Forging Resilience

57 Nigel MacLennan: From Striving to Thriving in Toxic Workplaces

• Aaron Hill • Season 2 • Episode 57

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What if toxic workplaces aren't the exception, but the rule? Leadership psychologist Professor Nigel McLennan delivers a sobering reality check about workplace toxicity that will resonate with anyone who's ever felt trapped in a harmful work environment.

McLennan introduces us to the "toxic tetrad"—sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellians—who create psychologically harmful workplaces while masterfully presenting positive public personas. These toxic leaders excel at appearing productive while causing untold damage to those beneath them. Most troubling? They're experts at identifying and punishing whistleblowers who dare speak truth to power.

The harsh reality? Sometimes the only way to truly thrive is to leave. With approximately 97% of whistleblowers suffering life-changing detriment and little legal protection, McLennan acknowledges that our current systems often reward silence over integrity. Yet understanding these dynamics is the first step toward protecting yourself and, eventually, creating healthier workplace cultures.

Nigel's website PSY Perform

Or connect with him on LinkedIn

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership.

Speaker 2:

Today on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by Professor Nigel McLennan, a leadership coach, a leadership and performance psychologist known for his pioneering work in applied psychology, coaching, executive development. With decades of experience, he's worked with top organizations and leaders worldwide, helping them optimize their performance, resilience and leadership impact. He's authored numerous books on leadership, innovation and resilience, and his insights into workplace psychology have made him a sought-after expert. Mac, welcome to the show. Hi, aaron, good to see you. Likewise. Likewise, mac. To kick things off, we're going to talk about how to go from surviving to thriving in potentially toxic workplaces. But why might the listener want to stay around and listen? What key insights are we going to be drawing on for today?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think one of the most important things to appreciate is that there are many toxic workplaces out there. In fact, it may well be that non-toxic workplaces are the exception rather than the rule, and it's extremely likely that the vast majority of people, throughout the course of their working careers, will find themselves in at least one toxic workplace, if not more. So there's definite self-interest, survival self-interest in this, yeah great.

Speaker 2:

How do you define a toxic workplace or a toxic leader or a toxic team member, for that matter?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's actually very difficult and there's no standard, agreed definition on this, so I'll have to give you my best definition of it. It's a workplace, or indeed an environment, where the culture is psychologically harmful. It causes the person emotional distress. It causes them things like moral injury we can go into that in a while if you want. It undermines the self-esteem, it destroys their confidence, it sabotages their career, and probably one of the defining characteristics would be they spend a lot of their time a disproportionate amount of their time figuring out how to protect themselves from the toxins the human toxins that they're surrounded by, maybe even spend more time thinking about that than they do about their own job performance.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's quite a lot of interesting factors there and definitely most people will have experienced some of that at some stage. So your work, Mac, what does it revolve around and what might be one or two steps then for people who find themselves in those positions in terms of, yeah, that toxic environment.

Speaker 3:

Well, most of my work revolves around coaching leaders, senior leaders and many leaders with the best of intentions have either allowed or inadvertently created a toxic culture. But fortunately, the nature of the work I do, because there's a phenomenon in coaching which is possibly easiest to describe as thus Women in coaching, which is possibly easiest to describe as thus those who need coaching most seek it least, and those who need coaching least seek it most. So, because I've been coaching most of my adult life, most of the people I end up coaching are individuals who are already exceptional performers and they're just trying to get another quarter percent, half percent, one percent, those at the other end of the spectrum, the toxic leaders, the ones who really need coaching but would never seek it out. They very rarely come into contact with the kind of knowledge that we're going to be sharing today because they simply don't seek it out.

Speaker 2:

Is it possible, then, for an organisation to exist where the leader might have great self-awareness, be very coachable, spend a lot of his own time or company money investing in himself and his personal development, but there's still to be toxic, almost like bubbles remain in that organisation.

Speaker 3:

Yes, or him or herself, because, as you know, there are some amazing female leaders. In fact, I would contend that some of the best leaders in history have been female and some of the best leaders in the future will definitely be female. In fact, many of them, I'm sure, will be female. Yes, it is entirely possible for organisations to have a well-intentioned, conscientious leader, and yet there are toxic bubbles around the organisation. How? Why? Well, most toxic leaders fall into what I call the toxic tetrad, and these are leaders lower down. The organisation.

