Sometime or other in your life you have encountered people with a toxic personality. A person is said to be “Toxic” who influences your life in a negative way. You are constantly stressed and depressed being around that person. You keep trying to find ways to please that person but the efforts are not at all appreciated. Toxic people anywhere, do no good to the people around them. They are people who try to control your life; they make you feel miserable about yourself by their constant nagging and bickering. Having a toxic employee/s affects the people adversely as well; they tend to cripple the confidence of the co-worker by their attitude, they make the work culture negative and unhealthy affecting the productivity of the other employees and organisation as a whole.

There are certain traits which are total give aways about a toxic person. Toxic people like to talk a lot and hardly put efforts to listen to the other person. They usually have a controlling behaviour. They want people to behave as they want, and manipulate them into getting what they want. They deliberately lie to you about the things and twist the fact or bend the truth as by doing that it will be beneficial to them. They are disrespectful to people around them, they like to gossip and constantly talk negatively about other people, and they have a problem in appreciating other peoples achievements.

Having a toxic employee in the place you work is like having a tumour which is slowly spreading all over and becomes life threatening without you even realising it. These employees are incompetent; they cannot be trusted with any work given to them. Some of the toxic employees are averse to authority and rules and regulations of the workplace. They have the capability to make the environment negative through their talks and actions. Having people with these traits in their personality affects the productivity and morale of their colleagues.

To deal with toxic people one of the most important things you have to do is to set a boundary for taking their behaviour. You should be clear on how far you can tolerate their behaviour. Be firm and decisive while telling them that their behaviour is not appreciated by you. Another way is to eliminate their presence in your life as their presence won’t do any good to you; if they cannot be eliminated then try to distance yourself from such people and surround yourself with like-minded people who respect you and value you for who you are.

While handling a toxic employee or teammate one has to remain calm under pressure as it will affect your performance. Coping strategies like being assertive while talking to them, ignoring their negative comments have to be in place while dealing with toxic employees. You should find a solution in the problem they are going to create. Superiors should have a face to face meeting with them and explain to them about the behaviour that they are projecting and the consequences of the same for them if they don’t improve their attitude.

It is challenging in dealing with a toxic person but preventive measures should be taken very quickly to control them as it affects people both mentally and emotionally being subjected to toxic behaviour.