01 Apr TSLH #013: 5 Strategies To Keep Toxic People At Bay
Read time: 6 minutes
We all know toxic people at work. They are people who are usually stars in their jobs, i.e., they achieve exceptional results, always exceed their targets. At the same time, these same successful people behave like divas. They tend to show one or several of these behaviors: Being condescending, aggressive, playing the victim, making drama, manipulating, judging, complaining to others, missing in action when you need them, etc.
Sounds familiar?
In the short term, it looks as if toxic people are in fact a good thing for a company: They deliver great results, often exceeding targets and they push through all the bottlenecks a complex organization processes is sure to provide in order to get to results quicker.
The toxic side aside, who wouldn’t want to have such people in a company?
In fact, a study by leadership development consultancy, Fierce Inc. showed that 80% of all employees have already at least one time worked with someone who could be labelled a toxic person. The study further found that only 40% of the managers were ready to take action to eliminate a toxic person vs. 88% of employees.
In short, toxic people are tolerated!
The truth is that toxic people, as the name indicates, will be extremely detrimental to your organization in the long run.
Because their successes are very often achieved at the expense of others, toxic people generate frustration, stress, anger, demotivation, loss of engagement and productivity, and a complete lack of collaboration.
As a result, people will start leaving the organization. The cost of losing people, those same people who are generally bringing a lot of value to the firm, will amount to something that no organization in their right mind should be ready to bear.
My experience taught me 2 things:
- It is extremely difficult – if not impossible – to get rid of toxic people in a normal corporate environment. This is because most managers/executives will go for the short-term results brought by these toxic people rather than contemplate the adverse long-term consequences of their acts. As I said before, this behavior is just plainly tolerated, period!
- It is possible to limit the negative impact of toxic people if you act courageously as an authentic leader.
Before I give you some tips to deal with toxic people, I want to highlight that you may be in 2 different positions: Either the toxic people is someone on the team you lead, or this is someone on another team.
In the former case, I will argue that it is slightly more easier to eliminate a toxic person because you are the boss. You can decide what to do with the toxic person. It may still require courage and leadership but you are in full control.
In the latter case, make sure you fight the right battle. While wanting to get rid of the toxic person is a commanding goal, you must realize that getting to this will be a tough fight. In that case, ask yourself how much of your credibility and mental health you are willing to invest in fighting this battle? How else can you achieve a result that will protect you and your team from a toxic person?
In both case, you can use some of the approaches I am describing below. This is how I suggest you do.
Set boundaries. In my leadership vocabulary, I call this setting your red lines with people. It is about setting expectations and establishing clarity about what behaviors you will tolerate and what behaviors you won’t.
This is how it can be done:
- With your team: As you start as the leader of the team, when you introduce yourself, you may say something like “Here are the behaviors which I will not tolerate in the team and from people outside of the team.” Name them and make it clear that these are red lines for you that should not be crossed. If you have a team already, it’s always a good time to tell people about them. For instance, do a team exercise on values.
- With people outside of the team: OK, let’s face it, you will likely not send an email to the entire organization as you start to tell everyone what your red lines are. However, each time you see a behavior that does not align with your set values and red lines, you need to act.
For instance, recently a sales person in the company I work for sent an email to a client, blasting the finance team for an error being made and making a very unfriendly comment that “those idiots in finance have no clue what they are doing.” The email was sent to a client, cc the person in finance he was bashing.
As you may have guessed, the sales guy in that case is definitely a toxic person in the company.
What did I do about that? I replied to the sales person email (removing the client from the conversation) and made myself very clear on 3 points:
- His behavior and email was totally unacceptable and unprofessional and this was a crossing of my red line (the value being respect in that case)
- I expected a full apology to the person in finance, per phone (no lame email)
- I expected he send a new email to the client, copying the finance person, to apologize to the client for the very inappropriate email
I also called the sales person to make it clear that if he did not act swiftly on these points, my next discussion would be with his manager and HR.
Stay self-aware and don’t get drawn in negative emotions and impulses. It is obviously easier said than done. However, do realize that another person’s toxicity is not about you; it’s about them.
My point here is there is no point for you spending your energy guessing what you did or why the toxic person is picking on you. If you let that happen, you let them take control and you don’t want this to happen.
Instead I recommend you stay away from these inner voices that are blaming you. How? For instance, take a small break, breathe or focus on something that matters a lot to you (your family, your kids). Or go talk to a trusted peer and have a good laugh.
This is extremely difficult to do at first. With practice, you can definitely intercept these inner-critic voices and push them away. So, practice!
