Is your workplace toxic, or have managers and employees stopped understanding each other?

Sometimes an employee believes their manager is against them. Sometimes a manager believes their employee does not respect them. And sometimes both are struggling under pressure neither knows how to communicate.

I have had conversations with employees who feel that their managers are targeting them. I have also spoken with managers who feel that the people reporting to them do not respect their authority.

What strikes me about these conversations is that, in many cases, both sides are frustrated. Both believe they are being misunderstood. Both feel the pressure. And both may be interpreting the other person's behaviour through the lens of their own experiences.

The employee sees a manager who keeps asking for updates, questioning their work, following up on deadlines and demanding better results. The employee begins to wonder: why is this manager always on my case? Do they have a problem with me?

Meanwhile, the manager is under pressure to meet targets, satisfy senior leadership, manage limited resources and account for the performance of the team. They keep following up because the results are not where they need to be. When the employee reacts defensively, avoids conversations or appears disengaged, the manager starts wondering: why don't they respect me? Why do I have to keep pushing them to do what they are supposed to do?

And so the cycle continues. The manager increases the pressure. The employee becomes more defensive. The manager interprets the defensiveness as disrespect. The employee interprets the increased pressure as personal hostility.

Eventually, someone begins looking for another job. The resignation letter may say "better opportunities", but behind it could be a relationship that deteriorated over time, a lack of trust, or an employee who no longer feels understood.

But here is the important distinction: not every difficult workplace is toxic, and not every conflict is a misunderstanding. Sometimes the management behaviour itself is the problem. The question is whether we are doing enough to tell the difference between legitimate performance management, poor leadership and genuinely harmful workplace behaviour.

1. When performance pressure starts feeling personal

One of the things managers need to learn is how to separate the person from their performance. An employee can miss a deadline without being a bad person. They can fall short of a target without being lazy. They can make a mistake without deliberately trying to undermine their manager.

Of course, employees remain accountable for their responsibilities. Targets matter. Deadlines matter. Quality matters. Organisations cannot operate effectively if expectations are ignored. But accountability becomes much more constructive when the employee understands what the manager is addressing.

Imagine a manager telling an employee:

"Your performance has been disappointing. I am tired of following up with you. You never seem to get things right."

Now compare that with:

"We agreed that this report would be completed by Friday, but it was not ready. This has affected the team's ability to meet its deadline. I want us to understand what went wrong, agree on what needs to change and establish how we will track progress. I want you to succeed in this role, but we also need to see improvement."

Both conversations address performance. Only one creates a clear path towards improvement without attacking the employee's character. The second conversation does not remove accountability. It makes accountability more useful.

A manager should be able to say "I have a concern about your performance" without making the employee feel that their entire worth as a person is under attack. People should be clear about what they are accountable for, what needs to improve and what support is available to help them improve.

2. Pressure is not the same as motivation

I sometimes wonder who taught managers that putting employees under pressure is one of the main ways to motivate them. Perhaps they were managed that way themselves. Perhaps they believe that because pressure works for them, it should work for everyone. Perhaps they have inherited a workplace culture in which fear is mistaken for discipline and silence is mistaken for respect.

Whatever the reason, we need to challenge the assumption that increasing pressure automatically increases performance.

Pressure can create urgency. A clear deadline can help someone prioritise. High standards can encourage people to stretch their capabilities. Honest feedback can help an employee recognise where they need to improve. But pressure without clarity, support or trust can produce a very different result.

• People become afraid to admit mistakes
• They hide problems until they become serious
• They focus on avoiding blame rather than solving the actual problem
• They comply while the manager is watching, then lose motivation when the immediate pressure disappears

A manager can obtain short-term compliance while gradually damaging the conditions required for long-term performance.

This is why management development must go beyond teaching people how to set targets, delegate tasks and demand results. Managers also need to understand motivation, coaching, feedback, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution and talent development. They need to know how to identify whether poor performance is caused by a capability gap, unclear expectations, inadequate resources, low motivation, personal challenges or a process that makes success unnecessarily difficult.

Different problems need different interventions. You cannot solve a training problem with threats. You cannot solve unclear expectations by repeatedly telling someone to work harder. And you cannot solve every performance problem by giving the employee another warning. Sometimes the employee needs coaching. Sometimes they need training. Sometimes the process needs fixing. Sometimes formal performance management is necessary. The manager's responsibility is to understand the problem before deciding on the response.

3. What managerial pressure means, and what it does not mean

There is another side to this conversation. Not every manager who follows up on your work has a personal issue with you. Not every difficult conversation means your manager wants you to leave. Not every request for improvement is evidence that you are being targeted.

