freedom. Individual team members should have a certain freedom in their work. The leader should not micro-manage all their detailed tasks and they should be shown a certain trust in their individual skills.
- Safe environment. A working environment should be safe not only in the physical but also psychological sense. No one should come to work stressed out by relationships at the workplace, caused either by team members or the team leader. A team must focus on positive relationships and no one should be ostracised.
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