Remediating Toxic Managers II: Better Solutions - ' Page Two '
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Lipman-Blumen argues well and has persuaded me that Toxies just get stronger with every unsuccessful attempt to correct them or push them aside, adding defensive techniques to their repertoires. Plus, they already excel at isolating out an individual for torment or targeting.
She suggests joining with others to confront the leader. Just as a baseball team in a slump won't fire all the players, the bigger your coalition, the harder it is to erase at one stroke. The Toxie's counter-approach is to try to fracture the coalition by firing some individuals or buying off a few. A confrontation, too, leaves the leader—reformed behavior or not—in place. That, in my opinion, is a poor idea.
When you have no alternative, this is a workable approach as long as you invest heavily in building and maintaining the coalition—it needs to be nurtured every hour because the Toxie is going to try to smash it and its members.
Lipman-Blumen's final approach is the one I generally favor: Join with others to overthrow the leader by meeting with him or her overtly. Again, the author believes that this only happens with a coalition with multiple constituencies (perhaps outsiders like customers or board members). And, I re-assert, you need to invest heavily in building and maintaining the coalition to survive the counter-assault.
Let me add an important lagniappe to the author's advice: Don't hire Toxies, and if you have them, don't promote them.
Most organizations are not healthy enough to have natural immunity to Toxies. I urge you to stop them in the two spots where it's easiest and least expensive in resources and casualties.
Don't hire them in the first place. Create whatever mechanisms you need to prevent them from getting in the door. One of my client companies was a very clever West Coast distributor of components. They were smart about people, but they liked to hire the "best" salespeople—those who were the best closers.
They knew they were taking some risk by hiring people who cared more about winning now than long-term relationships, but they had sophisticated technology to track accounts and felt they could control the reaction. They were wrong. One saleswoman stole some accounts and set up her own business (which failed), and a regional sales manager figured out how to spoof the tracking system to reward himself and select reps he had hired who kicked back some pelf to him.
I'll say it again: Unless you have no choice, don't hire someone you believe doesn't understand a shared fate—that in the long-term not only does he need to win, but the organization does too, equally.
Repair the flawed process that allows Toxies to advance
Don't promote them. You probably already have Toxies in the ranks of employees or even managers. Unless you are at death's door and have no other alternatives, do not promote them. If you can't move them out, you will have to invest resources constantly in keeping them from advancing to a wider span of control. Don't forget, they are very seductive as well as ruthless—the Ted Bundys of organizational development.
Whatever you do, though, don't wait for everything to turn ugly before you act.
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