Toxic people are the unnecessary crazies at work. Spending even a minute with them zap your energy. Hearing them talk rile up feelings that are mostly negative. For them, everything is big deal. There’s not an office hour when you can skip their drama. In extreme cases when they tend to be hurtful, they make you feel like your existence is the smallest, most insignificant of all. You don’t want to do anything or be around with them but they’re part of your team.
Posts on how to deal with toxic people at work just abounds. You can at least find a dozen ways on how to handle these people. Most of them are all about protecting yourself. They go on about establishing a limit or making yourself less vulnerable. It’s like: Never reach out to toxic people at work, period.
I tried a quick search on how you can help a team member change their toxic behavior. I’ve encountered some self-confessed toxic people and how they eventually changed. According to them, it’s all about self-awareness – recognizing the signs that you’re becoming a toxic person and initiating changes that mostly include therapy and restraint. (Whoa, therapy sounds so serious!) I’d like to think that they are what Randy Pausch would call recovering jerks in his book, “The Last Lecture”.
Workplace Interventions for Toxic People
This info-graphic from GetVOIP might be a good springboard on the interventions that the management can do to change toxic employee’s behavior. It may be applicable for both subordinates and managers:
5 Types of Toxic Employees and How to Deal with Them [Infographic]
Interventions for Toxic People Using Emotional Intelligence Approach
If you want a lengthy study on toxic managers, this article by Roy Lubit may be really insightful. The article aims to help senior management identify toxic managers so they can distinguish those who can still be coached and therefore, retain, and those who they need to let go. He argues that to effectively deal with toxic people, you need to understand where they’re coming from. Uncovering their objectives will help you design interventions accordingly. He emphasizes the importance of developing emotional intelligence so it can help you reign in your feelings and behaviors, rather than letting the feelings run away with you.
In his article, there are four types of toxic managers:
- Narcissistic
- Aggressive
- Rigid
- Impaired
Each type comes in several varieties. The author put each in a table so personal traits and objectives can easily be identified. He also put in recommendations on how to deal with each type, both for when you’re a subordinate or a superior.
I may not always agree on the recommendations, especially the ones for subordinates. Most of it seemed to lean on downplaying performance or avoiding provocation. But to senior management, it can be a good springboard on how to reach out to once well-performing managers who devolved into being a toxic boss.
If you can share any tips on how to reach out to a colleague or a boss who’s become toxic, put them in the comment below.
As always, thanks for dropping by!
jelsjournal.home.blog 