Leader Detoxification: Strategies for Transforming Toxic Leaders and Organizations

The best solution for toxicity problems is transforming toxic leaders through detoxification. Author Alan Goldman describes detoxification as "the umbrella term for directly addressing dysfunctional decisions, policies, oversights, miscalculations, avoidance behavior, and leadership and follower behaviors that contaminate employees and operations."

Detoxification is a complex process that involves both leaders and their organizations and is a "process that calls for coaches and consultants who are able to identify the multiple sources and players that contribute to toxicity within a system." Without assistance, leaders should refrain from attributing the cause of dysfunctional behavior to a single event or person.

A troubled leader may wield an extraordinary level of toxic influence; however, the detoxification process often uncovers multiple and interdependent sources. Even the most poisonous acts may be symptomatic of orders dispatched from the top of the organizational hierarchy making the source of toxicity less obvious at first glance.

In fact, blaming the most visible and obvious cause and perpetrators and responding slowly to dysfunctional behavior are actually ways to accelerate toxicity and make it extremely difficult to address internally. Goldman says, "The shock and dismay expressed by clients who identify their organizational pain as already reaching into the lymph nodes of their operations is testimony to the need for a detoxification process that incorporates affective coaching and consultation."

The most successful consultations result in collaborations between internal or external consultant and organization, and stimulate positive transformations of both the toxic leader and the company. There are deficits and negative organizational behaviors that must be overcome by toxic clients in order to reach a state appropriate for a positive transformation.

There can be numerous roadblocks, rationalizations, pseudo-interventions, ulterior motives, and acts of sabotage and resistance that can undermine the best of intentions. Organizations that suffer from high levels of toxicity are immersed in systems of deficit thinking and behavior that affect leadership, human capital, operations, and policies.

When deficient systems engulf the workplace, negative organizational behavior becomes the rule. A myriad of dysfunctions can affect relations between leaders and subordinates, research and development, work teams, and customer service, and result in a toxic system.

These can include prolonged conflict, sabotage, the abrupt hiring of mercenary CEOs, and savage overnight re-structurings. These acts all constitute extreme deficits and are on the short list of prime sources of toxicity in many organizations.

This article was based on the book "Transforming Toxic Leaders" by Alan Goldman. The book summary is available on the Business Book Summaries website.

A New, Improved Business Book Summaries Website to Serve You

The team from Business Book Summaries is very pleased to let you know that we have a brand-new, enhanced website to serve you better! Please read on and let us know what you think.

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At Business Book Summaries, we believe people become better professionals through learning. We believe that business books contain some of the best and most current business thought.

We believe that summaries of the best business books help people to learn more efficiently and more effectively. We believe that a summary can provide the basic overview of the book, and give you insights into the author’s ideas.

Nothing substitutes for reading the book, but we believe our summaries will help you to get a solid grasp of the lessons in the book, so you can decide which books to read and when to read them.

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We provide you with the best summaries of the best business books, every day. We enable you to acquire business knowledge faster, and with more understanding.

We provide our summaries to you in over 30 languages through a range of media, from PDFs to MP3s, on a range of devices, from PDAs to desktops.

What you can expect from the new website:

• The site will be updated with 5 new summaries each week.

• There are over 1,000 summaries in the catalogue.

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The Cost of the Generational Divide

The generation gap is most often noticed when older workers are trying to mentor or motivate younger workers, and younger workers are not receptive. The younger workers complain they just want to hear the company goals and be set free to work rather than be forced to sit through a pep rally.

The older workers complain the younger workers do not respect tradition and have no sense of teamwork or any work ethic, for that matter. This kind of miscommunication happens all the time in companies all over the nation.

Every employee is valuable and brings skills and talent to the table. Miscommunication and conflict across generations impact a company’s productivity and bottom line.

Lost revenue and turnover, costly consequences of the generational divide, can be averted if managers learn to bring employees together.

Generational harmony impacts a company’s profitability. In 2005, it was predicted that unemployment would be at five percent at the end of 2006.

Low unemployment and steady job growth usually makes employees comfortable enough to look for jobs with better opportunities and better benefits. It was predicted that by 2010 the United States would be short 10 million workers with the right skills.

The U.S. was short only three to four million workers in the late 1990s, and hiring managers were scrambling to fill empty chairs. Organizations need a plan to recruit and retain employees from all generations with the right skills.

Turnover is expensive, costing “50 to 150 percent of a departing employee’s annual wage.” It is time for organizations to assess the demographics of their workforce to make sure they have the “bench strength” for projected retirements.

Managers can take the following actions to immediately improve retention:
• Evaluate age of workforce.
• Develop strategies to attract and retain those about to retire.
• Identify ways to operate more efficiently.
• Create a formal process to assess manpower over the next five to 10 years.
• Evaluate current turnover.
• Establish two-way communication on all issues.
• Assess skill development commitments.
• Proactively work to retain talent.

Managers should be developing strategies to coax ready-to-retire workers into semi-retirement so they can mentor younger workers to do their jobs. Employers should not only be thinking of ways to retain quality employees, but also how to retain valued customers and colleagues. Generational misperceptions can injure these critical business relationships.

People are a business’s key resource. It is the people that make a company successful. Managers need to understand the demographics of their workforce, and to do whatever they can to retain and develop the skills of all their employees, regardless of generation. This plan of action will minimize turnover and increase the bottom line.

