Who and what is 'toxic'?

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Good evening. The world's most famous green grocer has been at bay all week, besieged by allegations of boorish and sexist behaviour, which he strenuously, if rather hamphistically, denies. But it's not all about Greg Wallace. The MasterChef Kitchens are the latest workplace to be described as toxic. A word derived from the Greek custom of poisoning their arrows with blood, dung, and snake venom. That's a recipe, as Greg would probably say, with real bite. A recent survey found that nearly three quarters of us think we've had a job in a toxic workplace. Marketing and PR seem the worst, though interestingly, charities are up there too. Is this a long overdue recognition of how bullying, sexism, favouritism, poisons where we work, an acknowledgement that power is constantly abused and needs to be called out? Or are we in danger of elevating everyday workplace annoyances into a pathology? Bosses just are demanding, colleagues clicky, get on with it. It's not just at work, unsatisfactory relationships of all kinds are now commonly described as toxic. How much hinges on actual behaviour as opposed to how it's perceived? Who or what is actually toxic? And how should we deal with it? That's our moral maze tonight. The panel and Mackelvoy, the executive editor of the News and Political Site Politico, the observer columnist Sonja Soda, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, Matthew Taylor, and the satirist and pundit, Constantin Kissin. Matthew Taylor, you've run a fair few organisations in your time. Were you ever worried that you were a toxic boss? Yeah, I've worked in toxic environments and thinking back, I fear I may have contributed to them, but ultimately I think this is about power and whether power is used fairly and responsibly for the good of the organisation or irresponsibly and oppressively as a plaything of those who hold it. Anne and Mackelvoy. I think we've probably all contributed to something that would now be called a toxic environment Michael, but I have a worry about the word because it feels to me as like starting fortissimo at one end of the piano when we talk about workplace relations, how we feel about them and how we've exercised power as Matthew just mentions. So, you know, I put a kind of half put up my hand, but I just wonder whether I'm going to be convinced tonight that it is a better word than my gut tells me it is. Sonja, Sonja Soda. So I think there is a danger that words like toxic get thrown around and get overused, but I absolutely think that we live in a society where there are toxic institutions. In fact, we, you know, they've been big institutional scandals, whether it's in the church or indeed the BBC, that do imply a toxic culture. And I think it is something that we should be worried about. I think a lot of nervousness around it comes about where you draw the line, what constitutes toxicity? Constantine. Well, very much on that point, I think what actually constitutes toxicity is not individual acts of misbehavior, but rather a structure on which there is no opportunity for redress where the people who don't have power in the structure don't have somebody they can go to and actually have the presenter, let's say spoken with, it doesn't always have to be about firing people at the first offense. I think it's more about, is there a culture of feedback such that when things happen, they're all not to happen, they don't continue happening. Pamela, thanks very much indeed. Our first witness has been Askins, who's a content creator on social media, with one and a half million followers, that's rather a lot, isn't it, and whose stick is people complaining about work. How many stories have you shared online about horrible bosses? So shared online a few hundred, but probably received in my DMs, so about 200,000 in the last eight years. Lord, what do they have in common? What made them toxic? Yeah, it's interesting. I think a lot of them aren't toxic. A lot of people are just sort of saying, what do you think of this? I will often push back and say, you know, I actually think I understand why they've done that and understand why they've been there. I think what is interesting is the consistency across all sectors, all countries, you know, blue, white, colour. It's amazing, as soon as I release a story, because I'm quite careful not to release names and company names, because it's more about calling out themes rather than just causing pylons. But it's amazing how often people will dive for the comments, say, I bet that's hospitality, or I bet that's America, or I bet that's a law firm. And it does understand the theme. The theme, what links them all very briefly. The theme is very standard work problems. It could be pay rise. It could be messing around with annual leave. It could be intrusion on, you know, sort of work life balance. It could be, you know, troubling boss or a colleague. There's so many different themes, but they also contribute to the same problem, I think. Okay, constant. Yeah, I find your comments are very interesting. One of the things that struck me was this idea that if you subjectively feel uncomfortable, then you're in a toxic environment. And I think we can all relate to that feeling of being uncomfortable. I mean, I had a job as a student where I think a boss made me uncomfortable three times in a week. Would you say that's a toxic environment when that happens? I would, yeah, because it's subjective in the sense we all feel things differently. So some things you might be able to shake off more than others. But the reality was you felt. I did. But the reason I ask is that now with 20 years experience in the workplace, when I reflect on it, the first time I was told off for being late, the second time I was told off for not sending a very important email, which caused the company thousands of pounds and losses. And the third time I got told off for calling my girlfriend in Ukraine on the company phone. When I look back at that, I don't think that's that was a toxic environment. I think I was a pretty useless employee. I think that's fair. And I think, you know, we all make mistakes. And, you know, I would say a really bad boss is one who never tells you off because your job is to train and engage. But actually, how you tell someone off is important as well. I think there are plenty of ways to tell someone off without them feeling like the walls are closing in and feeling pressure. And I think if you, especially if you're young, if you are telling someone off in a way for, you know, mistakes that we've all met, if you are telling them off in a way where they feel that bad about it, I think that is a pretty. Well, I can't agree with that because I just when I look back at that, I think I was wrong. And the reason I'm driving at this is to explore this idea of the subjectivity of all of this. Because if we define a toxic environment as one in which people feel uncomfortable, I can think of lots of what I would say very toxic environments, which are very comfortable. You know, if you've got a company in which there are four racists who work in an office and they love telling racist jokes and everyone's having a great time, we would all agree that's