Speaker 3:

Toxic tetrad consists of sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists and Machiavellians, and the very nature of these toxic individuals is they're really good at presenting a positive public face and then, behind the scenes, in privacy, their toxicity causes havoc, usually to their subordinates, sometimes to their peers, sometimes to their superiors, but almost always those who report directly to the toxins are deeply psychologically damaged.

Speaker 3:

And the top leaders? If they're not in the toxic tetrad, they will have zero awareness of what's going on, unless some brave whistleblower comes forward and exposes the degree of toxicity that's going on around them. And then what happens is, say, the narcissistic sociopath, they go into what's called narcissistic rage, they'll start attacking the individual who exposes them, they will defame them, they will deny the truth, they'll engage in a process called Darvel, which is they will deny, attack their accuser and then reverse the victim and offender. In other words, they will turn themselves into the person who is being offended against. That's classic narcissistic or toxic tetrad behavior. So, yes, it is entirely possible for a top leader to have an organisation where there are pockets of extreme toxicity and then to have zero awareness of it.

Speaker 2:

If that is the case, where the said leader is picking up these groups, what might be something that they do to start to address that, given the fact that they're in a leadership position to potentially do so?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, this is a perennial question and you could have asked Julius Caesar this nearly 2000 years ago and I'm sure he would have had a very sensible answer. Let me give you a case history that would be really relevant to answer your question. In fact, there's a lot more behind this case history that we can unpack, but it does answer your question. I was coaching a leader many years ago and this leader, when he was eventually promoted to chief executive, he carried on the behavior that he had been engaged in when he was the head of operations in the organization, and that was he spent most of his time in the field. So here's how it would go he and his team would make a decision in the boardroom in, say, january, and he would know that it would take some time to trickle down, and he would know that he should maybe expect to see the results in March, april, may and the the. He would be out in the field speaking to the people who were implementing the very policies and procedures and organizational changes that had been decided all these months before, and the vast majority of his time and I really do mean the vast majority of his time was spent at the coalface with the staff who were customer facing, with the customers, with the managers who were managing each operational branch, and he spent vast amounts of time literally traveling around the country.

Speaker 3:

This was a national chain, a chain that had many, many hundreds of stores right across the UK, and his approach was that there's no point in setting policy decisions unless you're closing the feedback loop and finding out whether or not those policies are actually being implemented.

Speaker 3:

So there's multiple elements to that. There's, first of all, checking that the people who are implementing have everything they need in order to fully implement, and then there's the second characteristic of this, which is scrutiny, to make sure that if it is being implemented, it's being implemented in a way that satisfies the original intentions and not in some other perverse or altered way. So because he was constantly in this closed feedback loop, setting policy, checking the policy had been implemented and engaged in full and ongoing scrutiny, it was almost impossible for toxicity in that organisation to emerge, because he was so in touch with the members of staff right across the entire organization. So if a leader is well-intentioned and has no idea that there is toxicity going on in their organization, it's almost, in my opinion, almost always because they are not in touch with the people at the coalface and they are not conducting proper or effective scrutiny of the organisation, and that's one of their main legal responsibilities, of course.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so how might, if somebody's listening to this, reflecting on what's discussed so far, if maybe they already do recognise that they're in a toxic workplace or have a toxic leader? What are some of the things the early? Or for those that aren't, what's one of the early warning signs in real life examples that we could draw on from your, from your experience, mike?

Speaker 3:

The early warning signs are big red flags. They're usually broadcast right across the organisation for anybody who wants to see them to see them. Almost always when there's a toxic organisation, there is duplicitous and toxic leadership. So, for instance, you'll have leaders who will say one thing and do the exact opposite. They will ask staff to do one thing and they will do the exact opposite. They will be engaged in spin. The truth will be widely known in the organization and yet the leaders will be deliberately misrepresenting the truth to not just the staff and the stakeholders, including customers, but also to regulators. You'll find that such individuals they're leading in order to obtain status and power and credibility, other than to serve. They're not servant leaderships. It's all about them. Any leader who's even a partial member of any part of the toxic tetrad sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists or Machiavellians they will inevitably create a toxic culture.

