In reality, what are the symptoms of a toxic worker? What are the causes? What are the situations where someone might be labeled "toxic" but the real problem is something else?
* 'this deadline is unrealistic'
* 'we can't continue at this pace, we have to have time to address some serious technical debt'
* 'I heard marketing saying that we can do X, but it isn't true and to add feature X would destroy our timeline'
* 'Adding more contractors isn't going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies'
Of course none of those things were what my manger wanted to hear. When things inevitably went south it all came down on me and I was managed out of the company. I'm much happier now, as I see that the job was what was toxic. My manager wouldn't listen to me and I wouldn't drink the kool-aid that all was well. In fact, I saw it as my responsibility to share these concerns and to not just go with the flow. Now that I've had time to look back on it, I just think that is his management style: grind people to the bone for all that they are worth, then throw them out and repeat to the next poor sap.
Anyways, the article is about toxic workers - but if the managers are the ones deciding what is considered 'productive' and who is 'toxic' then that isn't a very complete view of the actual environment.
And managers are technically workers too. There's no reason to put them in an ivory tower and assume they can't hate their job, hate people they work with or want to exact revenge for some wrong done against them.
Check out the difference a little wordsmithing makes:
* 'this deadline is unrealistic' — “id love to be able to get all this done for you, and with 8 weeks left, I’m only going to be able to get through half of this; let’s sit down and figure out what we can deprioritize without compromising the core of our next release”
* 'we can't continue at this pace, we have to have time to address some serious technical debt' — “I’ve noticed im having trouble moving quickly in the codebase with the level of testing we have right now, I’d love to lead an effort to improve testing and testability. Let’s resdefine ‘performance’ to include velocity, and with this new metric I’m sure we can find some time! Happy to do the leg work here.”
* 'I heard marketing saying that we can do X, but it isn't true and to add feature X would destroy our timeline' - same as 1: “I’d love to be able to get X out for you in the next release, and to do so requires we cut a few weeks scope elsewhere in the product — let’s sit down and see what we can deprioritize without compromising quality!”
* 'Adding more contractors isn't going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies' — what will? “Let’s see if we can save the company some money by finding a way to work more efficiently! I’ve noticed x and y, and I’d love to take the lead on it. Let’s define some metrics to show this is as good as or better than bringing in some more contractors! The finance team is going to love our proposal.”
But then, maybe it's just that I'm prototypically toxic. And why I've always been happier as an independent consultant. Because I've tended to have slack to declare bullshit.
If someone was using the term "toxic" simply because of those behaviors, I'd say they were just using the wrong word.
Based only on what you wrote, another possibility seems to be that some aspect of how you communicated those concerns, or some other aspect of your behavior entirely, is what caused people to consider you "toxic". It would be interesting to hear your former manager's view of things.
In my own experience, I've had plenty of cases where my own view of my conduct was very different from how my coworkers viewed me. The cumulative impact of miscommunication and my occasional lack of self-awareness has caused me some serious grief.
If they're all doofuses, it's time to leave!
But, if they're reasonable people, things will change for the better.
But in practice, 9/10 times when somebody says "toxic" they really mean rebellious (i.e. disagreeing with management decisions, calling out dishonest messaging, asking for transparency over management mistakes, sharing frustrations).
The article uses a loaded term to create a false-equivalence between "harmful to company" and "rebellious."
"toxic worker" is a pretty textbook definition now: -horrible team player -plays for the spotlight, claims credit in the spotlight, does little work privately -if in mgmt, verbally/mentally terrorizes subordinates -etc etc
People took the notion of a fluid language and took it too far, by letting words mean whatever they think they mean and refusing to get corrected and/or abide by a standard definition.
Which is the whole point of these sorts of studies: education
In areas where "toxic working" is ID'd as the risk it really is (i.e. this study is old, old news), it's never a term thrown around as a political term like you're concerned about. It's a specifically cancerous, horrible way of working that's seriously easy to identify. It's like trying to play politics with the term "water leaking" to describe anything other than water leaking.
Lots of nuance in judgement. Most people feel toxicity, but there are strong incentives to maintain situational homeostasis and capitalize on others’ blind spots.
Personally I’ve dumped a lot of that programming and am looking for non-judgemental and discerning workplaces, like I remember from early in my career. Hopefully not a pipe dream.
In reality he was causing 10x more problems than he fixed, and for multiple years in a row his personal overtime spending was significant in a company of 500 employees.
-horrible team player
-Unfortunately hugely effective at getting results
-plays for the spotlight, claims credit in the spotlight, does little work privately
-if in mgmt, verbally/mentally terrorizes subordinates -etc etc
It's just a truly poisonous person, who tends to be extremely performant so they can stick around in orgs, whose lack of interpersonal skills in the above realms more or less destroys teams in the long run.
That's why literature on toxic workplaces tends to not define toxic workers as "achievers" but as "high performers."
Frankly, that confusion is why this study exists. Orgs have to learn to figure out what who is "achieving," and who is "toxic working and getting results." It's a really common confusion point, but is only solved by education and good leadership.
Put another way, it's 10000% possibly to be a high achiever, and do none of that type of behavior.
From a mgmt perspective, assuming a good manager, it does.
If your team/org doesn't approach it that way, the solution is find a high performing team that does approach it that way, not become toxic yourself. 10/10 high performance, long term successful teams approach things this way (source: this study, and people who have experienced this approach luckily).
From my experience in most cases it's not getting you anywhere. You will just be taken as granted.
In the long run always individuals are blamed and not groups..
What does this mean? Symptom and result are the same thing.