a toxic environment, right? Totally agree. So the subjectivity is the bit that bothers me. Do we not need some kind of, like in the law, a reasonable person's standard where there's some consensus about what behavior is or isn't toxic? Because look, we can all agree, you know, sexual harassment or things of that nature or toxic. But when we get down into the weeds, like the example I gave, I would argue most people in this country, most reasonable people would say that I was, can we hear what he would argue? Of course, most people would argue that that was not a toxic environment. I don't think making someone feel uncomfortable necessarily means it's toxic because being told off is uncomfortable. It's not a great feeling. I think overall, I define toxic where something that significantly detracts or makes your mental or physical health at work feel significantly bad. That's kind of how I define it. And in regards to, like it would be great if we all had a score out of 100 and we all agree right, 80 out of 100 is, but like people feel things differently. You know, look at phobias, for example, like people are scared of heights more than other people. So it's hard to just say, right, this is what a normal person feels, therefore no one else beyond having a toxic relationship. I just think you know, I think if you ask someone, was that a toxic one, and they say yes, I do think we should listen. When you pick up there and when you say we should listen, that I am a bit concerned about this tension between the idea of it being defined by how do you feel as opposed to how did someone behave? Because how we feel is a number of things, isn't it? Our response to a bad workplace experience at some points can be a bit annoying, blow it off steam on a Friday night, get down the bar at the end of the day or whatever, or probably more healthily do yoga. And at other times it can really impair physical mental health. So the same behaviour seems to be toxic and not toxic at the same time. So I'm worried to be here about shrewding his toxic cat. I know what you mean. I think that no jobs perfect, right? So the idea of oh, I just had a bad day, therefore I have a toxic workplace, I think is silly, but I don't think that's what people mean. In the same way, like if you have an argument with your partner, that doesn't mean you're suddenly in a toxic relationship. I think people know what they mean when they say toxic and it can be some big things that happen, you know, like the obvious sort of news stories we've had this week, or it can just be a compounded effect of lots of little things and feeling like there is no communication or there is no sort of end point to it. So I do think at some point we don't confuse having a bad week with a toxic workplace, but I do think people know the difference and when you ask them, they do understand that. What's the utility of the term in? Because once you've slammed it on the table, it's a very kind of hard term, isn't it? It's even harsh. So if you say, well, we now talk about, you know, 360 degree reviews and people being able to express themselves much more, bring your whole self to work, etc. But as soon as you bring the word toxic into it, if anyone accuses me of that, very lightly to be defensive, I don't think you'd ever forget that that word was held at either if you were a reasonable person. So why is it useful? I think it's useful because it flags a performance issue. So, you know, we're talking about it being a sort of moral question, but I also think as a business owner, if I've got a manager who's creating a toxic environment, they're not going to be doing a very good job for me. There's like a huge amount of stats around, you know, the most motivated teams will give you 24% more output. Like this huge number suggests that actually for a business, it's really useful, even if you don't necessarily care about your employees, which you know, I'd like to think most people do. I think it's a real performance issue as well where a company will really struggle if they've got people feeling. Is it arguable? You say I'm a toxic boss. Can I say no, I'm really not? Absolutely. And I think that's where the communication happens. I think if you can give a safe place for people to avoid concerns, you lose the toxic flag quite quickly. I think where a lot of toxic labels come from is a feeling of frustration where they can't have an honest conversation when they're boss about why they're feeling like they are. They feel like HR is a bit of a, you know, a bit of a sort of bosses mates. They're not really helping out too much. A lot of toxic places feel like you've got no output. Whereas if you're a boss who generally can listen to feedback and say, look, I, you know, I annoyed you this week and you annoyed me and let's talk about why that was and let's work out how to work together properly. That's not a toxic label. Should I say that's a very healthy one? Have you been called toxic by any one or thought of yourself as toxic? I ask in the spirit that I'm more aware of it when I look at other people and I've been managing people since I was 22. I mean, a lot of my channel is based on the sex that I've made in the past. Like, we all do. Like, no, very few people wake up and go, I'm going to be an awful person there at work. Like all sort of boss conflicts, you know, even, you know, the rep who has behaviour sort of Greg, why is that? He probably thought he's trying to be charming or fun. Do you know what I mean? He probably wasn't setting out sort of be like that. So I did. I think a lot of this comes from ignorance and lack of training and a lack of communication, really. Thanks very much indeed, Ben Askins. Thanks. Our next witness is Dr. Jaina Williams, who's author of How a Work One and Women Versus Feminism. And she's on the line now. This idea of a toxic workplace, it's quite a modern thing. Isn't it, Jaina, that seems really to have caught on? Is it a good thing in your view, a kind of case of the the worm turning? I actually think the word itself is incredibly unhelpful for describing the workplace. I guess my biggest problem is just that it blows an awful lot of different types of behaviours together from things which are absolutely illegal, sexual and racial harassment, discrimination, to things which are just part and parcel of a workplace. I mean, bad bosses and unpleasant colleagues are as old as workplaces themselves. But then there's also the banter and jokes, which maybe to some people's taste and not others. So you've got a whole spectrum of behaviours there, which I think all need to be dealt with in very different ways and just labeling all of that as toxic really prevents, as I think from separating out different types of behaviours that we might want to treat differently. Understood, Sonny. Hi, Jaina. So I'm very comfortable saying that I'm one of the bricks in that survey, Michael Reference, who thinks they've worked in a toxic workplace before. And I'll just describe it briefly to you. You know, it's a big team. It was headed up by somebody who I'd characterise as a bully. They undermined and belittled people. It was a workplace characterised by fear. That wasn't just about the person. The culture filtered down. People were worried about