What to Do When Your Job is Killing You

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The following program is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is supported by the prayers and financial gifts of wonderful friends like you. Probably my worst job ever was counting lasagna noodles, like literally counting them and putting them in a box, so talk about mind-numbing. I worked for a nonprofit that was losing money, and as a result, the boss turned into a maniac. I had a male coworker tell me that because he was a man, he was in charge of me. I had a job where I had to cold call people and sell digital ads, and I was at that job for four months, and I only sold one. Well, some jobs can be really challenging, and the boss might be demanding you might not have the training you need.

Coworkers aren't cooperating, or maybe you're dealing with something much worse, a toxic work environment, and it's driving you crazy. We're going to explore this topic further today on Focus on the Family, and your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller. John, the truth is no job is perfect.

Guess why? No people are perfect, and we have to remember that. I think generally, though, finding a place with low toxicity, both in the secular space as well as the Christian space, a church very similar, is kind of a goal I've always had. You know, is this a place where I can work and flourish and do the things God's called me to do? Thankfully at Focus, I've always felt that way.

They say, you know, find something you like to do, and you'll never work a day in your life. I love that adage, but unfortunately, like anything, you have to mix with other people, and sometimes people bring a lot of baggage into the workplace. Sometimes that person can be your boss, and it becomes very difficult, and we're going to talk about this today with two great experts. Yeah, we have Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Paul White with us. Dr. Chapman is a good friend.

He's been here a number of times, of course. An author, a speaker, a counselor, best known for his series of books called The Five Love Languages. Dr. Paul White is a psychologist, author, and speaker, and together, he and Dr. Chapman wrote a book that will kind of form the foundation of our conversation today. It's called Rising Above a Toxic Workplace, Taking Care of Yourself in an Unhealthy Environment, and we've got details about our guests and the book in the show notes, or give us a call, 800-A-FAMILY. Dr. Chapman, Dr. White, welcome to Focus on the Family. Thank you. Nice to be here.

Doctor, doctor, doctor. No, it's so good, and you guys worked hard for those degrees. Thank you very much for doing that, and you put your, you know, your learnings and your experiences into a great book here, Rising Above a Toxic Workplace. Let's start with the definition of what that means. Define that toxic environment. Yeah, I think it's especially important because toxic is used so much today, and I think probably overused, and when you think about toxic environments, I think that the easiest way to understand a toxic workplace is to think about a toxic physical environment. It's unhealthy, it has poison, and it's going to damage you, and maybe eventually kill you if you don't take care of yourself and protect yourself and get out, and I think it's different than an unhealthy workplace, or maybe not a great boss kind of person. You know, they're trying, they're still learning, but a toxic workplace, really, over time you see that this is not healthy, it's starting to affect my personal health, sleep, relationships, my emotional health, and something needs to change or I'm not going to go well. So in essence, there's degrees to unhealthy slash toxic work environments. Some are mildly unhealthy to very toxic. Yeah, because most workplaces or work is not super enjoyable all the time, and so there's bad components and less than healthy colleagues, so you have that, but there's a point at which it sort of goes over the cliff and really becomes a bad place. In fact, like so many good thoughts, research can reinforce this. I think you had a reference in the book about a study with rabbits on a freeway.

First of all, that doesn't sound really good. I would say that would be a toxic environment for the rabbit, but how did the study come down? Yeah, it was an interesting study that they, I don't remember how they sort of came to it, but there was this group of rabbits that wound up living in one of those little triangles.

The median. Yeah, in between some freeways. They did have it fenced off, I believe.

I guess. Yeah, I heard, I think so, just for the rabbit lovers. Yes, but, you know, fumes and noise and not a healthy place to live, but they lived there for a while, at least. Yeah, but it did affect them, right? It made them less healthy, which is the point when you have chaos, horns.

I think the rabbits were saying to each other, how can we get out of here? Okay, like some employees might be saying, which leads me to that. Why does a person stay in a job that's in that toxic category? Why would somebody suck it up and stick with it? I think often it's because they need the money. They've got to feed the kids, you know, they've got to have the money, so they stay there. And consequently, it affects the kids, it affects the wife, it affects the whole family.

So that's not always the best decision, to stay there, just because of the money. But I understand it, because if you don't have another job, what do you want to do, you know? Well, and it comes down to that dinner conversation between you and your spouse. I would think typically, wow, work is just such a bummer. You know, it's just my boss is doing this, that, and the other thing. What can a spouse do to say, you know, you've said that 14 times this week, which is probably an indicator, right? But how can a spouse be supportive of somebody's observations?

