Hi Reader,

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Welcome to another Rev Up for the Week, where every Sunday at 4.05pm, I give you a thought to help drive you forward in the coming days.

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This week, I want to talk about toxic bosses. Well, I don’t really want to talk about them at all, to be honest, but it seems every time I’m interviewed about ‘KIND’, someone asks me “what about the toxic bosses?”. So I figured it’s a question people want to know the answer to: “Should I still be kind if someone isn’t being kind back?”, “How can we build a kind working culture if the boss is toxic?”, “How do I handle an unkind CEO?”, and so on.

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Well, the answer I give is “it depends…”.

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If the unkindness is coming from the CEO or there’s a persistent culture of bullying and toxicity, then the chances are that, in the longer term, it's much more likely to affect you, than your kindness affecting it. If you’re swimming against the tide and the waters are also full of sewage, then sooner or later, you’re better off finding a new pool. You’d probably have realised that whether or not you tried to be kind along the way. As the old saying goes, “most people join organisations, most people leave bosses”.

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But if the unkind behaviour is occasional or accidental - and remember, the biggest source of accidental unkindness is busyness, and usually unkindness is neither conscious nor desired – then I think you have a chance to make some change. When you role-model kindness with a bunch of receptive colleagues, you can change the immediate culture quite quickly, and often desired or successful behaviours ripple out far across the rest of the culture, because people will see the results.

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As Michelle Obama said, "when they go low, we go high". When people who are capable of self-awareness and open to change kindness driving higher-performing teams, then it will slowly but surely start to affect the culture in a positive way (hint: psychopaths lack self awareness and arent open to change).

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The other way to think about teams and cultures is that you can have an incredibly kind micro-culture, built around one single leader or a group of solid people, that can feel quite detached from the wider culture. I have witnessed this several times in my career, where I’ve been in larger organisations with quite grey or even uncaring cultures, but where the day-to-day workings of my particular team were filled with joy because of one person’s ability to create that bubble of kindness that doesn’t act like the rest of the organisation does.

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As we know, kindness has a ripple effect, so the more you practice it, the more other people are inspired to practice it, too. And the science shows us that kindness is one of the best builders of important brain-chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin that we have. When HR people talk about ‘engagement’ or ‘wellbeing at work’, what they’re really talking about is the brain chemistry: in broad terms, do people feel calm, satisfied and connected to each other, and to the cause.

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So what can we do about bad behaviour? We can call it out, challenge it at source, and role model something better.

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What can we do about a toxic line manager? It depends on the individual and situation of course, but the options are:

1. You leave

2. Wait for them to leave, or

3. Wait for their behaviour and the resultant stress to slowly consume you

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(...and I really don’t suggest option 3 – life’s too short).

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Have a great week,

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Graham

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PS – If you’ve still not got your copy of ‘KIND: The quiet power of kindness at work’, you can get it here. And if you order two copies, we’ll also send you my 8 Ways to Kindness course, absolutely free. I've been really delighted by the reception I've had to the book out in the world - brilliant reviews, an FT book of the month recommendation and lots of great chatter on Linkedin. So if you haven't dived in yet, then now's the time to join 'TeamKIND' and let's make work better. Grab your copy here or order it from your local bookshop.

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