making decisions because they were scared about getting on reasonably told off. It was a sort of culture of paralysis and it made me miserable and it made me miserable at work, but it also made me miserable at home. Why can't I describe that as toxic? And does it make me a snowflake that I want to describe it as toxic? It doesn't make you a snowflake, but actually it's actually really unhelpful in moving forward from that situation. So I think the best way of dealing with situations like that and what people have done in the past is actually get together with colleagues and this was why we have trade unions. So people could argue collectively for better pay and conditions, better treatment in the workplace or actually bring a legal case if things are that bad. Whereas the language, even the language of bullying, the language of toxicity, you know, it's debilitating. It literally says that you have been poisoned, that you are being demeaned. It puts workers into the position of objects rather than subjects in the workplace. But isn't that a bit simplistic, I suppose, in the sense that yes, you can organise collectively when you've got, say, a dispute over terms and conditions and pay. But if we're talking about bullying, bullying is a pattern of behaviour that it can actually be really difficult to challenge and I'm talking about workplace, where literally everyone was miserable. They didn't have the energy to sort of collectively organise and it was because people were scared and actually turning on each other. It would be very hard to organise in that workplace. I guess one thing that concerns me is the idea of people writing themselves into the role of a victim and the reason why that concerns me is because it makes it more difficult for you to stand up to someone who's treating you badly, the more you present yourself as a victim or fantasy yourself as a victim and this idea again that you've been effectively poisoned by a bad presence in the workplace. Again, it's this language of, you know, we're tired, we're helpless almost and I think actually people seeing themselves as powerful, as having agency in the workplace and actually even in the worst circumstances of being able to stand up to a bad boss of being able to tell them collectively or individually, no, this is not acceptable, you can't treat me like this. So do you think people who feel bullied by, you know, people who have really kind of quite nasty patterns of behaviour in the workplace, they feel scared? Do you think they're just weak and they need to sort of, you know, just stand up a bit more? No, that's why I think words that are very important to me are things like solidarity, collective, collective action, actually talking to your colleagues and whether people have similar experiences, can we get together? Will you come with me and we can go together to tell this boss that they aren't behaving in ways that are unacceptable? I think there are all kinds of things that people can do to take action to actually improve the situation that they've got. And do you think it's helpful to recognise a concept of a bad work culture, even if we don't use the word toxic? So for example, if you've got two workplaces and one employee is feeling credibly engaged, incredibly satisfied, they say in surveys and another, they feel very undervalued, they don't feel like they've got to say and they feel very, very unsatisfied. I mean, isn't it helpful to recognise that difference and say that second organisation has got a bad culture, maybe even toxic culture? I think there's definitely bad workplaces. Again, time in memorial work has not historically formed. Most people on the planet have been a pleasant experience, but I think it actually tells us there's something quite different about society today that we look to work to be a pleasant place, that we look to work as a source of emotional satisfaction. For an awful lot of people still today, work is a question of putting in the hours to earn the money. Safety used to mean physical and safety meant that you didn't get crushed down a mine or lose a limb on a production line. Now, safety in the workplaces come to mean emotional safety protection from feelings and ideas and words that we don't like to hear. And I think that speaks to a real shift in how we approach work. And I think it goes along with this idea that was mentioned earlier about, you know, bring your whole self to work. Well, the problem with bringing your whole self to work is not everybody's personality is to everyone's taste. Indeed, it's actually better if you bring the lesson yourself to work. Yes, possibly. Matthew Taylor. Yeah, I mean, it's not a mystery, really, is it? That when we talked 50 years ago about workplace we'd emphasise physical injury and now we emphasise psychological injury and the nature of manual work is massively decline and much higher proportion of us are in service industries or in white collar industries. I don't think that's anything to do with changing fads. That's just a kind of reflection of the nature of the workplace. But Sonny asked you about culture. What do you think of the concept of culture? Is it a useful concept? I think it is, but so just to come back to the point you're making about safety, because I think that's a really important point and I think it perhaps it relates to to culture. So perhaps we're not having the same concerns about physical safety for everybody nowadays, but the idea that people look to the workplace as a source of emotional satisfaction and a source of emotional safety, I think is quite new. And I think this, even though, you know, we might not have the same physical risks nowadays involved in work, I don't think it is actually true Matthew and I speak. I think it speaks to a very almost dare I say it elite or middle class perspective that the work is, work is looked to as a source of psychological safety. I don't know what I meant. So if you are a supermarket, for example, a supermarket checkout, you know, you might not face physical dangers, but the idea that this is a source of emotional satisfaction to you, it might not be. I'm afraid it's you who's being elitist. I've looked at the research on what people want from work and there's a remarkable consistency. It turns out that people who work in shops want exactly the same things as people who, I don't know, run think tanks, which is that they want a sense of job satisfaction. They want to be part of a good team. They want to feel that people who have authority over them treat them fairly. There's actually a remarkable consistency and some of the things that people do value are precisely these things about culture, about their way they're treated by their bosses and the way they're treated by their workforce. Why do you think that people who work in shops don't care about this? No, I do. I think that it's the point about emotional safety and emotional satisfaction. You don't think people in shops would like emotional, so you think they are happy to be bullied by their bosses or by their customers? I don't really understand. I think you're seeing the opposite of emotional safety as being bullied. I guess what I'm suggesting is that for some people, their family is the biggest source of emotional satisfaction