In my last blog I shared how to best respond when you get shown the door at work — in other words, you get fired. Today I’d like to discuss ways to best handle toxic people or a toxic work environment.

Let me first define what I mean by toxic. There are different levels of toxicity.

A toxic person, on the low end of the scale, can be one who simply has a bad attitude about work. They complain a lot. They have a poisonous attitude about the work, the company or just about life in general. On the high end of the scale are those that gossip, stir up trouble, and just cause discord in the office. Often, they attack people behind their backs and plant seeds of doubt and distrust about others.

I’ve worked with some toxic people over the years in different company cultures. I’ve sadly seen toxic people become so influential in the office that they chase away the good people. I once worked for a very passive business owner of a meat plant that employed about 90 people. The office accountant handled the finances, AP, and AR, and was a very negative, gossipy and manipulative person. If you got on this person’s bad side, and I did, you were going to have some bad days in the office. This person caused me and several other people with very positive outlooks to quit. The passive business owner lost some great people over the years because of the ‘one bad apple’ who spoiled the whole basket, while the ‘good apples’ eventually left.

Now, I’m not talking about people who have strong personalities and just say what they think and say what needs to be said. These strong alpha personalities can often be rough around the edges as far as their soft people skills go, and may say things in a way that ruffles some feathers in the office, but often they are just honest, forthright folks with genuine integrity.

Ten years ago, I did a one-year consulting gig with a food distributor that needed someone from the outside to come in and assist the sales team (about a dozen people) to think outside the box, set higher goals for themselves, and grow their protein sales numbers. Most on this team had become complacent and comfortable and were not challenging themselves to gain customers, increase margins, or grow the company’s revenues. It was totally status quo. Most everyone in this company was very passive-aggressive and things that needed to be said didn’t get said until a boiling point had been reached. Often, people left the company or just checked out emotionally from caring anymore.

This company had to bring in another outside person to be put in charge of the office and sales teams. In order to improve the office culture and overall performance of the company, they needed a strong alpha-leader that said what needed to be said on a daily basis. This person told me that every successful company needs a jerk (he actually said ‘a-hole,’ but I’ll use the word ‘jerk’). The jerk can’t be a people-pleaser, or be passive about non-performance, or dealing with toxic people on a daily basis. Most people won’t like the jerk, but the jerk can’t afford to care about what people think of them. The jerk says things like, “We can’t continue to allow our customers to pay whenever they feel like it, go collect all your past due invoices.” Or “You have a toxic, backbiting, negative attitude about your job that is affecting the positive attitudes of others, so get some help or move to a job somewhere else. Life is too short to work a job you hate every day.”

So you may have some jerks in your company that are not actually toxic people. Too many today are just too quick to automatically label anyone they don’t like as ‘toxic.’ But if you’re honest, you’ll know the difference. In my experience, toxic people often can be helped with coaching and counseling. They may have had a rough past or have some stuff going on at home that’s affecting their work life, or they’re just emotionally immature and they need some mentoring.

But there are a few toxic people you may encounter that just need to move to a different job or department — or be shown the door. Sometimes, there’s just no reforming them.

What’s been your experience working with toxic people?

Working in a toxic office or with toxic people

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