Toxic leaders, Amazon rumours & my mistakes
Ten years ago I resigned from a workplace that made me anxious and miserable.
From the first Monday morning meeting on my first day, I knew it wasn’t for me. The most senior person in the room belittled a dynamo of a woman I’d already clocked was a radiator of great energy and insight.
It didn’t get better from there: I was so utterly miserable that at night I would press my heart against my husband’s sleeping back to try to absorb his tranquillity and get some rest.
Here is the shocking thing: it took me over TWO YEARS—minus a maternity leave that I rushed into just so I didn’t have to show up—to resign.
What I learned
👀 Admit the truth from the start
What I saw and heard and felt were real. My mortgage, childcare and career concerns shouldn’t have overridden that knowledge. The sooner I admitted the truth, the sooner I could plan another way.
♟ Not black and white
I spent so long trying to fix my way out of the problem, that I let it blow into a crisis. Then—during my lunch break—a wise friend told me to go back to the office, get my coat… and go home forever. This resulted in a pretty chaotic year fishing for fivers down the back of the sofa.
❓ The best question to ask?
One that Margaret Heffernan has taught me since.
“If you had done everything, what would you have done?” In this case, I could have:
had more and better conversations with my boss and others
asked for a three or four day week while I figured it out
taken a sabbatical
requested a transfer within the company
got a coach
applied for a different job...
So Many Things.
What brought it all back was the news this week from Amazon: allegedly they are experiencing a turnover crisis with an unprecedented 50 VPs resigning in the last year. Citing policies and a culture that sound toxic, an email has leaked from a senior program manager, Sarah Schnierer, who was the founder of group of working mothers known as (hold onto your breakfast) the “Momazonians.”
She wrote:
“As I leave Amazon, I struggle between the pride I feel for the Momazonian community and the disappointment I have in the lack of progress Amazon made for women with children over the past few years,”
“While it has been an incredibly rewarding place to work, the pressure often feels relentless and at times, unnecessary. Employees are burnt out.”
To understand the full impact of a toxic culture, have a look at this report from Revelio Labs, which found that a toxic corporate culture is a 10x better predictor of the likelihood of people leaving an organisation, than what people think of their pay packet.
So, if you’re one of the many people we have interviewed since the New Year who is considering leaving their job in 2022 (some data suggests it’s one in three employees ):
admit what the real problem is
don’t confine yourself to black/white stay/go thinking
write down what you would do if you you’d done everything. Everything.
And if you are a leader in a toxic organisation, FIX IT before everyone leaves.
Good luck.
Next week
A board member told me that the (predominantly male) boards she sits on think that “the women have won” at work due to the pandemic… hmm! Let’s have a look at how true that is. Do please share your stories & thoughts with me.
Christine
