Toxic Leaders Put Your Heart and Brain Health at Risk |
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Even subtle forms of workplace abuse are a serious threat to heart and brain health.
Most recognize the harm from a leader who yells, berates, and humiliates.
Few realize the harm from the stress of expectations, little control, and lack of rewards.
Evidence accumulating over decades documents that our brain and heart health are vulnerable to abusive workplace environments. Yet few of us are taught how to recognize obvious, let alone subtle, toxic behaviours before they have begun to erode our mental and cardiovascular health.
Recently published research examines the impact of “job strain” on heart health. This subtle form of abuse occurs when employees have high job demands and expectations but little control over their work. An example would be a teacher who is expected to cover an extensive curriculum, with a large class, including students who suffer from trauma, as well as those with learning disabilities. The teacher has little control over all of these challenges and yet is expected to ensure students’ educational success.
Another example would be an engineer being told there aren’t enough resources and there isn’t enough time to do proper safety checks, or a physician who must put in seven to eight hours a week doing administrative paperwork while a backlog of patients isn’t being diagnosed or treated. In both cases, the worker doesn’t have control over the high demands of the workload and has little control over resource or time allocation. Both are aware of what could go wrong.
Effort and reward imbalance
Another subtle form of abuse occurs when leaders deny rewards to workers. Effort is ignored. Success is dismissed. Dedication is simply expected and not acknowledged. If anything, opportunities are blocked. No matter how hard they try, these workers are set up........