Bridging the Generation Gap was written as a reference tool for managers confronted with recruiting, retaining, and balancing the needs of five generations of employees. To access the book summary, please go to BusinessSummaries.com.

The 10 Attributes Of An Offer According To A Blur World

Let us take a look at all these attributes, keeping in mind that the most essential feature of all offers is that they are connected.

Anytime
Accessibility by users at any time of day is becoming a must-have for offers of all kinds.

Real Time
This need for Speed of response in today’s business environment puts a premium on systems that can operate in “real time”.

Interactive
Another great benefit of online systems that eliminate the middle person – travel agent, bank teller, stockbroker (and sometimes maybe even the physician) – is that they can easily be made interactive.

Anyplace
Hand in hand with anytime access goes anyplace access; this is the other half of the mail-order boom. The trick is being able to service anyplace access effectively – anytime. Is your offer available to customers wherever they are?

Learning
Offer really start to get interesting when they make it possible to learn; that is, when they can not only capture information about their use, but make adjustments or initiate action in line with that new information.

Anticipating
Once offers have the ability to learn, it’s just a short step to give them something even more blurred: the ability to anticipate.

Filtering
A special form of customization is the filtering of the wide range of information and choices that increasingly confront users.

Customizing
Customization is a major theme running through the offers cited so far, whether they involve computers, jeans, or books.

Upgrading
One distinctive feature of software products is the constant stream of upgrades they spawn. Once you’ve bought a program, it isn’t necessary to make a whole new purchase when its functionality is improved.

In this groundbreaking book, Stan Davis and Chris Meyer deliver more than a guided tour to these momentous shifts. They offer readers a working model to illustrate and benefit from the new rules of the connected economy, where advantage is temporary and nothing is fixed in time or space. To access the full book summary, please visit BusinessSummaries.com.

Respecting Employee Diversity

It has been previously mentioned that the larger the organization, the more diverse the workforce and the more varied the type of personalities that are present. In addition to ethics training, a highly-effective and complementary practice is to offer diversity training as well.

By recognizing employee differences, celebrating them, and teaching individuals how to respect them, it is more likely that teams will be more collaborative and employees will be able to work together more effectively.

There are two primary goals for diversity training:

1) eliminate values, stereotypes, and managerial practices that inhibit the personal and professional development of diverse employees, and

2) allow diverse employees to contribute their best efforts for achieving superior organizational performance.


As with ethics training, there are a wide number of exercises and workshops that organizations can hold to encourage more effective diversity management. When individuals within a company are able to respect each other for the behavioral choices they make, as well as for the cultural differences they may have, a more cohesive unit can be formed for greater efficiency.

The Essentials of Business Ethics by Denis Collins takes an in-depth look into the many ways companies can incorporate an ethical mindset into their business. To access the full book summary, please visit BusinessSummaries.com.

Emotional Intelligence: The New Science of Success

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to control and use one’s emotions in a constructive—rather than destructive—manner. This allows an individual to achieve his best performance, while inspiring others.

EI is a composite of many other qualities, such as effective oral communication and an ability to respond well to setbacks, which distinguish the competent from the truly successful. While success has basic threshold requirements—technical skills, for example—the truly crucial characteristics are those that enable people to manage their emotions rather than be derailed by extreme or upsetting circumstances.

Fortunately, there are strategies to improve one’s emotional intelligence. It is important to understand the four domains of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Self-awareness and self-management are related to one’s own personal competence, while social awareness and relationship management have to do with one’s competence in the social arena. One can improve behaviors in each of these domains to develop better overall emotional intelligence.

Ready to increase your emotional intelligence? More resources are available at BusinessSummaries.com. BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service. Every week, it sends out to subscribers a summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of new books released in the United States. Simply go to http://www.bizsum.com for more details.

Moving to Telework

Why move to telework? Telework has environmental and cost benefits.

According to a Harris poll, U.S. workers waste an estimated $4.3 billion in energy costs each year and generate 32 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from this energy consumption. From a business prospective, the benefits of telework include gains in productivity, the ability to access a global talent pool (including people with disabilities who find it difficult to work in an office environment), lower overhead costs, and a hedge against the risk of natural or manmade disasters.

The authors liken a successful telework leader to a symphony conductor who brings together a diverse group of musicians to play a complex piece of music successfully. The leader must be able to get all employees (both those who telework and those who do not) to work off a common platform of clear, open, disciplined, and deliberate communication.

Before even implementing a telework arrangement, the leader must ask if the workforce or team has the skills, abilities, commitment, and time to learn and use both the technology and communication skills required for telework. Then, if the company decides to implement telework, the leader must make sure that all employees understand both the why and how of telework.

The authors’ advice is to communicate, communicate, and communicate again. Since everyone processes information differently, it is important to use many different means of communication (e-mail, company blogs, podcasts, etc.) for the same message.

Closely linked to communication is change management. Leaders must work through barriers of resistance for many employees to accept telework and for telework to be successful.

Change management might include celebrating small successes, using hard data to create a case for change, and using interpersonal skills. An organization’s or team’s culture is important to the success of telework.

Culture can propel people forward in the desired direction or serve as a roadblock. Culture influences and reinforces behaviors without the need for formal documentation or guidelines.

When telework is in conflict with the corporate culture, teleworking arrangements are likely to fail.
Recognizing an organization’s culture requires recognizing what the organization truly values.

For an organization that values a lot of face-to-face time, telework is a hard fit. The authors note that although successful telework cultures vary, they generally have several things in common.

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