How to Heal Your Toxic Workplace with Curiosity

A toxic workplace can be a breeding ground for stress, anxiety, and depression. It can also lead to decreased productivity and increased staff turnover, so it’s bad for the overall business as well as mental health. Bearing in mind that the estimated cost of replacing one employee ranges from 6 - 9 months (Society for Human Resource Management) or 6 months to 2 years (Gallup) - keeping your employees happy is a must for any business that is looking to succeed.

If you find yourself in a toxic workplace, it's important to take steps to heal the environment. Whether you are in a role specific to employee wellness, a general manager or one of the team; you can take manageable steps to help yourself and others feel better, through curiosity.

Curiosity is the desire to learn and understand. It can help you to see things from different perspectives and to find solutions to problems. When you're curious, you're more likely to be open to new ideas, to empathise with your teammates, come up with innovative solutions to problems, and be less stressed whilst doing so.

Here are some tips for using curiosity to heal your toxic workplace:

Ask Questions

Curiosity is about asking questions: when you are curious, you want to know more about the world around you. Especially once our workplace relationships have soured, the way others do (or don’t do) things can be particularly annoying. Missed deadlines, stalled projects - rather than assuming we know why - dig deep and ask questions. You’ll get to know your colleagues better, their point of view, and how to collaborate better in future.

Be open to new ideas.

Curious people are more likely to be open to new ideas. Life gets better, and individuals and businesses thrive when new ideas - technologies, tools or suggestions - can be taken on and implemented. Everyone's life can get easier. Toxic workplaces are usually full of sticks in the mud - people who don’t want to adapt or engage with newness. You can spend a moment evaluating where you are on the adaptable to fixed mindset curve, and spend 2 - 5 extra minutes really trying to engage in a new idea the next time one gets suggested, or suggest one yourself.

Be willing to change

As the world moves even more quickly and enhanced connectivity means new ideas, products and services can spread like wildfire. It took Netflix 3.5 years to reach 1 million users, and ChatGPT just 5 days. Resisting change requires more and more energy, whereas curiosity can lead us to ask and imagine how things might be more fun, more interesting or worthwhile on the other side - and then give it a go.

In the workplace, often things are rejected out of hand because of the perceived cost of implementing a change. Instead of saying no, maybe ask how it could happen best - perhaps by running a test on one or two teams, or implementing a part of the larger change to start with. Ask “how could we do what we do, but better?” and see what answers come.

If you would like help implementing any of the above suggestions, email hello@curiousagenda.co.uk today.