Speaker 3:

Another early warning sign is poor leadership Leaders who lack empathy, who lack accountability or integrity. They tend to set a negative tone. They create distrust. You'll find in those organisations that if individuals, if other organisations go in to do an assessment, you'll find an endemic breakdown of trust. And when trust breaks down across an organisation, the entire organisation becomes dysfunctional because trust is the absolute core of any effective organisation, and if trust is broken down, you no longer have an effective organisation. Another one you find is poor internal communication. Information is being deliberately withheld from staff. It's not being openly and honestly shared. That breeds confusion, it creates rumours and it creates resentment amongst employees. In fact, there's a colloquial phrase that explains how people feel about this. They say I feel as though I'm being treated like a mushroom, kept in dark and fed on.

Speaker 2:

You can swear here mate, treated like a mushroom, kept in dark and fed on. Yes, you can finish the sentence. You can start here, mate.

Speaker 3:

You can finish the sentence. You'll find favouritism and nepotism. You'll find unequal treatment, where promotions and rewards are based on personal favour rather than on merit. That erodes morale and trust and fairness. You'll find such leaders creating destructive internal competition, setting one group of people against another or one person against another. You'll find people who are. You'll find that those leaders are making expectations of unpaid work, setting unrealistic workloads, expectations of unpaid work, setting unrealistic workloads. The staff are paid for a fixed salary, monday to Friday, nine to five, say 37 hours, or 37 and a half hours or so on, but they're expected to work 60, unpaid. That's a classic indicator of a toxic culture. You'll also find that there's tolerance of bad behaviour. When a junior or a middle manager is abusing their power or is harassing their staff or is engaged in unethical actions or behaviour and it seems to benefit the organisation, a blind eye will be turned to it. So when there's blind-eye-itis towards toxic behaviour lower down in the organisation, you can be absolutely sure there's high levels of toxicity at the top level of the organisation.

Speaker 3:

And, as we talked about before, lack of scrutiny. There's a phrase I use with clients, which is this where there is no light, darkness soon takes over. In other words, where there's no scrutiny, it is inevitable that dodgy behavior will start. It's just going to happen. There's just no possibility of anything else. Lack of accountability and this is another classic one. When mistakes are ignored. Leadership mistakes are ignored or they're blamed on others or they're swept under the rug. Mistakes are ignored or they're blamed on others, or they're swept under the rug, or there's a finger pointing blame orientated culture. That's extremely toxic and very, very damaging to individuals. Feedback where there's no effective feedback, or where honest feedback is punished or prevented or blocked or spun in some way that's another classic warning signal of a toxic culture. Clinging to updated practices that's another classic one.

Speaker 3:

I had a case many years ago with an organization I was working with. In fact, I can probably tell you about this. I was working with MFI, and the year I was working with them they won the National Training Award as a result of me working on the management training systems, and IKEA had just come into the UK market at that time and I pointed out to them that there were some major competitive issues. And here's how the conversation went. I had just moved house, I just moved house and I needed a coffee table for my lounge, because it was a lounge that looked odd without something in the center of it. So I went to trying to be loyal to the company I was working with at the time.

Speaker 3:

I went to MFI and I tried to order a coffee table. I wanted to pick it up and I found something that was absolutely ideal. It was just exactly what I was looking for and I was told it would take about six weeks to be delivered. And I pointed out that they had one sitting there and I'd be quite happy to take that one if they wanted me to, and that was. I was told that that was display only and that they operated a six weeks order to delivery model. Well, I couldn't get the coffee table I want, so I went down to Ikea and I found a nearly identical coffee table and, as you know, of course, with Ikea you go down to the warehouse section at the bottom of their store and you can pick it up, take it home and assemble it.

Speaker 3:

Well, an hour later I had this coffee table assembled in my lounge and I went back to have the conversation with the people at MFI and told them that there might be a bit of a problem with the business model if somebody who was trying very hard to be loyal actually found it better to go to one of their competitors, I was told. I'm sure you'll recognize these words. Oh, you don't understand how we do things around here. We've always done it this way and this is our business model. And, of course, I pointed out that this business model might actually have just been superseded to the point of a corporate collapse. Well, you know how it all panned out in the end.