in their life. Their hobbies, their interests. All of those are the places that they would look to for emotional fulfilment. I think it speaks to a very particular view of the workforce that you see your work as your source of emotional fulfilment. Well, it depends what we mean by emotional fulfilment, but as I said to you, all the research shows that these factors such as teamwork, such a sense of purpose, such a being, as being fairly treated are things that all employees care about. In the end, however, isn't this really about power? When people talk about toxicity in a culture, what they're saying is they're saying the people who have power are using that power irresponsibly or unfairly. That is a problem, isn't toxicity a reason way to describe that kind of culture that affects everybody? You talked about the collective. It's the description of the collective experience. Yeah, I think our clearly power is just a fact of life in the workplace, though. I mean, more people have bosses than are bosses. And you sell your labour power. I mean, that's a very old Marxist understanding of the work relationship. I sell my time for eight hours a day and during that eight hours, the boss does quite literally have power to tell me what to do to dictate how I spend my time. And I think the way we operate in work nowadays, we have the psychological mechanisms to try and pretend that this is not the reality. Okay, so I'm really confused now. Are you saying that actually your view is that the work contract should be that, you know, I'm paid, and I should just suck it up, basically, if my boss is unreasonable or unfair, I feel miserable. And most of all, and this is the heart of toxicity, I don't feel I can speak up. And nobody feels they can speak up, you know, so well, that's fine. You get your money, shut up and go home. Well, again, to really probably sound like an old Marxist tonight, I guess the power that workers have does again come back to this idea of collective bargaining, collective solidarity. So the boss is a singular person, perhaps, who has power of enumerous people. But when those numerous people get together and act collectively, and they then become more powerful and can stand up to the bad boss and say, we will not put up with this. We insist that you treat us more fairly, pay us more. But in the past, those disputes would have been about working conditions, about pay, about hours. They wouldn't have been, we want you to look after us better, we want you to be nicer to us. My worry is the debate about toxicity is suggesting that what workers want is to be better looked after, which really puts more power in the hands of bosses and makes workers less powerful when they're asking to be treated like children, essentially, and better looked after, better protected, better cared for in the workplace. I really don't like that. Joanna Williams, thank you very much indeed for joining us tonight. And sorry about the crackle, occasional crackle on the line there. Next witness is Dr Becker-Bland, who's a journalist, counsellor and founder of a charity called Stand Alone, that works with people who are estranged. We are moving here from toxicity in the workplace to toxic family relationships. Dr, she's on the line now. Dr Bland, the research thing is the toxic family relationships as something poisonous. And I suppose there's a little return of something. Yeah, of course, then every relationship is open to, I suppose, toxicity. Well, it's it's not just poisonous, but also somehow irredeemable as well. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I think that some relationships when you try and repair them are just irreparable. The dynamic cannot move forward. And you can't take away like the toxic element of it, which, you know, I don't really like to use the word toxic. I think the word harmful is a lot better. But I think those harmful aspects of some family dynamics, it's incredibly hard to move away from. And some people don't want to move away from them because they gain a lot of power and a lot of, yeah, a lot of, I suppose, good feeling from being in those positions. I understand. Amma Kelvin. Hi, and Becca, notwithstanding your new answer that you prefer harmful to to toxic, we are actually discussing the toxic and the concept at the moment on the program. I'm guessing some listeners might be thinking, well, I was kind of finally balanced when we were talking about the workplace, I could see both sides of that, the pros and cons of using this term. But as an analogy for what may have gone wrong, very badly wrong in families, then maybe they're uncomfortable with it because it does sound, it does sound so finely, it does sound like it's a kind of exit door from relationships which perhaps not certainly not in all cases, but in some cases one might want to find a way back to what's wrong with the way I'm looking at that. Okay, they're interesting to look at how what's wrong with looking at that. I think that ultimately then it's ideal for every family to try and work through some of these dynamics to kind of come to mediation, to really try and kind of work through the problems. However, the reality is is that not every family member will do that or has the bandwidth, the skill, the capacity to sit in the difficulty with other family members and grow and evolve the dynamic. So ultimately, yes, of course, like those relationships are incredibly important, but we can't say that some of those relationships don't hold behaviors which are extremely harmful to our mental, physical and emotional well-being. And we need to think very carefully about what kind of dynamics we have in our lives from those very close people that deliver such an important part of our growth. And I think one of the themes has run a bit through the program so far is kind of who's the best judge of that because there are certainly situations under great strain provocation where people might decide that their relations with their parents or their brother or even perhaps a close friend have become toxic. I do wonder whether we allow for people to take a different view of their own state of mind in the future and that the cutting off of relations would therefore be, you know, possibly have more downsides than the theory suggests that it's always going to be better for them just to have got ahead of it. I think that there's no ideal circumstance if you have a parent or you have a family member or a partner that is delivering, let's say unhealthy or toxic behavior regularly and won't reform, won't repair, then, you know, that's not a great situation to be in. And, you know, my research shows that the reality of moving away from a family member will have serious financial and material consequences in your life and, you know, it's not to be done lightly but some people do obviously understand that, you know, to reclaim their emotional well-being, it's something that they have to do. And I don't think we should ever for a moment say that people can't trust themselves. I think that was slightly implied in your question, like, you know, people who I've worked with and I've, you know, now worked with many hundreds of thousands of people in these scenarios, then they've never, never really misjudged themselves. They