Companies that focus too much on results while overlooking aggressive behavior to meet those goals are unintentionally encouraging bullying that harms employees’ mental health, says an article this week in Fast Company.
Not only do these managers get away with bad behavior but they’re often promoted largely because their employees feel the pain if they don’t deliver on expectations. This makes the workplace bully look good, says Teresa Daniel, author of Toxic Leaders and Tough Bosses: Organizational Guardrails to Keep High Performers on Track.
“When this occurs, the toxic leader not only is credited with getting results, but he also receives the related promotions and rewards, largely based on the great sense of duty and loyalty that his people feel to the organization – but not to him,” the article says.
Daniel writes that toxic work environments result in the defection of 1 in 5 employees at an annual cost of $44.6 billion to U.S. organizations.
The article cites research to examine why toxic leaders act the way they do, and why companies reward them even while claiming they want the opposite behavior. Check it out.