Because you never know if you're living on the median with the rabbits, necessarily. Yeah. I think there is a place for the spouse to not preach to them, but to ask questions. Honey, do you think maybe it's time we ought to be looking for something else? Because, you know, it seems like almost every night you're coming home and you're just under the load and you're talking about how bad it is. And maybe we ought to just take some time and start praying about a new place, you know, and maybe talk to some friends, maybe put out some feelers.

Because sometimes the person needs that encouragement, and if they know the spouse is with them in that process, they're far more likely to do it. Yeah, without a doubt. You know, most organizations, one of my favorite kind of management gurus is Patrick Lencioni. He's written a lot of great little fable books, actually. They're very easy to read.

They usually illustrate two or three points. One was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which I called him and said, can I steal this from you? To which he said, absolutely take it.

So I guess it's not really stealing. But it talked about building a trust culture, an atmosphere of accountability. Sometimes things that people struggle with.

Speak to the idea of a company or an organization having a more trust-oriented culture and the importance of that. Well, one other issue I want to just come back to about why people leave is that it takes a lot of emotional energy to leave a place. And so if you're in an unhealthy environment, you don't have a lot of emotional energy anyway.

And if you're the type of person who likes structure and planning to think about leaving where you are, finding another job, that whole transition just feels like a mountain to climb and it can leave you sort of stuck there. And that's where the support from the spouse can be really helpful. But the trust issue is huge because in our culture, trust is misunderstood. We sort of talk about it in all or nothing terms that either I trust you or I don't. When in actuality, trust is very situation specific. Like I plan to take Gary to the airport this afternoon and he, I think, can trust me to do that. But he shouldn't trust me to do open heart surgery on him. Right.

That would be wise. You're not that kind of doctor. Because I don't have that skill set. And so it's both situation specific as well as there's a concept of sort of the three C's of trust. One is competency. Do you have the skills and ability to do it? Second, do you are you consistent?

Do you show up, do quality work every time you're available? And then character has to do with trust in the sense of are you looking out for my interest as well as your own? And so it's sort of like a three legged stool that if you don't have those, it really becomes problematic. And so people don't just talk about, well, I don't trust Julia because, you know, I don't like her or, you know, she lied to me one time or something like that. But it's really helpful to identify the specific areas and what you need to trust somebody and for companies to think about that versus just they need to trust us. Unfortunately, a lot of people have grown up in situations where it's wise for them not to trust people because in their past relationships they've been taken advantage of. And so they've become suspicious or cautious. And so we have to learn how to build and rebuild trust. Of course.

Yeah, it's important. Let me ask you in this regard. You know, I worked in the secular business space before coming to focus on the family many years ago. But, you know, one of the things in Christian work and Christian organizations, churches, nonprofits, it can be a little passive aggressive. What I mean by that is everybody's in the meeting saying, oh, yes, this is a great idea.

Then they get in the hallway and say, that is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever seen. And then they begin to work against that. So getting people on the same page committed to something really critical. But why in the Christian space, and I'm sure this is true for churches, you know, when a decision is made, let's go.

And then you get a lot of, you know, I don't know how to say this politely, people that would stick something in your back maybe. I think a lot of that is because they often have not been a part of the decision. Right. You know, it's that the person is autocratic and they make this decision, pass it down and everybody just walks out and then they start talking about it. Whereas if the leader would seek the input of the people that works under their supervision and get their ideas, now you've got the team together.

You know, then the decision is made and they go out and they want to implement it because they were a part of making the decision. No, that's really good. And churches can suffer from poor leadership. I mean it sounds bad to talk about that, but I think it's true.

It's what you found in your book, correct? You highlighted some nonprofit and church leadership that's some of the most egregious. Why are they the most egregious? I think part of it is that as Christians sometimes we confuse different ideas as one is right and one is wrong. So switch, black and white. Yeah, versus that you have a different idea about how you think this should happen or the process. And so when we get into that right and wrong thinking, if you raise that, the other person receives it as you're saying, well, you're wrong and I'm right and then you get into this tension. And we haven't really taught one another good models for thinking differently and it's OK to be that way. And it's actually a strength. They find that when teams brainstorm and it allows different viewpoints that they come out with a better solution.

That's true. Yeah. Let me let me ask some specific stories that you mentioned in the book. One was about an out of control environment. I think it was about Lee, who worked as an administrative pastor under an egocentric, narcissistic leader. Yeah, that's how you describe the names have been changed. But describe that environment. And again, it's a Christian environment where these these behaviors should be probably better under control, I would think.

Yeah. So it was in a relatively large church to three thousand members for that community wasn't a huge community. And a growing church and a very vivacious pastor, outgoing, very social vision casting. And for whatever reason, the elders and the leadership had sort of decided that he was going to do his thing. And they were going to protect him from all the other aspects of the church life as far as staff kinds of things in Sunday school and small groups and all that. And so there was an executive pastor, administrative pastor Lee, who had that charge to do with that. And he was very tough and his way was right. And he sort of ruled it with an iron fist. And you didn't disagree with him.