understand what harmful is and they understand when they are being harmed. And we have to trust them, like, they are the best people to understand that. So, where would that leave? Everyone's familiar with the protocol of the, they're so parable of the protocol son, but where would that leave the protocol parent, the father, the mother, the person who has been shut out? If they come back many years later, I mean, you can see I'm sort of, you know, I've got the kinsy and sort of deathbed scenes in my mind here, but I think the idea is it would be familiar to a lot of people that maybe in later life, in changed circumstances, how do you then allow for a way back? Because my kind of concern about it, and you're, you're right to say that maybe I was putting an element of doubt about judgment, and you're absolutely right to hear that. Because I do believe we can change, and I do believe some of our judgments can change and a lot of both religious belief, but always human experience, underpinning it. Kind of tells us so. I do think that, you know, our resilience changes over time. So, you know, as we grow older, we have better life experiences that teach us how to deal with different dynamics and give us life skills and relationship skills that we may not have had before. And that may mean that when we're 40 years old, we are very different to a 20-year-old. And our brains are, you know, more adequately developed to be able to be equipped to deal with certain situations. However, I think what we need to understand is that, of course, the ideal situation is that everyone is able to work on the dynamic. But for 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, it can actually be incredibly hard to have the skills to come forward and say, "No mum, no dad, these are my needs, these are my boundaries. I need you to respect them." But when we're a bit later in life, of course, perhaps we do have those skills. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't respect what people do when they're younger, because they obviously need to get away from something that they perceive, knowing, understanding their body and their mind and their soul is very harmful. You don't like the idea of toxicity. You prefer the idea of harm. But do you think there's something useful in the analogy of poisoning a relationship? Yeah, I think, you know, I heard the other day, actually, from a friend, there's this really amazing analogy of, like, you're eating the most beautiful meal, but it's poisoning you slowly, so that eventually you will die. And I think there is something very poisonous about, like, certain dynamics. They're very addictive. And these kind of, yeah, like, certainly if there's a push pull, like, you know, someone in your family, someone in your relationship, brings you close and pushes you away, then that, you know, through certain mental health conditions, that can be part of it, certain attachment kind of conditions. But I think that ultimately, that is, you know, people can feel very poisoned by it, but also they can't get away. Constantin. I want to come back with what we explored with our first witness, which is the idea that, you know, your subjective experience is how everything should be determined. And you mention elsewhere that if you find something harmful, then it is. Does that leave a lot of room for a loving friend or a sister or brother, somebody to say, well, actually, you know, in that relationship, yes, your parent or whoever is being that way. But if you hadn't reacted in this way, or maybe if you didn't say this thing, or if you hadn't, you know, done this or that, actually the entire thing might be entirely different. I think in a healthy relationship, everybody's got the capacity to understand and see and own their part in what happens and take responsibility. And I think that's where harmful or toxic dynamics grow is when you've got one or two people that can't take responsibility. I actually think that's a really good point. But the problem is, you know, if you have a toxic relationship with the parent or harmful relationship or whatever we want to call it, you know, to expect that person to change something sometimes is quite unrealistic, I would argue. My experience, for example, is my, I had a quite difficult relationship with my parents, which evolved over time and particularly when I became a parent and I became very compassionate towards them. And I realized that they were just doing their best. That changed the entire relationship without them particularly changing. Should we not look to change ourselves rather than expecting the other party to change? I think we can only do what's within our control and what's within our control is obviously to change ourselves. And we can state really clearly what our needs and our boundaries are for people. And you know, the reality is we only have now and we only can act on this moment now. That's the only thing that's within our control. Like we don't have the future within our gift right now. So I think what we do is we express, like as the last guest said, we express what we need, we express what our boundaries are, we express how to love, you know, how to love me is by, you know, respecting these boundaries. This is how to show me love. But if those people can't meet you there and tell you that that's not appropriate or you're being sensitive and minimise you and gaslight you, like is there really a future for a dynamic like that? Because ultimately you don't have a voice. Well, I wonder whether having compassion for people and understanding that they're dealing with really serious challenges from their own childhood, which may well have been far more difficult in our own, actually allows them to get to a different place as opposed to sort of being these are my boundaries. And this is what I'm demanding from you. Otherwise, I insist on feeling unloved. Is there no space for simply unilateral forgiveness and compassion of that kind? Yes. And I just want to say that I don't think boundaries have to be delivered in quite the way you said it there. Like they can be delivered with love and compassion. Absolutely. You know, how we communicate these things is so important. It's what these things live and die on. So I do think communication is important there. Yeah, I think absolutely. We do need to have compassion. Compassion should be at the heart of everything we do in every relationship. But we can't use compassion as an excuse to override behaviour that ultimately will harm us. And in some very extreme cases may kill us. So we have to really look out for ourselves. We have to have a healthy sense of ego to be able to understand that, you know, we matter and it matters that people are harming us. Like, you know, we have to be able to take ourselves out of situations where ultimately it may lead to our demise. Becca Blan, thank you very much indeed. Last one, this is Donald Robertson, who's a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist and stoic philosopher, author of amongst other books along much of the same lines how to think like Socrates. He's on the line now. Donald Robertson, this is easy, isn't it? What would Socrates make of the idea of toxic relationships, do you think? Well, funnily enough, many