The painful Payette lesson
On the day of Julie Payette’s instalment as Canada’s 29th governor general, Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian female astronaut, reassuringly said, “Let me see. She was on the international space station. Did two space shuttle flights in front of an international audience on television. I don’t think she is going to have a problem.”
At the time, many other Canadians felt the same. Fifty-five per cent of Canadians approved of her nomination, with only 14 per cent disapproving, in an Angus Reid poll.
However, as the ink dries from her Jan. 21 resignation, the country is left collectively scratching its head. How did this rising star create a work environment that half of the participants in the Privy Council’s review described as “toxic” and “hostile”?
The hard truth for Canadians is that toxic leaders like Payette exist throughout senior ranks of our public, private and non-profit institutions. According to Statistics Canada’s latest report, 32 per cent of Canadians reported experiencing harassment in their workplace in the past year, with managers and supervisors being responsible for 39 per cent of harassment experienced by men and 32 per cent of women’s.
This is no small issue, given that toxic managers are incredibly costly. Not only are they a public-relations nightmare waiting to explode, they lead to increased, lasting levels of stress and anxiety, loss of confidence and lower job satisfaction among those they supervise. At the organizational level, toxic bosses reduce morale and productivity and increase costs of insurance and employee-assistance programs.
Toxic managers also push employees out the door. Gallup found that 50 per cent of employees have left a job “to get away from their manager” at some point in their career. This comes with a hefty price tag for employers — Canadian organizations pay an average of $18,000 every time an employee leaves, due to loss of productivity and recruitment costs.
So if toxic leaders are so prevalent and the costs of keeping them are so high, why do they keep getting hired and how do they continue to get by?
There is no simple answer, but in part it is fair to say that we often fall into the trap of assuming that a stellar resumé makes for an effective leader. We need to listen to the deluge of HR books, lectures and corporate training and hire strong leaders possessing a combination of passion, humility, adaptability, great listening skills and unimpeachable integrity. Research from CEO Genome debunked this pervasive stereotype of an “ideal leader” that, frankly, does not exist. Through an in-depth analysis of 17,000 executives, they found that only seven per cent of CEOs are Ivy League graduates, over a third are described as introverts and 45 per cent of them had career mishaps. They concluded that “seemingly ordinary people achieve extraordinary success.” Yet, they find charisma and confidence were key drivers in landing a leadership role despite it not correlating to stronger performance.
Had the Trudeau government, and more broadly Canadians, looked past Payette’s remarkable achievements as a scientist, pilot and astronaut — not to mention, someone who also speaks six languages and is a Juno-nominated musician — perhaps we would have noticed the red flags much earlier.
With a quick referral check, we would have discovered that Payette left her role at the Montreal Science Centre in 2016 after employees complained of verbal abuse. We could have noticed when five executives left her office within a threemonth period in 2018 and her office rotated through seven executive assistants in three years at Rideau Hall, including one who served three of her predecessors. Or we would have paused when responses from the Government of Canada’s 2019 Public Service Employee Survey painted a grim picture of Rideau Hall’s environment, with 71 per cent of respondents reporting harassment received from their superiors.
With the pandemic taking a toll on Canadians’ mental health (dipping to the lowest point ever recorded in December, according to one survey) and addiction at an all-time high, we simply cannot afford to have toxic bosses.
We hope that this news is a wake-up call and learning opportunity for Canadian organizations. We have to go beyond simply picking leaders who seem to like people and acknowledging that women, too, can exhibit traits of toxic masculinity. We need to educate both leaders and staff about harassment and its costs from the get-go; mitigate power imbalances by providing anonymous feedback channels so employees can voice their concerns and report mistreatment without fear of retaliation; and have superiors, peers or HR deliver the feedback.
And, most of all, we cannot afford to fall into the trap that all resumés that glitter are gold.
Petros Kusmu is a member of the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference and a management consultant focused on public sector transformations. He is curator of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Vancouver Hub and a board member of the Hogan’s Alley Society and CityHive.
Alyssa McDonald is an organizational psychology consultant advancing environmental and social responsibility through employee engagement, training and change management. She is vice-curator of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Vancouver Hub and an advocate for safe work environments.