The Impact of Toxic Managers on Team Relations
Some managers have certain traits that can harm relationships within a team. Minimizing the impact of these qualities can be a very challenging task. I will refer to such a manager as toxic ones and explain what this means, how it can show itself, and the negative outcomes it can cause.
Who is a toxic manager?
A toxic manager is someone whose behavior displays the following traits:
- They express their opinions without considering who they are talking to and how it may impact that person.
- They believe their viewpoint is the only correct one and refuse to compromise. If someone disagrees, they might rudely remind others of lack of their experience in the field.
- They fail to think ahead about how their actions might affect team dynamics and relationships.
- They try to boost their own ego by making inappropriate comments and asking unnecessary questions to showcase their supposed competence.
- They do not refrain from making discriminatory remarks based on factors like gender, age, or experience.
How can this behavior impact the team’s relationship?
Here are some examples from my personal experience.
1. Impacting team relationship
Alexa is a project manager who works with a team that collaborates frequently with another team on new projects. However, Alexa doesn’t understand how the other group operates, and she openly shows her dissatisfaction. She complains about the slow decision-making, numerous mistakes, and lack of accountability in the second team.
Alexa openly expresses her opinion, but she presents it as the only true and unquestionable one. She shares her negative views about the other team with her own, and, as a result, her team starts treating the second one the same way Alexa does — with intolerance, rudeness, and disrespect. This leads to deteriorating relationships between the groups and makes the problem-solving process even slower. Instead of completing tasks in a day, it now takes two weeks because of the strained working atmosphere.
2. Deterioration of personal relations
John, a 30-year-old team leader working on product development, attends meetings to discuss new features and resource optimization. However, during these meetings, he openly disagrees with the UX/UI designers, criticizes their work, and asks questions that make it seem like he doubts their competence.
As a result of these interactions, all meeting participants feel confused and demotivated. They question their own expertise and feel hesitant to work with John on the same team. The negative tone and attitude create an unproductive and uncomfortable working environment, affecting the team’s ability to come up with new solutions.
3. Breaking team relationship
Marina leads Team A, and they work alongside Teams B and C on a common problem. While everyone is involved, Team B takes the lead, and Team C contributes their expertise.
Team B proposes a solution that Team C needs to review and modify. Marina talks to the team leader of Team C and learns that Team B’s solution potentially won’t work. Instead of discussing it with Team B, Marina openly opposes their solution in meetings, suggesting starting over without even reviewing what was prepared.
Marina doesn’t consider how Team B will react to her disapproval of their solution, nor does she think about the impact on the team’s interactions. This can lead to dislike, negativity, conflicts, and complicated communication between the teams.
For me, such situations are critical and unacceptable in building effective work on projects. After all, in reality, a kind understanding attitude towards each other and a positive vibe in teams are a prerequisite for effective work. I will not wish anyone to witness the development of the events that I have described.
I sincerely believe that in the process of recruiting project managers, products, team leaders, etc., it is not enough to ask about Agile, metrics, and Git functionality. It is necessary to ask questions measuring their emotional intelligence. And what if such a situation happens, how will it be solved and how would you behave?
And, of course, this behavior is not incorrigible, it can be worked on and corrected. But in order to really understand the significance and consequences of one’s behavior, one must really realize the scale of the influence of one’s opinion.
