Spooky Workplaces:
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

FulfillingWork Newsletter articles regularly focus on how to make the workplace more effective and enjoyable. This month’s article, coinciding with Halloween, covers some of the scary ways in which people make the workplace frightful.

Try these suggestions to create an awful, de-motivating workplace full of toil and trouble:

Reinforce a False Sense of Urgency – Make sure each project you request from your staff is an emergency that must be handled ASAP, make it top priority. Be sure to add in unrealistic deadlines, require evening and weekend work and never say “thanks” when people deliver.

Let Conflict Brew – Even small conflicts when left to fester will leave a lingering taint to the workplace. Don't allow enough time to talk through the real issues — just enough to let the tension surface again and again.

Never Laugh or Lighten Up – When difficult issues come up, tell people: “It’s a job! You’re supposed to hate it!”  If people start enjoying work, you must be doing something wrong.

Enforce Stupid Rules With a Heavy Hand – Don’t answer any questions about why the rules exist, or what purpose they serve.  Have severe consequences for non-compliance, and use those employees taken down a peg for not following the rules as a miserable example to any others who might consider thinking for themselves.

Provide Vague Expectations – Your organization’s job descriptions provide sufficient information on what people should be doing.  It is just too time-consuming to work through all the details people keep asking about.  Let them figure this stuff out on their own.  Besides, if you get into the specifics, they’ll only start demanding that you spend time helping them on their issues.

Maintain a Steady Diet of Negative Feedback — Focus your attention on what people are doing wrong. Tell them immediately how they could have handled it better. Use body language and emotions to help the person understand just how badly they have messed up.  Negativity blossoms with only a little encouragement. Don’t let yourself off the hook either – each week review all your mistakes, and list the top three that make you feel the worst.  Then don’t forgive yourself for making those mistakes — ever.
 
Don’t Train Employees — Training only leads to trouble. Staff will start questioning the “way things are done around here.”  They’ll want to initiate their own plans, get focused on improvement, and ask for a raise.  Or perhaps they’ll leave after receiving training, which means you have to go through all the trouble of posting the job and interviewing again. Either way it’s trouble.

Be Aloof and Distant — If you are approachable or available, people will want to talk to you and engage you in their work. Employees should know better than to bother you with their petty problems, but they don’t.  Be clear that you don’t have time for the “little people.”  When you want to hear from them, you will let them know.

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Perhaps you have worked with co-workers or managers who seem to have subscribed to these ways of working. If so, I’m sorry to hear it, but not surprised.  We have a long way to go before workplaces become positive, engaged, learning environments that  honor our humanity as well as our productivity.  Inside your own sphere of influence, even if it is just your own thinking, strive to shine a bit of light in the Spooky Workplace darkness. 

Jessica Hartung, is the founder of Integrated Work Strategies, a professional development firm creating a future where people enjoy learning at work. Since her first job as a cashier at age 14 for Main Pharmacy in Downers Grove, IL, Jessica has been studying workplace learning, management practices and how to align them with our authentic human nature. Jessica provides senior-level coaching, facilitation, executive education and consulting to corporations, non-profit and government organizations.

For more information about how Integrated Work Strategies can assist you with your workplace challenges, please contact us at 303-516-9001, or visit our website www.integratedwork.com.