Preventing the toxic workplace

In the past week, Mattias has been reflecting on what he could do better to inspire his colleagues at iGoMoon to communicate to clients when they are running out of the original budget.

Sales in client-work

He experienced the situation that some of their customers did not even know that the team at iGoMoon what technically working for free at some point because no one has communicated that the budget for a project was used up. He believes these situations occur when the creative role overlaps with the sales role and people are afraid to offend someone by asking to increase the budget.

Important lesson

When it comes to the question of what Mattias has learned the past week, he refers to something that reaches a lot deeper than only the last 7 days. In the previous eight years of being the captain of the iGoMoon-rocket-venture, he has learned something he wants to prevent from happening in the future. Mattias is talking about the toxic workplace.

The toxic workplace

Elements of a toxic workplace are e.g. manipulative and offensive behavior, backstabbing, and eventually even harassment. He has experienced that these behaviors sometimes hide behind statements like: "Oh, I was just being honest", disguising manipulative behavior as transparency. Mattias explains further that all the behaviors stated above are actually the complete opposite of being transparent or having an open heart. His priority is that everyone at iGoMoon should feel appreciated, respected, and safe.

Make motivations well known

He believes that one of the most effective ways to prevent the wrong kind of transparency from happening is to make the organization's motivations for transparency well known. Another important part of this is to set clear boundaries and intentions. Basically, if a person is talking about something to someone, that person should be able to say the same thing with the person involved in the same room.

💡 EPISODE TAKE AWAY
It is really important to set clear boundaries and intentions in regards of the companies understanding of transparency. Like this, no one can disguise toxic behavior as being honest or transparent.

What is your thoughts about transparency at workplaces? Please let us know!