Why You Dread Work: What's Going Wrong in Your Workplace and How to Fix It

Helen Holmes

• Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781913019242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Ever felt that lurking sense of Sunday night dread? It's not just you. In this warm and empathetic guide to the modern workplace, find out exactly what's going wrong in your workplace – and how you can improve your working week. Drawing upon expert research and employee interviews, Helen Holmes looks at questions such as: Why are some colleagues so headache-inducing? How can you focus when you're being bombarded by emails and meetings? Are you being fairly paid relative to your colleagues? Fear, lack of focus and unfairness can do major damage to workplace culture, but they can be overcome with goodwill, purpose and trust. Holmes offers empathy and pragmatism for anyone who's ever contemplated quitting their job and running for the hills – and provides inspiring case studies and practical tips for crafting a better working week, one step at a time.

Part I

Fear

Chapter 1

Other people

After being in business for a number of years, many organizations are graced with the dubious honour of some kind of scandal: a punch-up, a torrid and highly visible liaison, a stapler chucked across the office in a wild rage.

I’m not talking about those stories.2

I’m interested in low-level bad behaviour: those apparently minor frustrations that appear to be routine, possibly even sanctioned by a business. Take simple, old-­fashioned lack of civility.

Rudeness

One evening I go to see the comedian Michelle Wolf at the Leicester Square Theatre in London. She’s vivacious, sharp and holds the crowd captivated. As I always make the mistake of thinking other people spring fully formed to greatness, I’m surprised to learn that Michelle had a very different life before stand-up comedy: she used to work on Wall Street, first for Bear Stearns and then, after its acquisition, for JP Morgan.

Michelle has said of her experience there: ‘The way that my job on Wall Street helped me [with stand-up] is that, in the corporate world in general, sometimes people are so mean to you for absolutely no reason, and you just can’t take it personally. People used to yell at me all the time, right in my face, and you just learn that it’s not about you. That helps in comedy a lot.’

I suppose it’s helpful that corporate life gave Michelle the resilience required for the gruelling business of stand-up, but – ­seriously? Why did she have to learn this from colleagues – adults in a highly professional environment? What happened to common civility?

Workplace rudeness is on the rise: 96% of US employees have been subject to workplace incivility and 99% have witnessed it. Between 1998 and 2005 the number saying they were treated rudely once or more per week almost doubled.

A head of marketing at a consultancy tells me, ‘My boss openly criticises people in the business, all the time. He regularly calls people stupid or demeans the junior members of my team when they present to him. He snaps things like, “if you’re just going to read out the slide, don’t bother”.’

Another executive took voluntary redundancy from a professional services firm after ‘battling’ a new boss, based in the US, who never met her face to face: ‘My first ever encounter with him was when he phoned me up and was yelling down the phone. I still don’t know what I had done wrong.’

It’s crushing when you come to realize that rude people and bullies don’t disappear when you leave the playground behind: you just about recover from the first bunch at school only to encounter them again in the workplace. In fact, the workplace is a bit like school: it’s the same, arbitrary ­throwing-together of very different personalities. You all have to get along, but how will it pan out? Those hopeful that reason and justice will prevail are probably the same ones who used to get their lunch money stolen.

On occasion, you may suspect that people missed out on their true vocation of a career in the dramatic arts. A VP of Programme Management tells me, ‘I had a boss who would say things like, “we’re going to take a baseball bat to so-and-so”, or yell that we’d all go to prison if something didn’t get done. That was his actual terminology.’

Of course, not everyone is horrible: most people in a workplace are lovely. However, it only takes a few rotten apples to ruin someone’s day. And an abrasive attitude spreads. Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, the authors of The Cost of Bad Behavior, are experts in how workers react when treated rudely. In one study, they found that 25% of managers who admitted to having behaved badly said they had been uncivil because their own leaders acted rudely.

Perhaps there is a leader further up the ranks who is unpredictably fierce, which keeps everyone on edge. Perhaps he is jovial for a moment of small talk before launching into a sudden verbal tirade, meaning that everyone is constantly nervous in meetings. ‘Sports-related chat … last night’s restaurant … ha ha!’ Then – SLAM! ‘Why haven’t you made your numbers?’ This kind of leader prides themselves on being terrifying except with a few inner-circle chums. That’s tough on everyone else, who soon finds there’s no way to get through to them. That is, unless they invent a time machine, go back twenty years and somehow happen to be their best friend in college.

This stuff gives most sensible people a headache: it doesn’t take any more time to be polite than it does to be abrasive, and bullying appears utterly superfluous to the business of making money. This means that most forms of rudeness are, quite simply, an unacceptable power play. Rudeness says: I am more important than you. I need this from you and I do not care about you – not even enough to be civil. Ouch!

Who hijacked my radical candour?

Why are these individuals tolerated? Sometimes, people are misusing the idea of constructive conflict, which has become a buzzword in management circles. It’s one of those trendy, ­counterintuitive things, like it being fine to fail as long as you fail fast. Robust dialogue, candour, radical honesty – call it what you will – the idea is that companies discard their fake harmony in favour of constructive challenge, to get things out in the open. Olann Kerrison, a VP for a financial firm, loves the concept. ‘I hate that culture of everyone nodding but no one actually agreeing,’ he tells me. ‘It makes a mockery of meetings. People are constantly kowtowing to each other, out of some misplaced desire to avoid conflict. Then, all the real decisions happen in the corridor afterwards, and others feel out of the loop.’

The problem with constructive conflict is not the rationale, which is unarguably sound, but the fact that it can get hijacked by abrasive people, or those with a political agenda of their own. The idea is that you critique ideas not people, but it appears that not everyone has got the memo.

One executive at an international media company tells me, ‘I’ve seen some horrific deliveries of “feedback”. In one example, the victim put the phone down, left his house for two hours to calm down and then booked a week off, because he couldn’t bear to be at work. People have no idea of the damage they can do.’

A marketing director agrees, telling me of the time she saw a colleague openly criticized in a meeting: ‘He struggled to work with me afterwards, because I’d seen him humiliated. The problem is that the damage doesn’t stay contained in that moment – there’s an invisible ripple effect. People carry it with them.’

One executive in an accountancy firm felt that ripple effect for himself: ‘Once, in a meeting, I challenged a difficult peer about something he’d done wrong, keeping it neutral like you’re supposed to. He lashed out with a personal attack. “You did this and that? I’m very disappointed in you.” He made it utterly personal and emotive – all to distract from the fact he had made a mistake.’

When misused, robust dialogue gives people carte blanche to launch into unguarded criticism, protected by their assertion they’re ‘just telling it like it is’. Too often, someone is left blindsided by the very public criticism they’ve just received. This can also be a great way to wound people twice: first be rude to them and then, if they react, imply they’re not strong enough to take honest feedback.

Before too long, you can almost forgive people for finding they miss their nice, fake harmony. After all, if your peers can verbally lash out at any moment, how safe is it to raise your hand or voice an idea?

Favourites

Abrasive behaviour sometimes goes unchecked because the perpetrator is a favourite of the boss, meaning they’re protected – even if they’re unpleasant or inept.

A scientist working in the pharmaceutical industry tells me an all-too-familiar tale over lunch one...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Why You Dread Work
• Half title
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Author’s note
• Extra half title
• Introduction
• Part I – Fear
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Combating fear: ideas
• Part II – Focus
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Focus: ideas
• Part III – Fairness
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Fairness: ideas
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• References