Speaker 3:

And if I did get taken out of the marketplace by IKEA's instant delivery scenario. So when people resist change, unfortunately that's another indicator of toxicity, because one of the key responsibilities of any key leader is to be in touch with the marketplace. This is why this previous leader I was telling you about was going out to the marketplace all the time. He was speaking to the people who were at the coalface. One of the key responsibilities of a leader is to stay in touch with the moves in the marketplace and indeed the best leaders create moves in the marketplace to provide better customer service, better products, more reliability, et cetera, et cetera. The worst leaders, I'm afraid they just polish the brassies on the sinking ship Titanic. Yeah, there are lots of red warning signals of toxicity. I think I've probably only listed about 10 or so, but there are many, many more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I get the impression there is a lot. So, mac, if we were to zoom out, then slightly in your opinion. So, mac, if we were to zoom out, then slightly in your opinion what's causing so many companies? Or toxic leaders and I've got a follow on question in regards to the MFI, ikea and the marketplace, but I think that's the first one.

Speaker 3:

In your opinion, if we were to zoom out on a societal level, is creating such so many toxic workplaces? Um, I I think the the key thing is is this and for those who are not uh into the the history of the development of the, of entrepreneurial culture in the west, I probably need to give some background information um, the the economic growth that that took place, that men made the industrial revolution possible and then made everything that we're all surrounded by possible. One of those factors was the creation of the limited liability company. So the limited liability company takes the personal risk away from an individual or a group of individuals who want to set up a company. The idea is this Nobody is going to risk financial wipeout to try and help society if it all goes wrong and they're going to be left bankrupt as a result. So the limited company was created in order to encourage people to take the risk.

Speaker 3:

So the limited company is what's called a legal fiction. It's treated as though it were a live human being, and the limited company can be taken to court as if it was an individual, is directed by individuals to do something dodgy, something toxic, something unethical, something illegal, a regulatory breach, the limited company is sued, not the individuals who directed that illegality, and only if a director of a company engages in extreme illegality will they ever be prosecuted. So essentially, what we've got is a mechanism to create legal impunity for illegal acts. People can engage in illegal activity under the shroud of a limited company that they could never get away with if they were doing it on the basis of being a private individual, and that, unfortunately, while it's also created, in my opinion, the economic growth and the massive growth of wealth over the last 250 years that human beings have seen it has also created the tendency for organisations to behave in the most despicable, unethical and corrupt ways, because the directors of the organisations know that they can pretty much do as they like with complete legal impunity. Interesting.

Speaker 2:

Going back to your example of the IKEA model and the outdated click to purchase, to delivery, and the instantaneous or the capacity to have things on demand. Yeah, I'm just wondering can we always trust the market?

Speaker 3:

When you say trust the market, you mean trust human beings as a collective to make a decision about what it is they want to buy, or trust the people who are providing to the market.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the people who are providing to the market.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, before I answer this, I should say there are some really ethical people out there desperately trying to do the right thing. They want to provide for their customers, for their shareholders, for their staff and want to do so in an ethical and responsible way. However, when they are put at competitive disadvantage by the unethical, duplicitous behavior of others, sometimes they can be wiped out, they can be put out of business. There's a phenomenon in the UK just now which is getting some public attention, which is this there's an act called the Public Interest Disclosure Act and that is an individual who reports wrongdoing going on inside an organization is theoretically, under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, protected from retaliation by those who are breaking the law inside the organization. The wrongdoers Theoretically theoretically 97-ish, sometimes it's 96%, sometimes it's 97%, depending on which year you look at of whistleblowers who have suffered life-changing detriment as a result of doing the right thing to protect the public are not supported by the courts. They have their cases dismissed. So we have organizations that A that are pretty much individuals and dodgy individuals and organizations who are pretty much legally immunized from prosecution unless they do something really, really criminal, like kill somebody or something like that, and we have the courts not supporting people of integrity, uh, standing up to do the right thing of the public. So it's little wonder that, given those two factors and there are many more given those two factors that we see so many corruption scandals on a daily basis and so many toxic organisations perpetuating their toxicity year after year after year and still being able to function somehow or other despite the known toxicity, I think maybe people, the population, have resigned themselves to.

