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Me: Today will be a great day
My anxiety:
Anybody on Trintellix? Thoughts ?
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As an exercise - swap your POV with this one person and think about how they may be feeling/reacting to the types of support you’re offering/have offered while they are in a negative space mentally:
1. PIP - “I’m a failure and I am going to be fired”
2. Concerned outreach and arranged PTO or medical leave - “Everyone else knows how badly things are going for me, it must be obvious that I’m a failure. It is only a matter of time before I get fired.”
3. Threat of being let go because of impact on others - “I’m such a failure that I’m hurting my team. I won’t be able to fix this, I’m sure I’ll be fired.”
And even if none of these actions are taken, you’re probably feeling a little resentful/irritated/frustrated by this person and their negativity right now. Which is just making the negative feedback loop worse, and making their toxicity worse.
So, at the risk of sounding like an overly cheerful camp counselor, I am going to encourage you to look for the bright spots, or at least the neutral spots, and raise green flags (instead of red ones). Is this person still contributing work? Make sure to thank them for the effort put into the work (not accomplishing it, but the actual day to day stuff that tends to drag us down). Ask this person to contribute in ways that are typically very positive for them (e.g. if they are not someone who likes speaking up, but are a great note taker, ask them to take notes for the next three meetings). Praise them for setting good boundaries with their work/life balance when they take time off and don’t answer emails. Find ways to create positive feedback interactions, instead of the negative ones that the toxicity is building from.
I have done many of those things as well, but they have reacted as if it’s toxic positivity on my part to praise anything good. I don’t think their issues stem from work, but rather they seem to be struggling on a much larger scale and resent how stupid it is to have to think about work when the world is so awful. All of which I get because depending on the day I feel the same. I can muster all the patience and understanding in the world for this person, but when I have multiple people on multiple teams who are all struggling in their own way saying this person is making things awful for them, what do I do? If it’s not ok to tell them they’re having negative impact on their teammates, do I ask them to work alone so others don’t have to deal with it? Do nothing and have multiple people quit because I won’t deal with someone who is so blatantly making work so much harder? I feel like there’s no good answer, but the longer it goes on the worse I feel about making others adapt rather than asking this person to change.
Tell them you’re concerned about them, then ask if they considered getting help. Does your agency have EAP?
I see. Sounds like you did all you could.
Can they take medical leave?
Can they take paid medical leave? If they are struggling, typically work is the last thing they need to be focusing on. Maybe they need a few weeks or months to focus on themselves.
They can, but they haven’t. Even with encouragement.
Why not have HR involved? There must be some company policy for this. Like give them a timeline to shape up and show improvement before talk of firing.
I’d want to know more about what they’re doing. Are they actively trying to make other people feel bad? Are they trash talking the company or coworkers? Or are they just so down that they’re like a dark cloud over others?
Toxic doesn’t feel like the right word if they’re just truly suffering. But if they’re trying to bring others down with them, some behavior mods are needed. I’d still caution putting them on a PIP or anything like that, because it’d really be kicking someone when they’re down. But forcing time off (if legal? I dunno) seems fair.
Do they know that they’re close to being let go because of the impact they’re having on the team? Realizing the way that they are behaving is having a negative effect on others might at least resolve that part of the problem…
It feels like I’ll just be piling on the distress to tell them this, but it really is the heart of my issue. As much as I care about this person, I have others I have to look out for as well and can’t continue to give them a pass when I see how badly it impacts others.
Following. Have a similar case.