people would say that Socrates himself was in a toxic family relationship because history portrays his wife, Zanthepi, as a very sharp tongue woman with a quite sharp fuse and it's something of a and labels her as something of a shrew. However, the plot thickens because Socrates didn't see her that way. He describes her as a good wife and a loving mother to his children and he saw her tantrums. The other people found intolerable is relatively trivial. So one man's meet as another man's poison is the saying goes for Socrates. You know, what was unbearable to one person was trivial to another person and Socrates had exceptional psychological and emotional resilience. Ah, Matthew Taylor. I know this is unfair, but it could sound to people as though you're a sponsor to someone being bullied at work, he's to tell them to just get over it. Yeah, just to kind of suck it up. Well, that's why I said that Socrates is Socrates. He's an exceptional character. So the stoic philosophers, for example, Epictetus says, look, if somebody is upset by something, we should empathise with him. Not sort of advice that you might anticipate getting from a stoic, but that's what he says to his students. Socrates, Epictetus says to his students, you are not Socrates, but you could aspire to become more like Socrates through training. Well, let's look at the aspiration then, because you know, I should own up. If I was intelligent and deep enough to live by a philosophy, it would indeed be a stoicism, but when we deal with the abuse of power, surely sometimes the right response is anger and a commitment to act. Well, that's a very interesting point. The stoics would say, you know, of course, many people, including some ancient philosophers, believe that anger could be righteous and it could be a constructive way of responding to social injustice or our toxic workplace, for example. But my belief is that anger is actually seldom the best way to respond to a problematic situation. And I agree with what Socrates says about this in Plato's Republic, for example. Socrates said to ruminate angerally or in a morbid or depressive way about a problem is actually the thing that's most unhelpful in many cases. And it prevents us from doing what we should do, which is to think through the problem clearly and objectively in order to solve it. See, if I was a boss, well, actually, I'm a boss, I think this is great. This philosophy, isn't it? Because I can basically treat people appallingly at work. And the advice from the, you know, if I had a stoic as a head of HR, if my staff go and complain about their terrible boss, the HR director is going to say, well, look, it's fine. You need to understand, you need to empathise, you need to be more philosophical about it. Is that right? I mean, should it, is it just that stoics shouldn't really go into HR? No, I mean, I think this is a common misconception about stoicism. So the stoics emphasize a sort of emotional acceptance. They don't think that it's worth getting excessively perturbed about the situations that upset other people, but they distinguish that from our motive to change the situation. They think we should exhibit self-discipline and courage in the service of justice and make practical changes in life. And in fact, if you look at the historical figures in the stoic tradition, they were often very active in politics and some of them risked and some of them even sacrificed their lives at taking a stand against autocrats. I guess what's interesting to me about this is that I think a characteristic of bullying very often is that it absolutely undermines people's capacity for some of the things that you're talking about, for kind of a sense of equanimity, a sense of autonomy, a sense of being in control. So I guess from a kind of stoical point of view, can you see that when people talk about toxicity, they talk about bullying, that the real damage is that it makes it very difficult for people to to live in the kind of way you're encouraging people to live? Yeah, I think the stoics themselves are very clear about this. So the stoics think in an ideal world, we'd all have the super resilience of Socrates or Diogenes or Sinek, but the stoics say that what they call the sage, the ideal wise man or woman is as rare as the Ethiopian phoenix, which incidentally was born every 500 years. So they say it's seldom that someone has such exceptional resilience. It's kind of a hypothetical ideal that we can aspire to, but most people have sensitivities that they've acquired through cultural norms or through their upbringing. And you know, for example, bullying can bring them down and make them depressed and damage them psychologically. And stoics should be empathic about that and understand that we shouldn't, the stoics say, expect other people to be sages. We shouldn't expect other people to be perfect. That would be very unwise and unrealistic of us. Sonia. Hi, Donald. Do you think Socrates is a better person because he can tolerate his wise behaviour and find it trivial than somebody who might find that behaviour difficult? Yes. I love it when I get a direct answer. Great. Well, the next thing I wanted to ask you about, given that you were so succinct there, was around this idea of sensitivity, which you mentioned, some people think, you know, I'm sensitive and it's true I can be a bit thin skin. But I think that sometimes that has positives. I think a flip side of my sensitivity is that I'm a very caring person. Is there a danger in urging everyone towards stoicism that we flatten out variations in sensitivity that can actually be quite good for society? Yeah, I mean, the stoics don't want to, they repeatedly say that their ideal isn't to have a heart of stone or be like as insensitive as a statue. So they think that the wise person has affection for other people and empathy for them, for example. One of the virtues of stoicism is full of store gear or paternal or familial affection, actually. So stoics are a little bit more sensitive in that regard and a constructive way than you might assume. But what they think we should avoid is having an unhealthy or pathological emotional reaction to things. They want to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy emotions. Sure. But isn't that sort of, you know, that's the idea of stericism. But in the real world, don't you get people who are thick skinned and quite insensitive and people who are thin skinned are perhaps more sensitive? Yeah, absolutely. And I think sensitivity, you know, is to large extent determined by genetics, by cultural norms. And also to some extent it's mutable. It goes up and down. And also it can be trained through CBT and resilience training and things like that. And do you think we're living in a world today where it's harder to be stoic if you look, for example, what some people talk about as a toxicity of social media? Yeah, I mean, look, what inspired ancient philosophy was a problem. It was the problem of political rhetoric that Socrates was responding to in the early days of the Greek democracy. So very quickly people found that they could use persuasive language to stoke greed and fear and anger and the assembly and manipulate and sway their votes and control society. And the philosophers, such