Speaker 3:

This is just the way things are. Many organizations will be corrupt and there's nothing we can do about it, and we all have to have jobs. So we go out and we work for these toxic, corrupt organizations Now, that's not to say all are. You know, as I said before, there are many organizations out there that are an absolute joy to work in and for and they do the right thing. But there are many out there where people are going into work day after day after day and they're suffering moral injury as a result of having to work in such a toxic and unpleasant environment. They feel as though they've got no choice and they know what would happen to them if they whistled blue and they spoke up about the illegalities. They know that would be their career, reputation and livelihood finished in an instant. So they stay silent. They become silently complicit, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, if that is that person finding themselves in that organisation, if they can't leave or don't want to leave and are not prepared to maybe whistleblow given that it seems like quite an uphill struggle to do so and not going to go in their favour, what are some of the personal things that people can do to, yeah, to help help themselves set themselves up for, for managing the toxicity or the, the moral injury or the psychological damage that's potentially there?

Speaker 3:

well, the people. People engage in a process called cognitive dissonance, which is that they'll use various reasoning gymnastics with themselves to justify continuing in a thoroughly unjustifiable situation. One of the cognitive dissonance techniques is blind-eye-itis. That is, they see it but they pretend they didn't see it. They know what's going on, but they, they. They argue with themselves that, um, there's nothing I can do about it, and and and if I did anything about it, that would be the end of my livelihood. That would have a knock-on effect in my family. So society has created a mechanism that actually makes it smart for me to say nothing and keep my mouth shut. So people justify it in in also in all sorts of ways.

Speaker 3:

I remember many years ago I went to um, I won't say which country, because this country is trying to solve that problem just now I went to a country which is, uh, notorious for its level of corruption and I was picked up at the airport by a taxi driver and I said the usual hellos and asked the person about their life and tried to engage in a pleasant, rapport-building conversation and within seconds the taxi driver had turned the conversation to corruption and I thought that's rather odd. And then the next time I went into a shop to get something, within seconds the conversation started to corruption. Just about everywhere I went, there was people talked about corruption. In the same way that Brits talk about the weather. In this particular country, people talk about corruption. It's the go-to conversation. And eventually I started to be curious about this and asked some of the people who had started this discussion I'm not starting it, I don't know about corruption in their country, and asked them how they cope with it.

Speaker 3:

And they all basically the the french shoulder shrugging type thing, which is that this is the way life is. You've got to accept it, you know, and and if you try and fight it, you're just making a rod for your own back. You're delusional, it's widespread, it's institutionalized, etc. Etc. Etc, et cetera, et cetera. So people cope with it by realizing or normalizing it in their own head, even if they don't want to be actively involved in it and most people don't want to be actively involved in it. They still have suspect it's. It's a case of using cognitive dissonance to to to accept that there's nothing you can do about it and if you do try and do something about it, you'll be destroyed. So might as well just buckle down and get on with it yeah.

Speaker 2:

so if we were to flip that, then if somebody does decide they want to do something, how can they go, or potentially one or two things they might be able to do to go from surviving or thriving, as we alluded to in the beginning of this conversation, in those toxic environments?

Speaker 3:

To thrive in that toxic environment. I'm afraid.

Speaker 2:

Run away.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, yes, absolutely Getting out and then licking your wounds from moral injury might be the best thing to do. But if they can't get out, or they believe they can't get out because this is all based on belief structure, of course, if they believe they can't get out because it's too difficult to find another job or the reputation of the organization is already so toxic that no other employer wants to take anyone who's come from there and I suspect that might well be the case with the post office in the uk just now uh, aaron, would you like to recruit a senior manager from the post office? Not this week, not this week. No, so maybe they feel as though they they can't get out. Um, how, how do they? How do they deal with it? Well, one of the options is, quite frankly, to use that old civil service phrase, to go native, in other words, to become part of the problem and try and make the best of it. They can.

Speaker 3:

Some people will try and get their pound of flesh out of the toxic environment, if they can, can, and some people will go from being silently complicit into being actively complicit, not because they wanted to, but because they felt as though they had no choice. They felt trapped and the longevity of their silent complicity was such that they crossed the line. In other words, they turned a blind eye. When it was now obvious that they turned a blind eye, that they could be held to account for having turned a blind eye, so others, other, more toxic individuals in the organization, can say well, you were party to doing nothing about X, y, z. All I'm asking you to do now is do a little bit more of the same. And then suddenly they've crossed that line from fully silent complicity to fully active complicity. So many people do cross that line. Um in in enron, for instance, almost all of the senior managers must have known about it in the sbm scandal that that was the Monaco scandal with the whistleblower Jonathan Taylor, everybody in the senior levels of that organisation must have known. They must have known about what was going on. It would just be impossible not to know what was going on In the BBC with the Jimmy Savile scandal. Vast numbers of people knew what was going on. None of them could prove it, but they all suspected what was going on. And the only person who went public on it I don't know if you remember Johnny Rotten going public on BBC television making the accusations, he was banned from BBC. As a result, the only person who spoke up about the Jimmy Savile outrage was banned from being on the BBC.

