Executive Summary

This podcast episode explores Catherine M. Mattice-Zundel's book 'Navigating a Toxic Workplace For Dummies,' focusing on how the modern workplace has shifted since 2020. It highlights the growing importance of psychological safety and provides a framework to distinguish between normal professional conflict and persistent workplace bullying, which the author identifies as psychological violence.

Key Takeaways

• •
• Post-pandemic workplace culture has a significantly lower tolerance for abuse, making psychological safety a requirement for organizational health.•
• Normal workplace conflict is typically isolated, task-oriented, and focused on finding a resolution to a specific problem.•
• Bullying is defined by repetitive and persistent behavior where the goal is power and control rather than the work itself.•
• Psychological violence is the term used to describe the intentional dismantling of an employee's confidence and well-being.•
• A culture becomes systemically toxic when an organization ignores abusive behavior or promotes bullies because they produce results

Segments

00:00

Introduction to the post-pandemic shift in workplace culture

01:05

The critical role of psychological safety in modern organizations

02:15

Distinguishing between healthy conflict and systemic bullying

03:40

Defining psychological violence and systemic organizational infection