as Socrates and the Stoics thought this is a threat and we need to protect ourselves against it. Well, if Socrates went in a tardis with Doctor Who really travelled to the present day, I think the first thing that he would say is that goodness me, you used to have to go out to listen to political rhetoric on the Penex or in the gymnasia of ancient Athens. But now we carry around sophists with us in our pockets. They've invaded our homes on television, on radio, and in social media and our mobile phones, we drink from a veritable firehose of rhetoric and propaganda these days. And so that problem is massively amplified. And I just want to come back to this idea that Socrates is a better and morally better person. I think the reason this makes you feel so uncomfortable is you know, I'm a journalist who writes a lot about domestic abuse and coercive control, which is another problematic pattern of behaviour like bullying. This is behaviour that really undermines your sense of self and your self esteem and you know, you feel gaslit. And you know, isn't there a risk with stoatism that you're saying that the better people are the people who can who can be stoic or in the face of that kind of abuse. And aren't you really undermining the people who are suffering as a result by saying they're not quite as good as people who might be impervious? So what you're saying is Stoicism is a form of victim blaming. Yes, yes, you put it better than me. Yes, you did put it better than me. Well, I'm good to like, so I'm still manning your argument, I guess. Like, no, I don't think it is actually. Because the stoics, first of all, they don't blame people for these kind of vulnerabilities or weaknesses. They think that we all have the, they view them more like a kind of like an allergy. Like, you know, our an illness. You know, they think that we all have the ability though to cure ourselves of these problems. So in the same way, you know, in psychotherapy and modern, there are many parallels between modern psychotherapy and ancient stoicism and modern psychotherapy. If somebody's clinically depressed, we don't blame them for it. But we do think it would be preferable, it would be healthy, and in a listen to the word that would be virtuous, it would be something that we would aspire to if we could gain emotional resilience and alleviate our depression. Donald Robertson, thank you very much indeed. Well, panel, I must say, well, all this is going on. I remember when I first came to the BBC from rather ruthless, early, burly of Fleet Street a very long time ago, it was the very opposite of toxic. In fact, people spent their whole careers at the BBC, blindly unaware that everybody thought they were useless. It's different now, our first witness and very modern take on this sort of stuff. He seemed to have a lot of competition for the title of the worst boss ever. Yeah, he did. I have to say, I was skeptical. I said in my introduction that I had sort of got really against the use of the word. I have to say, people say, oh, you're moral maize. How many of you really change your minds about very much? He actually did lead me very close to changing my mind about it because he was very reasonable about the use of the term and he clearly didn't just want it bandied about, but he did, I think, make a pretty good case that there were patterns of behaviour and how people felt about them, that if you didn't address them, would get worse. My challenge had been, well, what's a good point using this word, banding this word around. I thought he gave me rather good answer that there was a point and that I think he persuaded me you could improve things by careful use of it, and I think that is a matter we might come on to when that isn't appropriate, but yeah, it was a rather sweep by the first witness. Yeah, it comes at him and he did define a toxic workplace almost entirely subjectively, didn't he? Well, yes, it's something that has a negative impact on you. Quite, and as much as I would like to appear open-minded and magnanimous and all those wonderful things like an actual Alfred. That's my job. I've become far more entrenched as a result of listening to both to the first and to the second witness that we question, because there is a fun, articulate and wonderful as they both are. There's a fundamental unwillingness to recognise that reality is not subjective. It is consensually constructed when it comes to things like social norms, and I'm afraid underneath everything that they were saying, I hear the kind of late motif of modern Western society, which is me, me, me. Yeah, Matthew, how far do you go along with that argument of the subjective and the objective in this context? I don't think I do at all, really. I mean, the first thing to say, Michael, is that when you suggest that the BBC never sacked anybody over usas they were, that this is a non-toxic, but I'm not sure that's absolutely the case. I mean, I think the point that Ben Askins made is that this in a sense is there kind of performance issue. If you are making people feel terrible at work, and people feel they can't speak up, then one of the things that might not be able to speak up about is the fact that their colleagues are useless. They might not be able to have that kind of conversation where people hold each other to account. So, so, so, non-toxicity is not the same as those kind of permissiveness or a lack of authority or anything like that. And I think that one of the things that I kind of haven't could have grasped so much until I heard it tonight is that toxicity is a kind of shared concept. We don't, you know, we don't tend to say that one person suffers from toxicity. We talk about a toxic atmosphere, a toxic culture. So, it is actually a description of something that a number of people are are feeling. So, it's subjective, but it's collectively subjective. Yeah, now I understand that. Sonny, yeah, I suppose the problem about the subjectivity is it's very difficult to deny, isn't it? You know, how can you deny being a bully if the bullying is defined by how people respond to your behaviour? Yeah, I think there is necessarily a subjective element to it. And I suspect that that's where, you know, a witness like Joanna where her nervousness about it comes from. But I think the problem is in being so nervous about people self-defining as victims and enduring the line in the wrong place when it comes to toxic behaviour, that they that she throws a baby out with a bath water. So, she sort of disses the idea of culture altogether. And I just find it really tricky and difficult actually that when you're talking about patterns of toxic behaviour, whether it's bullying or coercive control, this idea that people who are basically being made to feel really terrible about themselves and it's really kind of impairing their sort of emotional feelings. Oh, it's all great because you can, you know, show some solidarity, you know, get down to pick it line. I say this as somebody who's been on a pick it line today. It's easier to do in relation to some things than others. And I just think when you're at the brunt of some of this behaviour, you're not in a place where you can, you can collectively organise because you're feeling really bad about yourself. Yeah, Anna, it