Speaker 3:

So many, many people do make that journey from silent complicity into active complicity. But for those who don't want to make that journey, they've got the option to try and encourage the individuals who are behaving badly to behave properly. However, in the majority of instances I suspect that they will be seen as the problem, not a team player not engaging in collective responsibility. Those are the classic phrases that are thrown at people who want to upset the nice, cosy, corrupt apple cart, and I suspect that they might find themselves being subjected to false accusations and then malicious investigations, abuse of the investigative process and then ultimately either destroyed or fired or charged with something, as was the case again in the post Office, particularly for the whistleblowers who spoke up. Those who resisted what was going on were the ones who seemed to be most viciously treated.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, it's a difficult one. How do you thrive in a toxic culture without becoming one of the toxins? I'm not too sure anyone's ever come to a sensible accommodation of that impossible squaring that impossible circle or circling that impossible square. We sort of wait around.

Speaker 2:

It does lead to ponder some bigger questions of zooming out and really what might we do as individuals to help create better environments for our staff, for people that work alongside us as well?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I've often pondered that question myself and thought what on earth could we do about this? Because this is not a new problem. This has been going on through the generations. We're just more aware of it now because of social media. People report their experiences quite widely. What do we do about it?

Speaker 3:

Do we decide that we're simply no longer prepared to work for toxic bosses, for toxic organisations? Okay, well, in the meantime, how do we make a living? And if we're the first person to put our head above the parapet, are we going to get shot down like a tall poppy, to mix some metaphors. Or if we were to call a national anti-toxicity strike, where everyone who believed they were in a toxic organisation would simply choose not to go to work one day in order to have a mental health day and protect their mental health, how many people would actually support that? Or would the vast majority of people say I'm not going to join that strike and label myself as one of the troublemakers and then be subject to the very toxicity that I've then complained about when I go back to work? I'm not going to go there.

Speaker 3:

I think until we've got proper laws in this area, we're not going to change anything.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's happening. Yeah, to have the top cover almost, to be able to follow through with the whole process and have that legal top cover know of a single case.

Speaker 3:

maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't know of a single case of the health and safety executive prosecuting a leader or a group of leaders for creating psychological toxicity at work, for creating a psychologically safe environment to work. I don't know of any cases like that. And if the health and safety executive are not prepared to take that kind of legal action to prosecute those people who are creating toxic cultures, I just don't see any way in which a normal member of staff can be protected from toxicity by the state. I just don't see how it's possible.

Speaker 2:

Again with the work that you've done. What advice might you give to somebody who is about to raise their head above the parapet in terms of their own personal processes to put in place to be able to withstand this, what potential be a quite a bumpy ride and probably drawn out. Is there anything that you might suggest that individual to do?

Speaker 3:

yeah, the fact I've felt many whistleblowers over the last four years and, uh, vast majority the vast majority of them would say don't really. Yeah, they've all had their lives, reputations, mental health, uh, and livelihoods destroyed, every single one, and only a tiny, tiny percentage of them have had any form of redress. So it may be that we've actually not you and I individually, but we as a society we may well have created an environment where toxicity is encouraged, where doing the right thing in the public interest is actively decouraged, and it may actually be career, reputation and financial suicide to do the right thing.

Speaker 2:

We're not painting a rosy picture today, but I think it's definitely something that provokes uh interesting conversation and all the more reason to to fully do our research and understand what, what we're walking into before we start committing to, to certain projects, teams or jobs absolutely, and you're right, it's.