A manager may be responsible for a team's results while also answering to a department head, a director or a managing director. They may have their own deadlines, limited resources and difficult decisions. Sometimes the person asking you for results is also being asked to explain why those results have not been achieved.

That does not excuse poor behaviour. A manager's pressure does not give them permission to humiliate, intimidate or mistreat employees. But understanding the pressure a manager faces can help employees interpret certain situations more fairly.

An employee who receives critical feedback can ask:

• What specifically needs to improve?
• What standard or expectation am I not meeting?
• Can we agree on what successful performance looks like?
• Is there a skill, resource or process issue affecting my results?
• When can we review progress?

These questions can move a conversation away from assumptions and towards practical solutions. Employees should also be able to raise concerns respectfully, explain genuine obstacles and request the support they need.

Professional maturity does not mean accepting every decision without question. It means being willing to engage constructively, take responsibility where appropriate and distinguish between feedback about your work and an attack on your identity.

At the same time, if there is a pattern of bullying, discrimination, retaliation or other harmful conduct, employees should not be expected to explain it away as managerial pressure. Such concerns deserve to be taken seriously and addressed through appropriate channels.

4. Managers need to show their people they are not the enemy

One leadership skill that deserves more attention is the ability to communicate positive intent without weakening accountability. Managers should not assume that employees automatically understand why they are being challenged. Sometimes employees need to hear it explicitly.

A manager can say:

"My responsibility is to help this team deliver results, and part of that responsibility is helping you perform well. When I raise a concern, I want us to address the work, not turn it into a personal conflict. I will be honest with you about where improvement is needed, and I also want you to be honest with me about what is getting in your way."

That kind of conversation helps establish a working relationship in which expectations are clear and concerns can be discussed. However, reassurance cannot exist only in words. It must be supported by consistent behaviour.

A manager cannot repeatedly embarrass an employee in meetings and then expect a private assurance of goodwill to restore trust. They cannot favour some employees, apply standards inconsistently and expect everyone to believe that performance is the only issue.

Trust develops when people see fairness, consistency, confidentiality where appropriate, constructive feedback and a genuine willingness to listen. A manager does not have to be liked by every employee. But employees should be able to understand the manager's expectations, raise legitimate concerns and trust that they will be treated fairly.

5. What happens to the rest of the team?

The effects of a difficult manager and employee relationship rarely stop with the two people involved. Other employees may witness the tension and begin choosing sides. Colleagues may become afraid that they will be treated the same way. Team members may stop sharing information, collaboration may decline and small disagreements may become larger conflicts.

Some employees begin to disengage. Others leave. Those who remain may carry additional work, which creates more pressure and increases the likelihood of further conflict.

The organisation may then treat the resignation as an isolated recruitment problem. It advertises the vacancy, interviews candidates, makes an offer and onboards a replacement. Yet the underlying management problem remains. The new employee enters the same environment, encounters the same behaviour and may eventually reach the same conclusion as the person who left.

This is why employee turnover should sometimes prompt a deeper question: are we replacing people because they are not right for the organisation, or are we repeatedly replacing people without addressing the conditions that make them leave?

Recruitment can fill a vacancy. It cannot, on its own, repair a damaged management culture.

An organisation needs to look at exit feedback, turnover patterns, employee relations cases, performance trends, management practices and employee engagement. It should examine whether concerns are isolated incidents or recurring patterns. It should also avoid assuming that every resignation is caused by a manager. Compensation, career opportunities, workload, personal circumstances, job design and other factors may be involved.

The aim is not to find someone to blame. It is to identify what the organisation needs to understand and improve.

6. Train managers to develop talent, not merely supervise it

Many employees become managers because they are technically competent, experienced or good at their jobs. But being good at doing the work does not automatically make someone good at managing the people who do it.

A strong salesperson may become a sales manager without being taught how to coach underperforming sales representatives. An excellent technician may become a supervisor without learning how to give constructive feedback. A highly capable HR professional may become a manager without sufficient preparation for difficult conversations, conflict resolution or developing talent. We promote people into positions of authority and sometimes leave them to figure out leadership through trial and error. Then we wonder why employees complain about management.

Manager development should be intentional. It should cover at least five areas:

• Performance management. Set clear expectations, agree on measurable objectives, give timely feedback and address underperformance fairly.
• Motivation and coaching. Understand what helps people perform, how to identify barriers and how to support improvement without removing personal accountability.
• Communication and employee relations. Manage disagreement, listen without becoming defensive, document concerns appropriately and handle difficult conversations professionally.
• Talent development. Identify strengths, close capability gaps, support career growth and prepare people for greater responsibility.
• Self-management. Recognise how your own stress, communication style and reactions affect the people you lead.