You could, but you wouldn't be at the table next week. I mean, and it was it was sad in that, you know, with that kind of situation, you have a lot of people run through staff and then you hear stories from different parts of the church. And the senior pastor really was sort of kept ignorant of a lot of that.

And it was unfortunate that it continues as a church today, but, you know, has had its struggles over time. Yeah, I mean, and again, all do. And there is no perfection.

We want to make sure we stress that again. But everybody could probably do better. And that makes the work environment much better. You also had a good story, I think, about a pastor who resigned rather than put his church through a split.

Describe that environment and a good choice. It sounded like in the book where the person chose to step down rather than create conflict. Yeah, I think that was one where the pastor had come in and things were going quite well. But there were a few of the leaders, the lay leaders in the church. I don't know if they were deacons or whatever, but and they didn't like the things that were happening. And so they were calling the church to have a vote on whether to keep the pastor or not. And when it got to that juncture, he felt like the better thing for the church would be for him to resign rather than to have the church vote on whether he stays there or doesn't stay there. Which to me was probably a wise decision on his part.

He was putting the ministry of the church above his own well-doing. What are some of those positive attributes that you should look for in a workplace without the expectation being so high that it's heaven? Because we're not going to hit that, I don't think, either as an employer or an employee. So what is a reasonable zone that people should feel good about?

Even though from time to time something might pop up, it's a bit of a speed bump in your comfort zone. Right. One of the things we found is that a characteristic of a toxic workplace is what we call sick systems. Meaning that sort of the structure of the place just isn't designed to work well. And so the flip side of that is to have healthy systems, which would include having a clear sense of what your role and responsibilities are and to whom you report and are held responsible versus a lot of toxic workplaces, hospitals, colleges, and universities, public schools, ministries have multiple reporting relationships.

So it's very confusing. You know, you report to this person about this and you report to this person about that, and then things get lost and it's hard to hold people accountable for getting the job done. So being clear about who does what. But also another characteristic is direct communication versus indirect communication.

Indirect communication is sort of like the red warning light that goes off that when people go around people to get approval about something or you send somebody to send a message to a supervisor or another worker that, hey, that report's not done yet, it'll be Monday, but that's where you get to shoot the messenger kind of process. And so that whole looking for direct communication, honest communication, it's people feel okay to be themselves versus that they have to conform to a singular narrow culture of behavior. I think those are signs to look for. And also just that people are somewhat relaxed and enjoy themselves and laugh occasionally.

I mean, laughter is a very good, as long as it's not super cynical cutting kinds of humor. But I think those could be helpful. I think another factor in a healthy workplace is the people that work there feel appreciated. They're not just a cog in a machine. They're a person and they have that sense.

They care about me here. Another one is the need for humility in leadership. So again, Scripture's proving how God wired us. In fact, I think in the book you cite Billy Graham as a great example of someone who operated with humility.

Describe that. Yeah, I think if you knew anything about Billy Graham and you listened to him talk or interfaced with him at all, you would know that he did not take credit for all the things that God was doing through him and his organization. He recognized, first of all, it's God that's doing all of this. But he also gave credit to his staff and his team. It's our team working together.

And I think that's true of any healthy leader. It's not about me. It's about us.

And it's doing things together. I had a good friend that was leading an organization, a manufacturing company, had about 300 employees. He said, every year I sit down with groups of 10 of my employees, but all of them eventually in one year, and I simply ask the question, what can we do to make things better around here? And he said, some of my best ideas have come out of that. So a leader doesn't sense, I've got to know everything.

I've got to know everything. No, no, use the team. And that's a sign of a healthy leader. That's really true.

That's really true. Yeah, I try to do, I do desserts with the staff in probably third, third, a third. So every year I try to make sure that we're at least having time for that Q&A. And we do today, actually, or tomorrow, we're doing a suite with Chick-fil-A sandwiches for everybody.

Come into the exact suite and participate with us and see where that action is happening. One of the important aspects of a healthy environment, I think, is good mentoring, and especially that mentoring being encouraged. Is that important, and how would you validate that? I think it is.

And it's interesting, I just had a conversation with a young business leader who indicated that he believes that the younger culture and sort of Gen Z are looking for mentors more than maybe some of the people that are a little bit older. And in a toxic workplace, it's huge, because when you're in a toxic workplace, you become disoriented. If you think about breathing in toxic fumes or whatever, you're not thinking clearly.

You're foggy. And that happens in a toxic workplace. You're not sure, you thought, well, I thought this was right and that was wrong, but they're saying this is okay to do, and your judgment is sort of called into question. You're not sure if you should do this or not. And it's critical to have somebody that you can go to and seek their input and their advice and understand maybe the context better, but to give you input on how to think through and process the issue.

