Past Events

Public Workshop — Thank You For Your Participation … and making this Event a Success!!

Managing Toxic Personalities & Their Systems of Power

By Professors Mitch Kusy and Elizabeth Holloway

Workshop Overview

This workshop addressed the counter-productive forces that reduce respect in the workplace, impacting wellness and the bottom line … and provided practical actions for participants to make an immediate meaningful difference!

The Integral Business Leadership Group was pleased to bring this important and timely workshop to Vancouver. This interactive workshop was led by two world-class presenters who shared insights and strategies they have developed through sound research and extensive practice. Organizations across North America, Europe, New Zealand and Australia have found Kusy and Holloway’s work of great value and their strategies have been widely adopted.

Benefits of Attending

  • A greater understanding of the costs that toxic personalities inflict on you and your organization
  • How to identify toxic personalities in the workplace
  • Strategies for remediating the costly effects of toxic personalities – at the individual, team and organizational levels

Who Should Attend

  • Managers concerned about the health and productivity of their organization
  • Human Resource professionals responsible for developing HR policy and advising senior managers
  • Consultants supporting organizations in enhancing workplace health and wellness
  • Shop Stewards and other union members with a role in workplace health and wellness
  • Anyone interested in workplace health and wellness

Thank you for your interest.

More Information on this Workshop…

Managing Toxic Personalities & their Systems of Power

By Professors Mitch Kusy and Elizabeth Holloway

The unique feature of this workshop is that it is both informative and practical in addressing the forces that reduce productivity and wellness in the workplace. It provides useful strategies for dealing with this important issue at the individual, team and organizational levels.

Individual strategies:

  • 5-step model for giving feedback regarding toxic behaviours
  • Leadership coaching of systems supporting respect and engagement
  • Use of the 4-step apology to promote respect

Team strategies:

  • Use of teams to uncover that uncivil people build bad reputations; 1/3 report false recruiting information
  • Translation of organization’s values into team norms
  • Systemic feedback to toxic protectors & toxic buffers
  • An accountability partner for every leader

Organizational strategies:

  • Multi-level design of a zero-tolerance policy
  • Inclusion of respectful engagement in your performance management system including appraisal, 360 feedback, recruiting, and leadership development
  • A 60-40 split between “task work” and “values work”
  • Effective “skip-level” evaluations

Toxic Behaviour Erodes The Bottom Line

What are the bottom line effects?

  • 50% of employees believe they are not competent to respond to verbal abuse
  • 68% reported a decline in performance
  • 78% less commitment to the organization
  • 12% of victims quit
  • Fully loaded costs of subsequent turnover are 1.5 to 2.5 times the person’s salary.

How pervasive are work toxic personalities?

  • 94% of leaders work with individuals demonstrating toxic, disrespectful behaviours
  • 92% of leaders rated the severity of the behaviour from 7 to 10 on a 10-point scale

Mitchell Kusy

Dr. Mitchell Kusy, a Fulbright Scholar in International Organization Development and professor at Antioch University, Ph.D. Program in Leadership & Change, was head of leadership development for American Express and Director of Organization Development at HealthPartners. Author of several business books, he consults in strategic planning, organization development, and the design of organizational communities of respectful engagement. He received the Minnesota Organization Development Practitioner of the Year Award in 1998. Dr. Kusy is a principal in his consulting firm, Real Organization Impact, International (ROI).

Elizabeth Holloway

Dr. Elizabeth Holloway, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and Diplomat in Professional Psychology, is a professor at Antioch University, Ph.D. Program in Leadership & Change. She was a Leadership Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and consults with leaders worldwide on systems approaches to supervision, mentoring, coaching, toxicity, and building communities of respectful engagement. She has published extensively in research and training of supervision in professional practice. Her media interviews with co-author Mitch Kusy on toxic behaviours in organizations are available at www.toxicpersonalities.com