Speaker 3:

It's not a rosy picture, um, but it's probably better to to realize that the, the roses grow with thorns and they grow in rather unpleasant substances beginning of their stage. But sometimes even those toxic organizations can create some fantastic outcomes. Not in a pure way, but the rose still creates a beautiful aroma and a beautiful visual aesthetic, even though it's actually quite a toxic place and way in which it grows. It's not a rosy picture. To carry on that rosy metaphor.

Speaker 3:

Do want to do the right thing in the public interest. The one thing I've observed over the years is that the people of integrity, who stand up to do the right thing, who fare best, are those who've collated the most evidence of wrongdoing. So my suggestion would be, if someone's in a toxic environment, gather any and all evidence you can for as long as you need to, because you never know when you will need it and you can be absolutely sure. If you're in a toxic environment, the individuals about whom you have concerns, about whose behavior you're concerned, they will have no qualms about making false accusations against you. They will have no qualms about making false accusations against you. They will have no qualms about denying that certain conversations took place, they will have no qualms about deliberately misinterpreting what you said. They will have no qualms about defaming you and otherwise destroying you. And if you know that that's coming down the line, if we're doing the right thing, then gather evidence, gather evidence, gather evidence and keep gathering evidence.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, just to play devil's advocate to this and just gently challenge, for the sake of conversation, mac, what's the chances of this, the toxic bandwagon for want of a better word, even though it's not the one but just becoming a a symptom of a weak society and we're just, we're just collapsing in on on what we've already created. It's always been there.

Speaker 3:

We should just toughen up and get on with it yeah, and that that's, that's one of the coping mechanisms that many people adopt. Uh, they'll say pretty much those words to themselves. Toxicity is just the norm. It's just the way human societies are. And if I'm going to thrive in in this society, then I've got to accept that I'm going to be exposed to toxicity on a regular and ongoing basis and I've got to protect myself against it. And and here's how I'm going to protect myself against it and then they'll come up with a series of strategies to do so. It may well be that, uh, you know it's, it's. It's a bit like it's a bit like warfare. You know people are going to um shoot high velocity pieces of lead at you in warfare and you know you don't go home and cry to mummy about it. You accept that that's just war and you carry on and do the best you can. And it may be that psychological bullets being fired at people is part of life and we're never going collectively do anything about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, on that point there, matt, what suggestions might you have for people to up their level of personal resilience, given the amount of toxicity that there is around?

Speaker 3:

Well, perhaps to answer that question, we maybe look at what is resilience it's yeah, it's actually quite difficult to to define that.

Speaker 3:

There's no agreed um definition and it seems to be. The definition seems to vary from one context to another. But let me give you some of the the kind of colloquial definitions that might work Bounce back ability. So that's suggesting that resilience is about overcoming temporary adversities, persistence in the face of adversity, and that could be ongoing Resilience could be a multifaceted process of ongoing adaptation to challenges. In other words, it's a series of skills that we have. So that's a skills-based definition. Or it could be a series of empowering internal and external behaviors that manifest as persistence. In other words, it can be part cognitive, part thinking pattern, part emotional habit, part behavior and part belief structure, or maybe all of those things have to be involved in resilience. It's really quite difficult to pin down, and you might ask the question then well, if we can't pin it down, let's accept that we've got a vague definition, that we all know it when we see it.

Speaker 3:

Where does it come from? Why are some people resilient and others are not? Well, it seems to be that there are a handful of variables that are causal or creative of resilience. For instance, motivation. When people are really really motivated for a particular goal. They seem to keep going in the face of all sorts of adversities, and they seem to keep going when everybody else falls by the wayside. So it might be the level of intensity and commitment that a person has to achieve a particular goal that creates resilience. It could also be a sense of self-efficacy. So if somebody believes in themselves I am capable of doing X Y Z and that their self-worth is tied to being able to believe in themselves and being able to achieve X Y Z, they're more likely to continue, because their self-identity is threatened If they don't continue. It would shape foundations of who they are.

Speaker 3:

So maybe the belief in self-efficacy is the driver of resilience. Or it could be their values. Some people value particular things. So, for instance, somebody who values integrity and doing the right thing in the best public interest. Maybe that's the kind of person who stands up as a whistleblower and reports the wrongdoing and they're prepared to take brickbats that they inevitably know come their way because they're living their values, and then they have to be remarkably resilient to go through what they know they're going to go through. Or it could be that the perceived rewards make a person persistent. So we know that when someone is offered a life-changing reward for something, they will persist, be resilient much, much more than they would be if they were just offered some casual thank you. Or it could be perceived risk much, much more than they would be if they were just offered some casual thank you. Or it could be perceived risk Someone's perception of risk could make them resilient. So if an individual believes that their friends and family are at risk if a particularly toxic nation, for instance in actually Germany in the Second World War, is not defeated, they might be prepared to go to war to protect their friends and family and the things that they value, because the perceived risk of not doing so is so high.

