As I have worked with and studied organizations of all sizes, and also mentored people in organizations of various types and sizes, one of the things that I always like to asses is the environment. Sometimes, I’ll find an employee who is frustrated. They can’t seem to catch a break. They think that they are capable of performing, but, for some reason, things just never go their way. Meanwhile, their “peers” seem to get the breaks. They get the accolades from the boss. They get the best evaluations. They get the bonuses, the pay raises, the awards and, of course, ultimately, they get the big promotion. This can happen in small corporations and even in big corporations, despite all their well-intended processes and procedures try to assure equity within the workforce. I will address “Favoritism” in a separate article, because that is a longer discussion.

Here, I just want to observe that there is a spectrum of work environments that includes more than just a supportive environment and an environment of non-support. In fact, in my experience I have observed people working in environments of negative support, or what we could call anti-support, where the boss and others are actively throwing unnecessary obstacles in a junior leader’s path. We’ll discuss this more, shortly. If we are going to discuss the extreme negative, then I think it is also important to discuss the extreme positive, what we have observed, or what the ideal work environment would be that we could envision. This is an environment that goes way beyond our expectations of what we might call a supportive environment. For our discussion, I’ll just call this an environment of super-support. I am certain that there are a handful of rare organizations, who might exemplify some of the ideals of a super-supportive work environment. Over the years, I have heard of just a few. I won’t rehash their cultures, because I would rather focus on the ideal attributes that we might want to see in a Super-Supportive Work Environment, and I hope to hear from you.

So, let’s discuss briefly, what an Environment of Negative Support or Anti-Support may look like.