Navigating Toxic Interactions with Senior Leads: Managing Challenges within the Organization
I am encountering a challenge within my organization as there are a few senior leads who exhibit toxic behavior. Although they are not directly part of my team, I have to collaborate with them on project reviews and other matters. Recently, the working environment has become tense due to various reasons. It's important to note that these individuals are not my managers, and I have a positive relationship with my own manager. However, I still face difficulties in managing the toxicity. One specific issue is that this person shows favoritism towards someone else on my team due to a personal friendship. As a result, the overall environment has become quite chilly. Sometimes switching jobs is not always a viable option, so I am seeking advice on how to navigate this situation within the constraints of my current employment.
Discussion
(2 comments)- 0a year agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
This person shows favoritism towards someone else on my team due to a personal friendship
What is the impact of this behavior? My recommendation is to bring this up in a respectful way to your manager and focus on (1) the negative impact of the behavior you see and (2) any suggestions you may have.
Few more thoughts in my communication video.
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a year agoSenior Software Engineer and Career CoachI'm sorry you have to go through this.
I'm glad you are looking for ways to work through it rather than job-switching right away. You may end up getting to that point, but situations happen like this at many places, so there's no guarantee job switching would get you what you want.
In terms of advice, I'd echo Rahul's thoughts on having direct discussions about this.
However, one thing I'd watch out for is to be aware of any assumptions you may be making.
In some cases, for example, an assumption such as "This person is showing favoritism" may actually be the following:
- The person receiving favoritism has been feeling severely demotivated lately and recently had a chat with the person who "appears" to be giving favoritism about this. The person who is giving favoritism is actually just trying to be supportive of the other person and get them out of their demotivated situation.
Now I just totally made that up as 1 story. Your story may be right instead. But reading your message, I do get the sense that you've formed a lot of "stories" around why each thing is happening.
My point is that it's ok to have those stories, but recognize them as such. They may not be fact. You will only have all the facts by speaking with the right individuals and coming at any conversation with an open mind to other possible reasons these things may be happening.
Since the above covers everything that I think would be personalized to your case here, for the rest of the advice, I will link you to an article I wrote on having difficult conversations as it talks a bit about the above generally + gives a step by step process for approaching the conversations it appears you should have: https://careercutler.substack.com/p/what-the-mandalorian-can-teach-you
I also touch more on this topic in the Taro answer here: https://www.jointaro.com/question/mNYdLgsDo6kejwgBli1c/how-to-scope-tasks-that-you-have-not-done-before/
I hope this helps!
