In the work environment, spending many hours a week with people with different interests and roles from ours can lead to some toxic attitudes .

It is about ways of acting and predispositions of behaviour that harm us and the rest of the team , worsening the work climate and making the performance of the organization be burdened, at least in part.

Related article: “Toxic bosses: 11 defining characteristics”

Toxic partners: have you ever had to deal with someone like that?

As it is very easy for these toxic attitudes to become chronic, making all the members of the team adapt (and resign themselves) to living with them, it is convenient to detect them as soon as possible and cut them off at the root, for the good of all.

Let’s see what these toxic attitudes of peers are and how to fight them.

1. The least bad option

Certain colleagues may create a system of basically involuntary manipulation , based on their bad mood. These people take advantage of their moments of bad temper to create small blackmail that puts the overall functioning of the work team at risk. Basically, what they do is try to get the rest of their colleagues to make sacrifices in order to appease them, carrying out part of their work as in a strategy in which the lesser evil is chosen.

What happens is that, in the first place, the reason why these people are in a bad mood has nothing to do with what happens at work , and therefore on many occasions it is not the responsibility of the rest of their colleagues. However, the consequences of their anger do have an impact on the work climate, creating the illusion that it is a company problem.

In this way, the others will be willing to “bear” the consequences of the bad mood and give this person preferential treatment. In turn, there comes a point when the partner who is benefiting from this “learns” that his bad mood is rewarded.

In the event that we detect this toxic attitude, the ideal is to encourage the Human Resources department to contact this person to explore the origins of his or her emotional state and see how it can be resolved without negatively affecting the organisation as a whole. Confronting this person with the same emotional intensity that she uses in complaining is not recommended, because it can generate a rebound effect and make her show herself even more angry, this time making us part of her anger.

Learn more: “Toxic friendships: 7 signs to spot a bad friend”

2. Making conflict expand

Within an organization it is relatively frequent that certain frictions and conflicts arise between some people . The way in which these conflicts are resolved will be decisive in preventing the conflict from affecting the overall functioning of the company, but on some occasions people may appear willing to inflate the size of these small fights.

The reason is that, in order to break their cornered position in the conflict, some colleagues may want to break their isolation by involving people who, because of their role in the company, do not have to take a position for or against someone.

That is why it is worth knowing how to recognize when these cases occur in order to act consistently according to the nature of the conflict: certain fights are resolved in private .

3. Fake manager exercise

In the intrigues and pseudo-conspiracies that can appear within an organization , one of the most used methods is to try to win over certain people by giving them gifts they did not ask for . Thus, for example, some people may act paternalistic towards us.

Condescending comments to us, or even attempts to make us hear how these fake managers speak well of us to other colleagues when they “are not supposed to know we are listening” are classics of bad taste that we do not have to tolerate if we suspect that it is not part of the spontaneous behaviour of these people and is part of a strategy to win our favour. In these cases, the ideal is to maintain a courteous treatment but not to show appreciation for these unsolicited gifts . In these cases, assertiveness is everything.

4. Information traffic

In the globalized world information is power, and some people may spend a significant part of their working day trying to gossip about everything that is going on in the working and personal lives of their colleagues.

This may be due to the usefulness of certain information when it comes to advancing in the company, or it may be due to the simple pleasure of browsing. In any case, in the face of this type of behaviour it is good to communicate that there is no valid justification for believing that you have the right to know everything about what your colleagues are doing. Within organisations, the need for privacy remains of paramount importance, despite the existence of teamwork.

5. The critique machine gun

Other colleagues can be very insistent with certain criticisms that are basically unfounded. In this case it is very possible that trying to make us complicit in these criticisms is not part of any planned strategy to turn us against someone: there are people who simply like to criticize.

In these cases, the ideal way to ensure that the dynamics of teamwork do not suffer is, firstly, to be clear that the person in question criticises without reason , and secondly, to make him/her see in a polite way that we do not think like him/her. It may also be useful to encourage her to formalize her complaints, since, on the one hand, she will make the reasons for her complaints clear, and secondly, she will be forced to adopt a position in which defending her position will require a certain effort, which may make her wonder to what extent she is right.