If you are a business leader working to create a great workplace built on trust and respect, the typical company grapevine and rumor mill can work against your best efforts.  The people who tend to run these unofficial underground communication systems may not always be healthy for your organization.  These seemingly untraceable messages can work against your great workplace strategy.  In other words, the water cooler can be a toxic meeting place.

Not everyone will join the great workplace movement with your leadership team, even though they are proven to be the most financially successful, innovative, creative and long-term successful organizations.  Not everyone wants to play nice.  And there are those who prefer to create turmoil and misery in the workplace.  Toxic employees and managers can feed the unofficial communication pipeline with questionable information merely to stir up controversy.

According to grapevine experts, the majority of water cooler talk doesn’t really happen at the water cooler any more.  Employee chatter, rumors, gossip and grapevine banter transpires at company kitchens and breakrooms across America.  Although a certain amount of communication through the grapevine is to be expected – and can be utilized as a positive tool by leadership – the vine can cross the line and hurt innocent people inside or outside your organization.

When leaders work to create a great work environment, it is a good idea to squelch rumors fairly quickly to prevent people from getting hurt.  Observing the grapevine participants allows leaders to determine who may or may not be a good cultural fit.

In companies where there is little communication coming down from the top, grapevine traffic will increase to counterbalance the information void.  The problem occurs when the information being distributed through the vine is purely speculative, untrue or aimed at individuals that could be devastating.  Leaders need to be careful not to be held hostage by the gatekeepers, gossips, rumormongers and snitches that can overrun a company if they are not properly dealt with, according to Paul Falcone, a human resource executive and best-selling author of several human resource books.  He defines the different types of grapevine participants, as follows:

• Gossips: These folks typically initiate unfounded rumors.  They obtain power from having the “scoop.”
• Rumormongers: Perpetuate rumors even if they are completely untrue, lack a foundation in truth or could damage the reputation of a coworker.
• Snitches: This role is fairly self-explanatory.  Snitches derive their power from sharing juicy information that is usually hurtful to others.  Playing the role of a tattletale is just plain wrong.

When someone volunteers a juicy piece of information while you make your morning or afternoon run to the break room, do you choose to participate, even if the information could be hurtful or degrading to a fellow employee? It is best to live by higher standards and refuse to listen to or perpetuate company gossip.  Creating a great workplace requires a certain amount of discipline.

Image Credit: A.V. Club

When the day is sunny, cloudless, warm and bright, I am at my best.  In fact, most people I know prefer the light and enjoy being outdoors when the sun is shining bright. Even your indoor time is better because you know the outdoors are so beautiful.  It makes you want to open the windows and let that good stuff inside.

I have found the same holds true in the workplace.  It is good to keep things well lighted.   Bad behavior tends to occur during the cover of darkness.  Not only is it a good idea to light your actual office or work area, it is also a best people practice to light up your company culture. The company culture needs a good dose of light to keep things headed in the right direction because negative and toxic actions most likely happen in darkness.  In the famous Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the worst behavior of the prison guards occurred during the nighttime when fewer people were around to watch them beat and torment their prisoners.

Toxic managers, office jerks and bullies only survive because they are allowed to spread their toxic venom under the cover of darkness. This darkness comes in the form of leaders looking the other way, human resource professionals siding with inhumane treatment of employees, posting code of conduct policies that are not followed by leadership, Alpha Males who are allowed to create mobs to terrorize individual targets in the organization, coworkers who don’t want to get involved, CEO’s who prefer to keep high-performing jerks regardless of the body count, or the mere fact not one leader is brave enough to step forward and call out the toxic individual’s behavior.  Firing an employee should not be an easy or enjoyable process but sometimes it is needed to save the organization.

Is there sufficient light in your organization? Do you have the official policies but subversive work is conducted behind the scenes in the dark of night?  Is there open communication up and down the organization? Start a revolution of light. Walk into the light and bring some people with you.

Image: iStockPhoto

Before taking a position with a new company, how does one avoid a toxic company culture? Applicants are well within their rights to interview current employees to obtain honest feedback on the company culture. If you are not allowed to interview existing employees of your choice, this could be a sign your future employer is hiding a toxic workplace. For those in the job market, the following are potential clues a workplace has a noxious work environment.

