Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic: Navigating Your Way Around a Toxic Coworker
Toxic Coworks Drain Half Your Brainpower
The term “Toxic” is thrown around quite a bit these days. Whether someone is describing their workplace, a former (or current) boss, or the most frustrating of them all, a toxic coworker.
In the book, Toxic Workplace (2009), authors Mitchell Kusy and Elizabeth Holloway define toxic personalities as those whose “counterproductive behavior damages individuals, teams, and organizations over time.” People who are shaming, belittling, passive-aggressive, directly aggressive, or saboteurs are just a few of the types of personalities considered toxic in workplaces. Research out of the MIT Sloan School of Management (2022) identified five main attributes most likely to contribute to creating a toxic culture: disrespectful, non-inclusive, unethical, cutthroat, and abusive. The researchers, Sull et al., even gave these five attributes a name that makes them sound like a supergroup of villains – The Toxic Five.
Based on my experience, a “toxic” coworker rarely possesses just one of these traits. For example, I remember working with someone who was a crafty saboteur. They were covert and sneaky, presenting one way to my face and a totally different way behind my back. In one instance, they celebrated with me after landing a new account, and then a week later, when I called the person in charge at my new account, they let me know they had heard from my coworker and were going to work with him instead because he convinced them he was “more equipped to handle their unique needs.” When confronted on the matter, he simply raised his hands up and said, “It’s a tough game out there, and I’m just doing my job.”
I’ll give you a second to pick your jaws up from the floor.
Okay, welcome back.
In this instance, they were overtly a saboteur and covertly disrespectful, unethical, and cutthroat – a toxic personality trait mixed with three of the “toxic five.”
I was frustrated and angry. And then, after management told me nothing would be done about what happened because my coworker is one of their top producers, I felt helpless, too. Other people experienced the same thing I did, but no one wanted to say anything out of fear of what might happen if they did.
My experience, while shocking to some, is not unique to me, and this type of behavior takes a toll on organizations and the people within them.
A Look at the Numbers
First of all, if you’ve experienced toxic behavior at work, it turns out you’re overwhelmingly not alone. In 2023, FlexJobs conducted a survey and found that 84% of workers have worked with at least one toxic coworker, and 27% have worked with multiple. In one study by the Harvard Business Review (2013), 98% of workers reported experiencing uncivil behavior at work, and half of them said they experienced it every single week. Most recently, Monster’s 2025 Mental Health in the Workplace Poll reported that 80% of U.S. workers said they work in a toxic work environment. With numbers like these, it’s no wonder this subject has become a hot topic for discussion all over LinkedIn and TikTok!
It’s one thing to acknowledge that toxic behavior is common, but how does it actually affect organizations?
In one study, 48% of managers and employees reported that their work effort decreased in response to rudeness, and 47% reported intentionally reducing their time at work (Porath, 2013). Elsewhere, 68% of employees reported toxic environments, or coworkers, hurt their performance due to it decreasing their cognitive function – their literal ability to think and process – by 30 to 50% (Massivue, 2024). That same article uncovered that toxic work environments cost U.S. businesses approximately $45 billion dollars per year in lost productivity. Yikes!
It’s also worth considering that a study by MIT Sloan School of Management (2022) found that a toxic work culture is the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition, meaning that your toxic coworker or boss would most likely be the reason you’d leave a job.
Lastly, as Spirence is a mental health prevention platform, we would be remiss if we didn’t bring up how people’s health is affected by toxic individuals. Clark et al. (2021) found that workplace incivility was significantly related to increased headaches, sleep problems, and digestive problems. They also noted a significant decrease in people’s overall sense of well-being. Furthermore, Hassanie et al. (2025) found that having a toxic coworker likely increased the odds of people experiencing burnout, secondary traumatic stress disorders, and lower mental health. They even found that the most resilient of people could only stand so much of it before it got to them, too! Anjum et al. (2018) found that incivility, harassment, and bullying all led to burnout, which reduced people’s productivity.
By now, you can see that the effects of having a toxic coworker are enormous, costly, and widespread. The question then becomes, what can you do about it?
Taking Action Against the Behavior
In recent years, an attorney-turned-author and public figure, Jefferson Fisher, has gained popularity for sharing tactics to help people manage bullies and other toxic behaviors. He has a quote in his book, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More, that I love:
“Stop attending every argument you’re invited to.”
The message behind the message here is that how we respond to toxic behavior matters more than the behavior itself. While it’s easy to get caught up and feel the need to defend ourselves, as Fisher writes, “…a long pause is your greatest weapon.”
