The Idea in Brief
Who takes the heat in your company—quietly shouldering others’ sadness or bitterness, listening compassionately, offering comforting suggestions, softening collective pain? Toxic handlers, no doubt—enduringly trustworthy, calm, and nonjudgmental individuals.
These unsung heroes perform the usually thankless job of saving their companies from self-destruction during traumatic times—relentless change, layoffs, abusive bosses, competitor blindsiding. Attuned to their organizations’ human aspects, they drive toward organizational goals—by managing others’ pain.
Should the bottom line take priority over a “warm and fuzzy” corporate culture? Quite the contrary: Pain management directly powers financial performance. Toxic handlers enable smart, energized people to keep contributing great ideas despite pain—ensuring their company’s success.
But managing others’ emotions is exhausting, and toxic handlers risk burnout themselves. To keep them at their posts, acknowledge what they do—then support them.
The Idea in Practice
What Toxic Handlers Do
Listen empathetically. A project manager at a public utility headed by an abusive new CEO let people vent their anger in his office. They walked away calmer.
Suggest solutions. Just listening isn’t enough. A VP of a bank experiencing tension between arrogant new MBAs and clerical workers counseled both parties on treating one another more tactfully.
Work behind the scenes to prevent pain. A toxic handler, seeing a talented employee demoralized by her difficult boss, negotiated to move her to an upbeat department—without revealing the plan to her.
Reframe difficult messages. One handler translated his boss’s “Tell those idiots to get their act together by Friday, before they’re doomed!” into “Let’s put our heads together to see what we need to do to meet [the boss’s] deadline.”
How To Support Toxic Handlers
Toxic handlers risk burnout—including sleeplessness, depression, and panic attacks. Pushed to their limits, they may even leave their companies. Losing them, or becoming known as a miserable place to work, quickly corrodes your bottom line. To prevent this outcome:
Acknowledge toxic handlers’ existence and importance. Thank people who serve as toxic handlers. Encourage focused discussion of organizational pain and their role in alleviating it.
Help toxic handlers share their experiences. Arrange meetings where they can talk, decompress, rejuvenate. Hire experts to help them process pressures, manage stress, and learn to say no.
Reassign at-risk handlers to safer zones. Give an overly stressed handler a break; e.g., send him to a work conference featuring plenty of rest and relaxation.
Model healthy toxic handling. Teach handlers to stay healthy in their inherently unhealthy roles by balancing work and personal lives with family time, exercise, and administrative help. Set an example of staying calm amid turmoil.
Make toxic handling obsolete.
- Create rituals encouraging public grieving. One company, acquired by a former competitor, formally eulogized the firm. The ritual helped employees embrace their new situation.
- Hire external consultants as surrogate toxic handlers. They can provide more objective feedback than internal managers can—if they’re trusted and credible.
- Provide stress-management training to decrease the need for toxic handling and teach handlers to nurture themselves.
As a senior project manager at a public utility company, Michael had thrived in his job for nearly a decade. His team of 24 engineers worked quickly and effectively together and was often the source of creative ideas that helped the rest of the organization. All that changed, however, when the utility’s board brought in a hard-charging CEO and made Michael one of his direct reports. “He walked all over people,” Michael recalls. “He made fun of them; he intimidated them. He criticized work for no reason, and he changed his plans daily. Another project manager was hospitalized with ulcers and took early retirement. People throughout the organization felt scared and betrayed. Everyone was running around and whispering, and the copy machine was going nonstop with résumés. No one was working. People could barely function.”