1. Employees are not allowed to voice their honest opinion on workplace issues.
2. Employees fall in or out of leadership’s favor without explanation, and as a result, are included or excluded from company events, projects or meetings.
3. Employees with opposing viewpoints are not welcomed visitors to the executive suite. \
4. Employees are fired without warning or explanation, nor are they given the opportunity to address the real issues leading to their departure.
5. Receptionists and assistants tend to be beautiful, attractive eye-candy for chauvinistic executives.
6. Overweight people are routinely urged by leadership to exercise and made to feel inferior to their slender coworkers and leaders.
7. Employees are expected to assume heavier workloads and work excessive overtime while legitimate requests for headcount increases are denied, all while the company is promoting the importance of work/life balance.
8. Employees with excellent reputations are abruptly fired or transferred because their performance is suddenly unsatisfactory.
9. The human resources department is viewed by leadership as an administrative function or transaction facilitator rather than a partner in developing great people and work environments.
10. The human resources department merely follows orders from leadership and is afraid to question company practices.
11. Rude behavior is routinely allowed.
12. Employees who treat people with trust and respect are considered weak and not management material.
13. Tough, no-nonsense supervisory behavior is rewarded.
14. Executives are assigned reserved parking spaces.
15. The CEO and his/her executive team rarely walk around the office to visit with employees.
16. Company information or news is not consistently shared with the entire workforce.
17. Employees routinely read breaking news about their company in the local newspaper or online news services rather than from internal company publications.
18. Press releases are distributed to public media outlets prior to employee distribution.
19. Political views of the leaders are expressed to employees, and the employees are expected to blindly support and/or vote for those causes.
20. Executives have their own restrooms.
21. The company has a code of conduct policy but does not provide regular training to leaders or employees.
22. Employees are expected to intuitively know what is expected from them without explanation and can be disciplined for not following these unwritten rules of conduct or performance.
23. Employees who raise legitimate company issues are summarily terminated without cause.
24. Executives hire C-level and professional staff outside the approved recruiting process and do not carefully consider the recruit’s management style or their potential impact on company culture.

Anyone can have a bad day and lash out at a coworker. Civilized people will later apologize for their poor behavior. On the other hand, there are certifiably rude people in corporate America who have made incivility, rudeness and verbal abuse a way of life in business. The companies who employ these violent neanderthals in business suits should beware of their negative consequences.

In a recent behavioral study reported by Harvard Business Review, it was determined that workers on the receiving end of verbal abuse became impaired in their ability to perform tasks. According to researchers, “their studies indicate that after exposure to rudeness, people think hard about the incident—whether just ruminating or trying to formulate a response—and those thought processes take cognitive resources away from other tasks.”

“The mere thought of being on the receiving end of verbal abuse hurts people’s ability to perform complex tasks requiring creativity, flexibility, and memory recall,” according to Christine Porath of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Amir Erez of the Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida.

The study also found the environmental impact of rudeness to be very profound and overreaching to even those outside the receiving end of the abuse. Researchers stated, “Verbal abuse affects more than just those who experience it directly; it apparently can harm innocent bystanders.”

If you want your company culture to deteriorate with increasing doses of fear, risk aversion, inability to make decisions, and lack of communication, employ or promote rude people. In other words, trying to create a great workplace while employing rude people is a recipe for failure.

It is common for business leaders to allow executives, rainmakers, and movers and shakers to behave in a rude manner, including verbal and psychological abuse. Leaders falsely believe the rude rainmaker’s contributions overcompensate for the toxic venom they spew in the office. Some mistaken leaders believe a toxic tyrant’s abuse causes employees to work harder.

Do you want to build an energized, profitable and high-performance organization? Require your leaders to take a stand against rude behavior. At times doing the right thing is difficult—it calls for strength of character—but it brings great rewards. The CEO must weed out abusive employees no matter their position in the organization. By doing so, the organization can return to an environment conducive to creativity, flexibility, productivity and profitability.