So especially if you're in a toxic workplace, seeking out somebody, it may be within the business or it may be somebody that's just a friend from church or a business leader that you know, that you seek out as a mentor to give you input and make sure that you're not sort of, your thinking isn't becoming distorted as a result of your environment. Let me move in this direction. You know, at times in a Christian environment, like we're in here at Focus, I'll point out to new staff, I'll say, you know, we all hopefully know Galatians 5, 22, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, mercy. Hopefully we operate with the fruit of the Spirit. That's the goal. And I'm sure you're going to slip occasionally because we're all so human and we're in a sinful world, so we get that.

We just can't see a pattern of that, right? And then I'll say, you don't want to be rooted, and you're smiling because you know it's true. I say this a lot. You don't want to be rooted in the other guy's fruit. That's Galatians 5, 19.

And the first three or four mentions of that are, you know, sexual in nature. But then it moves into divisiveness, disunity, prevarication, lying, things that many people, even in the church, can find themselves doing if they're not mindful of it. Speak to that idea of waking up every day thinking, okay, I've got to be rooted in God's fruit today. I've got to be in his vineyard, so I'm producing the fruit that shows a difference in my life, rather than being rooted in the other guy's fruit. Yeah, I think this is where Christians have it on non-Christians in terms of relationships at work or anywhere else, is because we have outside help.

Because by nature, we are not loving and joyful and kind and all those things. But if we begin today with God, I want to be your representative today, and I want to represent the things that need to be represented. And also, the whole concept of love, that I want to have a positive impact on the people that I encounter today at my workplace. You know, a lot of stuff going on, but help me to be a positive influence, to bring something positive and encouraging that will enhance the lives of other people, rather than being a part of the problem just by doing what everybody else is doing, arguing and complaining, expressing complaints and all that sort of thing. We can be a light in the midst of darkness. I think the other thing, too, is the encouragement to not go there if you're at the water cooler and the hallway and the conversation is going to a divisive nature, to be the mature one to say, well, you know, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

We don't know everything and what led to the decision or whatever it might be. Yeah, we've actually found that there's two simple steps to help decrease a negative environment. One is not to fan the flames or add fuel to the fire. Don't join into the complaining or the grumbling or the gossip. And secondly is sort of douse it with some water by turning the conversation to something positive.

And it doesn't have to be about that topic and just be, hey, wasn't it a beautiful weekend or, you know, I'm really glad that spring is coming so that you turn it. And we can do that. I think some very small things that we can do in our behaviors that have a significant impact in our workplace relationships that aren't necessarily sharing Bible verses or whatever, but it's that gratitude approach to life and saying positive things and not grumbling. Well, it should be the discipline of the Christian. I think that's self-evident when you read Scripture. The New Testament fills us with that.

Let's end here. And it fits this same vein that we've been discussing. You point out the prayer of St. Francis that can guide us in our work environment, which, you know, a lot of people may not always put that together. What did St. Francis say or what was the prayer that he would pray that applies to us in this arena? Well, you know, it's really a powerful prayer. He said, Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace, where there's hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is sadness, joy, where there is darkness, light.

That's it. It's a good prayer. For every day of your life.

Absolutely. And God can answer that. We'll answer that prayer if you really are open and want to be that kind of person. That's the way to wake up every day and memorize that, recite that. I think I'm going to give myself that challenge to wake up on the edge of bed and say, Jim Daly reporting for duty, sir.

Right? Well, this has been so good. I don't think we always think about our work environment. And at the very beginning, Gary, what you said, that it can infect our family life, too, our marriage, our parenting with our kids. You come home grumpy and rah, rah, rah. So what do you do to turn that around? This is a great resource, rising above a toxic workplace, taking care of yourself in an unhealthy environment.

I mean, what a place to go. If you're feeling that way, get in touch with us. We want to provide this to you. If you can make a donation of any amount, we'll send it as our way of saying thank you.

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That's what it goes toward, all that, not shareholders profit. So let's work together, and we'll send you the book as our way of saying thank you. Donate as you can when you get in touch, either a monthly gift or a one-time donation of any amount, and request that book, Rising Above a Toxic Workplace, taking care of yourself in an unhealthy environment.

Our number is 800-AFAMILY, or check the show notes for details. Gary and Paul, thanks again for being with us. It's been really enlightening. Thank you.

Thank you. We enjoyed being here. And so glad you could join us as well to listen in and plan to be here tomorrow as Joe Dallas shares his testimony of coming to faith in Christ and overcoming homosexuality. I had been born again. I had been filled with the Spirit. I loved the Lord, but I had temptations. And I thought the presence of those temptations meant there was something foundationally wrong with me. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Thank you.