5: So What Experiences Have Real People Had of Toxic Humans at Work?

In this chapter, we hear stories from people who have interacted with toxic individuals at work, on Boards and in different sectors and industries. After each recollection, there are some key reflection points to invite the reader to discern patterns of behaviour and to selectively extract ideas for how to help others as well as themselves to cope in toxic work and Board environments.

‘There was a particular professor who made my life a misery. He was a bully – a full professor who looked down on me. Every interaction was just miserable. While the whole place wasn't toxic, obnoxious behaviour by professors was tolerated by the system. I was still under 35, and I could be feisty when it came to fighting back but as I recall those times, I realise now that I wasn't particularly skilled to deal with people like him at that time. The place was really a bastion of white male power where some believed they had the right to be “the elite”. I was a young woman, and often the only one present at set-piece meetings. If I knew then what I know now in terms of how to handle conversations with such toxic humans more wisely, things might have been better. One coping strategy that I developed came via what I call the “wise secretary” with whom I would confer prior to going to executive board meetings. I learned how not to add oxygen to the fire – so if he chose to take me on about something, I would dutifully listen to him and then, when he'd finished, ask: “Is there anything else?” I would then wait patiently, and listen to more if more was said (all to ensure the oxygen was depleted). Then I would ask: “This is what I heard – is this right?” This approach helped to prevent the worst kind of shouting matches from developing. I also made sure never to bump into him on my own – more because I never wanted to be in a situation where what I might have said to him in a one-to-one situation might later be misrepresented – and with no one else there, no witnesses, I knew it would have been very difficult to dispute his version of events.