TOXIC CULTURES AND MENTAL HEALTH

By Allan English

This post is part of a reflection following the BellLet'sTalk Campaign of January 29th, 2020; a day during which Canadian society, including the Canadian Armed Forces, engages to discuss mental health issue on a large scale. In face of the CAF's leadership proactiveness during the campaign, Dr. Allan English wanted to share some thoughts about mental health in the military.

Toxic workplace cultures have “adverse effects on mental and physical health (including suicide, stress-related illness, and post-traumatic stress), increasing demands on an already overburdened healthcare system; job satisfaction and commitment; individual and collective performance (cognition and collaboration); employee turnover; and the creation of an organizational culture that tolerates other inappropriate behaviors including sexual harassment and discrimination. In addition to the impact on direct targets of toxicity, research has identified the transmission of adverse effects to bystanders and family members,” according to Kenneth Williams, a senior chaplain in the US military in his article, “Toxic Culture: Enabling Incivility in the U.S. Military and What to Do About It,” (https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Publications/Article/1325971/toxic-culture-enabling-incivility-in-the-us-military-and-what-to-do-about-it/).

Little research has been done on the CAF’s toxic culture, which Justice Marie Deschamps in her March 2015 report on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces, found, “…is hostile to women and LGTBQ members, and conducive to more serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault.” However, because parts of CAF culture are based on a “hyper-masculine,” sexualized American warrior culture that reinforces gender stereotypes objectifies women and LGBTQ personnel, creates a sense that male warriors are “entitled” to sexual favours, and normalizes myths about sexual assault that contribute to “creating or sustaining a cultural environment where sexual assaults can occur and thrive,” extensive American studies on the toxic culture in its military are relevant to us.

While the terms “toxic culture” and “toxic leadership” are used frequently when referring to some organizational cultures, they are often not well defined. Williams provides this explanation of “toxicity” in cultures: “toxicity refers to a pattern of combined, counterproductive behaviors encompassing not only harmful leadership but also abusive supervision, bullying, and workplace incivility, involving leaders, peers, and direct reports as offenders, incorporating six specific behaviors (see table): shaming, passive hostility, team sabotage, indifference, negativity, and exploitation. These elements indicate a clear but often covert pattern of abuse, disrespect, and control of others, either aggressively or passively, in the name of high performance on the surface, but with the goal of self-advancement, resulting in the sabotage of interpersonal and organizational trust.”

Despite the fact that “toxicity sabotages cohesion, trust, and performance” in military organizations, Williams points out that toxic personnel “are frequently highly competent, dedicated to task accomplishment, possess skills or expertise needed by the organization, and at least appear to be productive in the short term.” Leaders can become “toxic protectors” when they “tolerate toxic behaviors” because in the short-term these behaviours make the leader’s organization look good and may contribute to the leader’s advancement. When advancement is based on “merit-based evaluation systems” emphasizing short-term “performance-based achievement,” toxic behaviours can be enabled and perpetuated because these systems rarely take into account the long-term negative effects of these behaviours on the organization.

This review of Tarnished: Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Military by George E. Reed (http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol16/no3/page80-eng.asp), the latest in a long line of well-researched studies on the US Army’s leadership challenges published over the past four decades, highlights some of the systemic factors that enable toxic leadership styles in organizations. It notes that if merit-based evaluation systems focus on short term mission accomplishment, the “what” of mission execution and “give little weight to organizational health during a leader’s tenure, the “how” of mission execution,” this often results in the rise of  toxic leaders “in an organization while leaving in their wakes a series of demoralized units with unnecessarily high attrition rates.”

The review argues, as Justice Deschamps found, that the CAF suffers from toxic leadership in many quarters because of a toxic culture perpetuated by micromanagement and a rapid turnover in leaders, whose advancement depends “on achieving set goals in a relatively short period of time” with “little focus…on the health of a unit” during a leader’s tenure. Unless the CAF carries out the “comprehensive culture change” called for by Justice Deschamps in her report it will continue, through its toxic culture, to have adverse effects on the mental and physical health of its members and veterans, especially women subjected to “serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault” enabled by parts of this culture.