Get into a coaching mode. You’ve heard me say this more than once, great leaders are also great coaches. So use coaching to your advantage here.
Once you have achieved #2 above (not getting drawn in negativity), focus on listening to what is said by the toxic person. Figure out what’s being said by asking some of the powerful questions I have listed in the past.
By all means, don’t enter into conflict, don’t react to the person’s behavior or aggressiveness. Hold back and get into an inquiry mode, a mode where you want to know more about the situation.
Here are 3 great questions you could ask the person to approach this:
- What is causing the frustration for you and led you to write this email? or to talk to talk to me in such an aggressive way?
- How can we work together to solve this challenge?
- I’ve told you how I feel after you talked to me like you did. How do you feel about that?
If the toxic person feels like you’re generally concerned about what’s going on, they will likely open up to you. And then, you can (1) help them solve any problem they may have had initially, and (2) reestablish some rules and trust between the 2 of you.
Last year, I was in a 1-hour meeting with a new executive vice-president who had a very aggressive communication style with everyone in the meeting, with expressions such as “I will not tolerate failure”, “I won’t be your friend if you don’t do this”, “Tell me why you did not achieve this result” or “Should I do everything here?”
The executive vice-president was not a toxic person, but his communication certainly was and he was on the brink to being labelled a toxic boss.
I myself felt attacked directly by his tone, so did some members of my team.
Immediately after the meeting had ended, I called this new executive vice-president and told him bluntly “I am disappointed by today’s meeting. I felt aggressed and offended by how you talked to me, my team and other people from the organization. I felt your tone was not appropriate and I don’t want to make hasty judgments as why you communicated this way. I want to understand from you what happened?”
This question “I want to understand from you what happened?” changed everything and opened the discussion completely. For the next 30 minutes, we exchanged our views on what went wrong and how we felt and agreed on how we should work together in the future.
Since that discussion, we both work very closely and efficiently together, and communication is now what I would call normal.
Give the gift of feedback. This is in essence what I have already said in #3 above, but to address toxic people’s behaviors, you need to advise people about their toxic behavior.
Remember that feedback when given correctly can provide tremendous benefits to the receiver. For one, toxic people may not realize that they’re affecting other people. They may never have been confronted by others on how toxic they are. Also, toxic people tend to live in their thoughts, never questioning whether what they do or say is appropriate. They’re often not in the present world.
In #3 above, I showed how you could communicate to discuss toxic communication and give feedback in a way that will benefit the receiver.
Be careful though that toxic people often like to manipulate, gossip and create drama to make you look like the fool or culprit. This means that some toxic people will refuse to hear feedback because they won’t be able to understand that the chaos seemingly brought to them is caused by something they’re done to someone else.
My advice here is to prepare thoroughly before giving feedback, and act with resolve. As the victim of a toxic person, or if you’re the leader of a team, in order to defend one of the persons on the team, you have the choice to do something about the toxic behavior or not do something. This is your opportunity to make your leadership shine!
Remember what I said in one of my posts about the only 2 responsibilities only a leader can have: One is getting resources for the team. The other one is offering air cover/protection to the team. Addressing toxic behavior is definitely about protecting the team.
Now, if all of the above and all else that you have tried fails, there is but only one solution: Escalate the issue – but go in with a case.
I will always recommend to start dealing with a toxic colleague yourself before going above their head. This gives you ample time to defuse any issues, clarify any misunderstanding, addressing a toxic behavior quickly and with immediate results.
Sometimes you won’t have a choice though. If you’re the boss of the toxic person, go to HR with a strong case. If the toxic person is outside of your team, talk to their manager and set your expectations with them.
Now, remember that many managers tolerate these behaviors. They may downplay the harm done by the toxic person, saying things like “They do not mean harm”, or “That’s fine, it was only one instance”. Insist, and do set the expectation that if the manager does not do anything about the issue, your next stop will be HR.
When you bring the case to the person’s manager or HR, focus on facts and how the company is negatively affected by this person’s behavior. Don’t simply say that the person is difficult to work with. Have clear prepared points showing how morale or engagement in your team is impacted, bring as much evidence as possible. If people have left because of that person, say it and show the cost to the company of tolerating the toxic behavior.
Make a clear case for the deleterious effect that sustained toxic behavior can have in the workplace. If left unchecked, morale of an entire team can be damaged – or even irrevocably changed.
I wish you a great read and great experimentation. I’ll see you next Saturday!
TL; DR (Too Long, Did not Read)
5 strategies to keep toxic people at bay
- Set boundaries.
- Avoid negative emotions and impulses.
- Get into a coaching mode.
- Give the gift of feedback.
- Escalate.
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