did remind us at first, but it wasn't just bullying, racism, sexism. It's things like the sort of favouritism or no training or poor communication you lit on, didn't you? Yes, I mean, these are all grave flaws and flaws that a lot of us will have encountered in the workplace being at the sharp end of and probably metered out to others if we're honest. I do think there I do toughen up a bit because if we're not going to have the platonic ideal of bosses or indeed comedies or workplaces and I did sort of think if you're starting to talk about things like favouritism or indeed sometimes even the way that people communicate it, everyone can communicate better at times. But I didn't think that that could really, I think, hit a measure for me or something that could be described as toxic because there is a bit of, the best is the enemy of the good here. I mean, at this point, I did begin to wonder if anyone had ever worked in a workplace, it was not toxic. And I did slide you on, I just thought of, to some people say I'm now switching around to subbending towards his position, which is, there is a tension with, you're waiting for that. There is a tension that, we're then talking about resilience training and all these theories going on at once that want us to have CBT be more resilient. At the same time, not kind of get over the fact that things are toxic. I think there's a little tension inside all of us about that. Yeah, Matthew Joanna Williams thought this was all the whole idea was rather damaging, that it should be dealt with by, I'm paraphrasing now, by solidarity rather than whining. Well, I think people sometimes do show solidarity in responding to what they see as toxicity. I couldn't, to be honest, I found this kind of idea that the fact that people want to be happy at work is a new fangled idea and we should go back to the old days and people went down the mines. I couldn't quite get it. Actually, it's historically not accurate either, because I live in York. The idea, if you think of, you know, the quaker employers around here, the idea that employers didn't use to care about making their employees happy is some didn't, but some absolutely did. So it is, as I said, very consistent, the things that people care about to work, and yes, of course they care about terms and conditions and pay, but they really do also care about culture and they do care about being treated fairly. Of course, she made some good points, I thought, that she felt that was infantilising the whole idea that it turns workers into victims and everybody wants to be a victim these days, don't they? And it made things personal and kind of permanent as well. It's bit difficult to move on from that idea. I do agree with that sort of ideologically, but I have to say as someone who does lead a small team with my YouTube channel, I have to say I think culture is immensely important. I think culture is, I think somebody said, I don't know whose quarter is, culture is what happens when no one's watching and I found that to be absolutely the case. So I think the cultural environment of an organisation is extremely important because that is how the values of the people at the top get communicated to people who don't have a direct interaction with them. So my view is that, yes, of course, in modern society people are thinking of themselves as victims far too much, in my opinion, but that does not negate the fact that I think as Matthew rightly said, teams, and I think Ben actually, I'll first witness too, the teams that have a good culture and that are happy to perform better. And I think that's inevitably the case. It's only when it comes to toxic, so-called toxic family relationships. Becca Blant had some really interesting things to say about that, didn't you know, the people who we can't sustain in our lives. It's a people, it was an interesting definition. Yeah, and I think when you're talking about really truly toxic behaviour, so abusive, kind of coercive relationships, and I think that's what she was talking about. I think sometimes, she's absolutely right, actually, that sometimes you might end up having to walk away for the sake of your own emotional health. I guess my concern is that I think there is a bit of a, in therapy, I think, around family relationships. I think sometimes, from what I've heard, from what you know, from friends, therapists are a bit too keen sometimes, essentially, some therapists have sort of encouraged you to cut yourself off. And you know, you've got to have that sense of ego, but maybe sometimes actually it can go too far and it can be perhaps harmful. And that's something that I worry about, and I guess it comes back to this idea of what is too much and where do you draw the line, and that's really difficult. And I thought the idea of a stoic as head of HR was rather, rather good fun. And he also had this idea of it being a very subjective things. These were subjective matters, but the overturn was he was responsible for your own emotional response. Yes, in fairness, I thought it was a great marketing job for the stoic. Where can I sign? Where can we sign? But yes, it was definitely on that side of being responsible, greater self-responsibility, resilience. Excellent. The point, well, not everybody's socrates in some way, if you could just have had a very high bar there. Socrates had maybe had a lot of other advantages in his life as well as his brilliance he could put up with a difficult misses. So I thought that was interesting, but it does actually point to something that we've been trying to chart tonight, which is where is this tension then between, if you like, living within ourselves and self-responsibility, and that as a form of strength, as opposed to kind of strength, which is asserting or pushing back against something. Philosophically, I think that's absolutely fascinating, not only in the stoics, but in everything that we properly apply philosophy to life. Which side of that divide do we fall on? I think we could see by temperament tonight that we all kind of fell on one side of the other. Matthew and I last witnessed, you know, did seem to think that we'd live in more toxic circumstances, if only because of social media. Yes, but can we just go back to Beckablan for a second, Michael, which is that, while I was just thinking about the balance of risk here, and actually, well, I think about, I think about friends that I have people I give advice to. Actually, I'm much more often via myself saying to people, you know, this relationship really isn't working, and you should think about getting out of it, rather than saying to people, you walked away far too quickly. So I do actually think that, you know, people do get quite often trapped in situations that are toxic, and I think we've all experienced that with our friends. Yes, certainly, I think not just social media, but I actually say, in the modern workplace, a very competitive, hierarchal, very intensive is not a place where we easy to practice stoicism. Okay, well, on that very philosophical point, we'll have to leave it on the thread. That's it for this week from our panel, Constantine Kissin, Sonia Soda, Anne McElvoy, and Matthew Taylor. And from me, until the same time, next week stays stoical. Goodbye.