Everyone has qualms with some aspect of their job.
Maybe it’s long work hours or boring, repetitive tasks. Sometimes the people we work with can be annoying and intrusive, and many of us have struggled to work with a horrible boss.
If you’re dealing with a toxic workplace, what can you do about it?
Once you feel like the stress of your job is interfering with the rest of your life, that’s when those annoyances can actually become harmful to your physical and mental health, said Tessa West, a psychology professor at New York University and author of the book “Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works For You.”
“You really need to take a good record of what your daily stressors are and when you’re not sleeping, when you’re not eating, when you’re starting to fight with your kids and your spouse, and really look at the cumulative effects of those things and see how they’re actually kind of bleeding over to affect your daily life,” she says. “That’s when we have to start questioning, ‘Is this the right job for me? Is this the right place for me to be?’ ”
5 questions with Tessa West
What are some examples of toxic coworkers?
“We’re probably all very familiar with a micromanaging boss, that person who seems to work all the time, but not really get anything done because they’re looking over your shoulder all of the time. At the same time, they can also be a neglectful boss because while they’re micromanaging you, they’re ignoring other people.
“Probably the most annoying coworker is the kiss-up, kick-down. The boss loves them. They’re extremely good at impressing people in power, but they really torture people who work at the same level as them and people who are beneath them. I think those people are very tricky to manage because everyone seems to really like them.
“I would say the most psychologically damaging ones are the gaslighters, those are the ones that really can isolate you, trick you into working for them, and really make you feel like you’re working towards something important or make you feel like you’re completely useless and the only reason why you’re still here is because of them.”
What can you do about a micromanaging boss?
“I think our intuition is to go to the micromanager and lead with our feelings. ‘Why don’t you trust me? What is it about me, or what is it about you, that is making you behave this way?’ And I think instead you should actually put your emotions to the side and focus on what the end goal is. When you do that, it helps your micromanager see that their own behavior is actually harmful to themselves.
“So instead of getting them to wake up and say, ‘Oh, this is hurting the people I work for,’ getting them to realize, ‘My behavior is actually also hurting my own progress,’ is important. So when you do that, and you sit down and say, ‘OK, we want to get this report done. What’s it going to take to get there? Let’s figure out what those steps look like.’ Then they start to see how they’re interfering with their own progress by going in and editing that Google Doc every five minutes and changing those sentences. From there, you can then come up with a little report or plan of how you’re going to get there.”
What should you do if a coworker is undermining you or taking credit for your ideas?
“I think you need to figure out if it’s a culture problem, honestly. I think a lot of us try to take this on as an interpersonal problem. You need to actually ask around, find the people who have relationships with these individuals, and see if this is something just very common in this workplace.
“More often than not, the answer to that question is yes. This isn’t a person problem. This is a culture problem. This is a norm problem. That’s when you need to ask yourself, ‘Is this the right job for me?’ If it is a person problem, then you need to build out that network. You need to really work those connections to help deal with the problem, not try to manage that person on your own.”
How can you deal with miscommunication or generational differences?
“Give people the benefit of the doubt, and when in doubt, just get on the phone and talk to people. I think we don’t do this enough. We have communication that is text, it is Slack, it is email, what scientists call asynchronous communication, the stuff that happens where we’re not actually talking to one another. Get on the phone.Have that quick two-minute call the minute things seem off. It tends to solve the problem really, really quickly, and it doesn’t take very long.
“I’ve gone into organizations and solved generational problems. They were all just about emojis where, you know, younger generations use them. They tend to be much more informal in their written communication. They see it as a means to an end, just to get stuff done, whereas older generations are more formal, and they think you need to speak formally in written word as a form of respect. And so there’s all this miscommunication going on.
“So don’t assume that you know someone’s intent or tone based on whether the ellipsis is there, whether there’s all caps, whether they’re screaming at you or they need to or not with those caps. Get on the phone because chances are, there are some generational divides, and those younger people using emojis, they don’t mean to disrespect you. That’s just how they talk to one another. That’s how they have been raised with their digital world, whereas older generations see that and they think it’s strange and disrespectful and doesn’t belong in the workplace. So those divides are very much a part of what’s going on right now.”
How can you keep yourself sane and healthy until you can find a new job?
“You have to create little pockets of stress relief and end-of-the-day rewards for yourself to get through the day. If I accomplish this, I get that coffee, I get that drink with a friend. If I’m feeling stressed, I’m going to go for a walk. Think of your day in terms of little chunks with stress relief bubbles in between those chunks, and I think that’s really the only way we can get through incredibly stressful jobs with no way out right now, is putting little reward structures in throughout the day. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get through these tough jobs that honestly none of us can quit right now.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Samantha Raphelson produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Raphelson also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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