Workplace toxicity is tricky to navigate. You may feel you have limited ability to do anything about toxic behavior, depending on whether it’s showing up in a coworker, direct report, or leader. The answer is not to do nothing. Talk to a trusted coworker or manager about how to approach the issue. If that’s not helpful, speak to your HR representative and see if they have advice about how to handle a given situation, and begin creating a record of the behavior you observe. If you are a leader, you have an obligation to address this behavior. Don’t overlook or justify it because you aren’t sure what to say. Work with HR to figure out what your options are, and do what needs to be done. Enabling bad behavior in the workplace has an exponential impact that ripples throughout teams and impacts clients. Set a time to talk and have a trusted third party present, like HR, to listen or participate in the discussion. Make your expectations known and establish how you’ll check in to gauge improvements in behavior. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that there are policies in place designed to address toxic behavior in the workplace. You may find that your leaders or HR department aren’t particularly helpful, but you won’t know until you try. If you don’t get an adequate response, encourage others you trust, who also recognize the toxic behavior in question, to have their own conversations with leadership and HR. Continued feedback may be what tips the balance toward addressing the issue. If the behavior is allowed to go on unchecked, then it’s time for you to consider whether you need to make a move to another department or workplace. You do have a choice in whether or not you tolerate toxic behavior.
I once assumed responsibility for a team with a couple of people who fit the martyr and egomaniac archetypes. Their behavior had gone largely unchecked for years, lowering the morale of those who had to work closely with them. The floodgates of information opened wide when I first took over the team. Those who had ongoing dealings with them had renewed hope that perhaps a new manager would take action where others hadn’t. The more I learned about their behavior through my own experiences with each of them, the clearer it became just how much of an impact they had on the rest of the team. I went to my manager and HR to discuss my concerns. They were onboard with my proceeding to address the situation, so I spoke to each person directly about my expectations and began documenting our interactions. As expectations continued to go unmet, warnings were written and consequences made clear. The martyr cried and the egomaniac dismissed me as a clueless bitch who clearly didn’t understand just how amazing they were. Even after extensive documentation that included the feedback of other team members, I was the one who had to eventually say, “Enough is enough. It’s time to move forward to next steps.” I told my manager I was done, she supported the decision, and I spoke with HR to get the wheels in motion. If I hadn’t proactively sought to address the situation and eventually firmly demand an end to the cycle, nothing would have changed.
The most effective way to handle any toxic relationship or situation is to establish boundaries. Remember that logic will not work. If you continue to try to talk with this person, expect it to be a complete waste of time and energy that takes you straight into the cycle of defensiveness, blame-shifting, and gaslighting, where nothing is accomplished and you make no progress. It’s best to leave logic out of it altogether. Set the boundary, share it verbally, and make clear what the consequences are for violating that boundary. They may act confused, cry, get angry, or all of the above. You cannot control the other person’s reaction, and their potential reaction should not silence you. Remain calm and respond with something that is true, but do not rationalize or justify your position.
If this sounds like a harsh approach to you, do some self-examination. Why does it feel harsh when the other person is being so clearly disrespectful of you or others, continuing to push against boundaries in an attempt to get you to back down? Setting boundaries is not a pleasant experience in the moment, because you are violating the silent terms of an agreement you have been participating in until that moment. It’s uncomfortable for you because you might feel mean for doing so, and the other person’s reaction is going to feed right into the fear that you are, indeed, being a meanie. Accept the discomfort as a necessary part of what must be done and do it.
Toxic people are capable of responding to boundary-setting. In order to give boundaries a real shot, you have to be incredibly vigilant about sticking to the limits you set. Be ready to enforce the consequences of a boundary violation every single time one occurs, so you can gauge whether there is any hope of a tenable long-term impact. In the professional setting, document your expectations and progress toward meeting them. In your personal life, use your best judgment to set limits, and stop wasting your effort if your boundaries aren’t observed. If boundaries are observed, you may be able to maintain a relationship with this person on your own terms. The extent to which you put in effort is up to you. The manipulator may honor your boundaries for a while, then test you to see if you will let them cross the line after a period of compliance. Do not give an inch! Any flexibility on your part will be interpreted as an invitation to further push your boundaries, and you’ll have to start all over again. If they continue to be noncompliant, you can begin thinking about whether you want to take a longer break and eventually cut contact with this person. Professionally, it’s important to have an established course of action for noncompliance and stick with it. In some cases, the manipulator might decide your boundaries are a deal-breaker and move on. If so, good. They’ve shown you it’s not worth the effort to maintain a personal or professional association on someone else’s terms.
For very close relationships that you wish to maintain with strict boundaries in place, the biggest favor you can do for yourself is to drop your expectations that this person will behave any differently in the future. They have shown you over and over again exactly who they are. Your choice to remain connected with boundaries that prioritize your needs is valid, but do it in a way that doesn’t set you up for disappointment. Do it with compassion for yourself and the other, but with clarity that they are who they are.
I’ve used the term dangerous to describe the tolerance of toxicity in any aspect of your life, and if you continue to doubt its impact, I want to dispel that now, once and for all. Manipulators leverage the arousal of guilt and shame as a way of controlling you. Guilt and shame. Two of the most harmful emotions any of us can harbor about ourselves. They use them, deliberately, as a means to create their desired outcome. What’s going on with you is the least of their concerns. When you resist, their reactions tend to be overblown in order to keep you in line, even if keeping you in line comes at the expense of your own emotional comfort. In particularly toxic relationships, where there is true malignant intent that invades multiple aspects of the relationship, the person on the receiving end of the toxicity can feel desperate to escape. If you’ve experienced a toxic relationship, you may have had thoughts about how life would be easier if the other person died or disappeared, triggering the guilt and shame spiral all over again. What’s wrong with you that such an extreme outcome would be a relief from this endless cycle?
There is nothing wrong with you.
The fact that you feel this way is your red flag, on fire and waving in hurricane-force winds, warning you that this interaction is so poisonous you feel the only way out is for the other person to cease to exist. These emotions reveal just how terrible an impact this relationship is having on you, and how disempowered you are in this dynamic. Sometimes, the option of cutting contact with the person in question must be considered, which can trigger fear, guilt, shame, etc., about your own heartlessness. It may come to that, but there is no need to make such a heavy decision right out of the gate.
There is a caveat to all of the above. If you are in a toxic relationship with someone you are truly afraid of, do not do any of this alone. Engagement in a highly toxic relationship can create a deep sense of shame; if you haven’t shared any of what you’ve been experiencing, it’s time to confide in someone you trust. Find a therapist to work with, and if the thought of trying to establish a relationship with a new care provider is too daunting at the moment, make an appointment