Are you in a toxic relationship (with work)?

Jan 14, 2025

Faithful readers will often hear me refer to our “relationship with work”.

The more people I help to transform work in their lives, the more I really do think of it as a relationship.

So what does it mean to have a ‘healthy’ relationship?

Like many modern day humans, I went poking around the internet for clues to healthy relationships and found eight signs of a healthy relationship that I think apply pretty well to work!  

• Mutual respect - valuing the other’s beliefs and them as a person
• Safety - considering the other’s well-being along with your own
• Open and honest communication - having mutual willingness to share thoughts, feelings and information without fearing rejection or reprisal
• Compromise - when disagreements happen, hearing the other out and negotiating solutions
• Equality - respecting the feelings and input of the other
• Independence - being able able to have a life outside of the relationship
• Support - providing feedback and compassion
• Privacy - having the space to meet your own needs

On the flip side, signs of an unhealthy relationship can be:

• Intensity - taking up more space in the other's life than is warranted by the nature of the relationship
• Isolation - feeling cut off from others
• Extreme jealousy - hopefully this doesn’t show up at work but if it does, that’s something to definitely take note of
• Belittling - demeaning behavior that does not value the other's self-worth, talents, opinion, and viewpoints
• Volatility - extreme emotions and big swings in the relationship

Certainly it is easy to see how these signs of health apply to our personal relationships but from where I sit, having worked with hundreds of people to help them thrive at work, I see signs of them across all sorts of industries and in different organizations.

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Something to Try

My clients often describe the dynamics at work (both healthy and unhealthy) in general terms.

"It's a good place to work."

“I feel disrespected.”

“I don’t feel good about how things are going.” 

“It feels like we’re treated like children.”

"It's somewhere I'd like to stay if I can."

A general sense of things does not give us the clarity we need about the health of our relationship.

So find the source! 

• Is the culture-at-large at the heart of your relationship with work or is your sense of things rooted in a single person, policy or practice?

• Where do you find indications of a healthy relationship - mutual respect, safety, open and honest communication, compromise, equality, independence, support and privacy?

• What about indicators of an unhealthy relationship - intensity, isolation, volatility, extreme jealousy, belittling, demeaning behavior that does not value your self-worth, talents, opinion, and viewpoints?

• Are your healthy or unhealthy experiences connected to a particular person? How can you invest more in people with whom you have a healthy dynamic? 

• How might you guard yourself against the dynamics that are unhealthy (if the person that comes to mind is your boss, Pooja Lakshmin, author of Real Self-Care, has some great insights on how to deal)?

• What about overall culture? Do people generally withhold information, praise, and social supports or are they generous in these aspects?

Carefully consider what you see in these answers.

Look at where you are investing your time and energy. 

Is there a way to shift away from unhealthy aspects of your work and towards the more healthy ones?

Also, remember that our relationship with work can be closely connected to our mental health. 

If you find yourself having a reaction that seems disconnected from what’s currently going on at work, or experience an outsized response to your current situation, finding a therapist or other mental health professional could be an incredibly helpful first step.