Training alone is not enough. Organisations must also give managers reasonable resources, clear authority, appropriate workloads and support from senior leadership. We cannot demand that managers develop their people while giving them no time to coach, no training to lead and no support when problems arise. And we cannot hold employees accountable for performance while ignoring the conditions in which they are expected to perform.

7. So, what actually makes a workplace toxic?

The word toxic is used frequently in conversations about work. Sometimes it describes genuinely harmful environments. At other times it is used for any situation that is uncomfortable, demanding or difficult.

A demanding workplace is not automatically toxic. Constructive criticism is not automatically bullying. A performance improvement plan is not automatically persecution. Equally, a workplace does not have to be openly hostile every day to be harmful. The distinction lies in the behaviour, its pattern, its impact and how the organisation responds.

A workplace may have serious problems when employees experience persistent humiliation, intimidation, discrimination, retaliation, unfair treatment, deliberate exclusion or a pattern of behaviour that undermines their dignity and ability to work. It can also develop an unhealthy culture when people are afraid to raise concerns, managers use fear to obtain compliance, accountability is inconsistent, or senior leaders ignore recurring complaints. These are not problems that should be dismissed as misunderstandings.

But where the primary issue is unclear expectations, poor feedback, different communication styles or a lack of trust, there may be an opportunity to repair the relationship through honest conversations, coaching and better management practices.

The organisation's task is to establish which situation it is dealing with, rather than applying one explanation to every conflict. Not every uncomfortable conversation is toxic. Not every complaint proves misconduct. And not every conflict should be resolved by telling the employee to adjust their attitude. Fairness requires us to examine the facts.

8. Before someone resigns, can the conversation happen earlier?

Imagine if, before an employee reached the point of resignation, their manager had asked:

"What is making your work difficult at the moment? Is there something about how I manage you that we should discuss? What support would help you meet expectations?"

Imagine if an employee who felt targeted could say:

"When my work is followed up repeatedly, I sometimes interpret it as a lack of trust. I would appreciate clarity on what you are concerned about and how we can agree on progress."

Neither conversation guarantees agreement. Neither removes accountability. But both create an opportunity to understand what is happening before frustration becomes disengagement.

Organisations should encourage regular one-to-one conversations, clear performance expectations, timely feedback and safe channels for raising concerns. Managers should be trained to respond to concerns without automatically treating them as insubordination. Employees should be encouraged to raise issues professionally rather than allowing assumptions to grow unchecked.

Where the relationship has already deteriorated, a structured intervention may be necessary. That could include facilitated discussions, coaching, a formal grievance process or an investigation, depending on the circumstances. The important thing is not to wait until the resignation letter arrives before asking what went wrong.

The real question is not who is under more pressure

Managers have pressure. Employees have pressure. Senior leaders have pressure. Business owners have pressure. The pressures are different, but they are connected.

The manager needs results. The employee needs clear expectations, fair treatment and the means to do their job. The organisation needs both to work together effectively.

When managers respond to pressure by passing it down without direction or support, they can create an environment in which everyone feels threatened. When employees interpret every challenge as a personal attack, they can miss opportunities to learn and improve. When senior leadership demands results without developing management capability, the organisation can unintentionally reinforce both patterns.

What we need is not a workplace without pressure. We need workplaces where pressure is managed responsibly, expectations are clear, performance concerns are addressed fairly and people are equipped to succeed.

Recruiting the right people matters. Developing them matters. Measuring their performance matters. But so does developing the managers responsible for bringing out the best in them. A manager's role is not simply to ensure that work gets done. It is also to create the conditions in which people understand what is expected, have the opportunity to perform, receive honest feedback and are held accountable fairly. And an employee's responsibility is not simply to complete assigned tasks. It is also to communicate, take ownership, respond to feedback and contribute to a professional working relationship.

Both sides have responsibilities. Neither side should have to sacrifice dignity for performance.

So perhaps one of the most important questions an organisation can ask is not "Why are our employees resigning?" or "Why are our managers struggling to get results?" It is this: are we developing managers who know how to achieve results through people, and building a culture in which employees can be challenged, supported and held accountable without feeling that their dignity is under attack?

Because the goal should not be to make work pressure disappear. It should be to ensure that pressure produces better performance, stronger people and healthier organisations, not unnecessary conflict, damaged trust and another resignation.

Better managers do more than manage performance. They develop the people who deliver it.

How Scorelian can help

• Build manager capability. Learning and Development runs private leadership, feedback and performance conversation training for your managers.
• Fix the process behind the pressure. HR Consultancy helps set clear expectations, performance frameworks and fair, documented ways to handle concerns.
• Get an outside view. HR Outsourcing gives your managers a named HR adviser to call before a conflict becomes a resignation or a grievance.

Book a conversation about your management culture, or email info@scorelian.com.