Speaker 3:

The level of self-responsibility can create resilience. If a person takes total responsibility for every aspect of their being, their psychology, their beliefs, their emotions, their behaviors and so on, and they are aware of their own processes, they might be thinking that the way to achieve whatever it is they're trying to achieve is quite simply to keep going in the face of adversity. You know, like the Grand Canyon was carved by the tiny Colorado River. If you've been to the Grand Canyon and you look at the Colorado River from the top of it, you can see how small this thing was, and it's carved out this enormous space just by keeping going over millions and millions of years. So it could be that self-responsibility is a feature. I could go on. There are many, many other features that could be responsible for resilience, but it does seem to be that it's a key feature in overcoming toxic organizations.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, Mack. Well, I've thoroughly enjoyed today's conversation. Lots of things to think about, more questions than answers, which is always a good sign, I feel. But is there anything else that you feel that you would want to mention before we start to close out today?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, perhaps we can talk about some of the factors that can encourage resilience, can build it. Here's a handful of them. One is to be optimistic.

Speaker 3:

We know that people who are optimistic are more resilient than people who are pessimistic. We know that when people acknowledge the reality of a situation so not necessarily accepting it, they're just acknowledging the reality of the situation they're more likely to try and come up with strategies and methods to overcome any adverse situation. And if they take their minds and focus on potential solutions, they're much more likely to be resilient and keep going in the face of adversity. So if their mind is focusing on all the problems, their resilience will collapse. But if they're focusing on potential solutions to deal with the problems, they're much more likely to keep going. And, as I've said before, if they take total global responsibility for every aspect of their own lives, they're much more likely to be resilient and cope with toxicity.

Speaker 3:

If they've got themselves into a mindset of being a victim, if they change that to moving from being a victim of circumstance to being a victor over circumstance, that can change their mindset dramatically and if they build up a support network.

Speaker 3:

So in toxic organizations there will be a handful of toxins, human toxins and the vast majority of the rest of the people will be the victims of those human toxins. Or if they gather together, they could be victors over the circumstance. In other words, if they create support groups where they figure out how they're going to cope with the toxic individuals that they're having to cope with and if they develop a flexible approach to dealing with the toxicity as it emerges on a day-to-day basis, rather than having a one-size-one strategy-fits-all approach. If they're flexible in the approach, they will be light on their feet and able to respond to the current reality rather than any perceived yesterday reality. I could go on and on. There's so many more factors that we could use to focus on, such as being proactive in dealing with it, such as learning from one's previous mistakes in dealing with the toxicity and developing better strategies, having got rid of the ones that didn't work before, and so on.

Speaker 2:

so there's so much more we could go into yeah, it seems to me they fall into three, three or four categories along the lines of mindset and the way that we see things, the emotional regulation, um, and the way that we process things, as well as the, the support and structures that we put in place to, to, to build those.

Speaker 3:

But that's what I should.

Speaker 2:

That's what I should have said yeah, but I'm just summarizing what you said because I haven't got as many keywords to hand. But um, that's, that's what I'm sensing I?

Speaker 3:

I totally agree. Yes, it's a. It's a lovely summary of of the key factors. Uh, thank you no, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, mac. Listen, today's been absolutely brilliant, right? Um, if people wanted to get in touch with you to find out a bit more about you or the work that you do, where may? Where may they find you?

Speaker 3:

yeah, they can go to umsyperform, P-S-Y and then the word performcom, which is my website, and on there there's a contact page. Or they can go to drnigelmcclennanuk, which is my psychotherapy website, and again they can contact me through the contact form on that page.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, Mac, thanks again for your time today, thanks for your insights, thanks for sharing all your probably a smidgen of your knowledge, but I've thoroughly enjoyed today. It's been great to speak to you, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Aaron, thanks for your really insightful questions, much appreciated. Take care.