Here are some well-documented tools to help you deal with toxic behaviors:
The Gray Rock Method
By making yourself boring and unreactive to the toxic person, you deprive them of the response they want. While this certainly takes a wheelbarrow full of emotional control, it’s the most sure-fire way to ensure a toxic person leaves you alone. They are looking for a reaction from you, so if you don’t give it to them, they are likely to a) reflect on why they aren’t getting what they want, and b) move on away from bothering you. (PureWow, 2025; Star HR, 2025). Remember, how a person treats you says more about them than it does about you, so don’t stoop to their level or give them what they want.
Document Everything and Find Strength in Numbers
Look, everyone has a bad day. But if someone’s behavior has become increasingly problematic, toxic, widespread, and consistent, it’s time to start building a posse of people and a stack of evidence. Begin collaborating with other people who have been exposed to the person’s behavior. Collectively, start documenting everything. Save every email. Write down emotionless, fact-based recaps after each problematic interaction. Build an evidence trail of the behavior (HR Acuity, 2025) to support your case.
If the person is a coworker of yours, before escalating the situation to include management and HR, approach the person as a group to try to address the behavior. Kusy and Holloway, authors of Toxic Workplace, found that group feedback is far more effective than attempting to provide feedback to a person behaving toxically on your own. As a group, use “we” statements and separate the person from the behavior to reduce defensiveness. They already have an angry mob coming at them with corporate pitchforks, so you need to do whatever you can to reduce their sense of being threatened. For example, try saying something like “Our ability to work productively is affected when (name a few specific instances and behaviors from your documentation).” In the end, this person is your teammate. Treat them with respect, model the behavior you want to see in them, use your power in numbers, and try to get them aligned (or re-aligned) with the team. Here’s a mantra for you to repeat: This isn’t a group attack – it’s an intervention.
If that doesn’t work, you’ll want to take your collective documentation and escalate the situation to HR or management. People often fear retaliation, so they don’t complain about a boss or coworker, but coming together as a group to file a joint complaint makes that fear less likely to materialize.
Take Care of Yourself
As difficult as it may be to have a toxic coworker, you need to ensure you have self-care practices in place. Sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress-management tools, and having support systems in place are all crucial to cope with the stress of being exposed to toxic behavior.
You cannot operate from a place of clarity, control, or professionalism if you aren’t taking care of yourself. These situations take their toll on us, physically and mentally, so our greatest offense is to build a strong internal defense. If the situation is starting to get in your head and you begin to question yourself, use your support system to reality-check your thoughts. Trusted colleagues, friends, mentors, and clinicians are all options to help you lighten the psychological load.
In the end, we are not responsible for the behavior of others. We simply cannot control what someone else does. However, we are responsible for how we show up, so let’s show up at our best!
Spirence is here to support your mental health as you navigate day-to-day life. Spirence’s virtual library of courses, seminars, and more offers education, tools, and skills to help you achieve whole-person mastery…even in the face of toxic behavior.
Blake Cohen | MS, PsyD(c)
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIST
References:
Anjum, A., Ming, X., Siddiqi, A. F., & Rasool, S. F. (2018). An empirical study analyzing job productivity in toxic workplace environments. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(5), 1035.
Clark, C. M., Sattler, V. P., & Barbosa-Leiker, C. (2021). Workplace incivility and its effects on the physical and psychological health of nursing faculty. Nursing Education Perspectives, 42(5), 297–299.
Farmani, M. (2025, January 19). How to deal with toxic coworkers, according to a CEO. PureWow.
Fisher, J. (2025). The next conversation: Argue less, talk more. Penguin Random House.
FlexJobs. (2023, September 18). Report: Toxic workplaces are pervasive and harmful.
Hassanie, S., Uludag, O., Trivedi, D., BouKarroum, S., & Saidy, J. (2025). Who cares for the healthcare workers? The impact of workplace incivility on healthcare workers’ traumatic stress and mental health mediated by psychological resilience. Human Factors in Healthcare, 7, 100105.
HR Acuity. (2025, December 17). How to manage toxic employees in the workplace.
Kusy, M., & Holloway, E. (2009). Toxic workplace! Managing toxic personalities and their systems of power. Jossey-Bass.
Massivue. (2024, October 29). The silent productivity killer: Understanding and measuring the impact of toxic workplace culture.
Monster. (2025). Mental health in the workplace poll. As reported in Speakwise. (2026). Toxic workplace statistics 2026: Key data.
Porath, C., & Pearson, C. (2013, January–February). The price of incivility. Harvard Business Review.
Star HR. (2025, May 5). 35-ish ways to deal with a toxic coworker, according to an HR expert.
Sull, D., Sull, C., & Zweig, B. (2022, January 11). Toxic culture is driving the Great Resignation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 63(2), 1–9.
Sull, D., & Sull, C. (2022, March 16). Why every leader needs to worry about toxic culture. MIT Sloan Management Review.
