10: Reflections on What Toxic Humans, Unchecked, Can Do to Organisations – And How to Contain or Stop Them

At the beginning of Toxic Humans, we took a brief look at the history of toxic humans in popular culture while also examining some of the historical, larger than life, controversial figures in business who exhibited what we might broadly describe as toxic behaviour and who met, to a greater or lesser extent, the litmus tests or definitions of toxicity as proposed by Marcia Lynn Whicker, Jean Lipman-Blumen, Carol Dweck, Martha Stout, John A. Byrne, Simon Baron-Cohen, Jon Ronson, Robert Hart and Dr Mark Freestone. We started to uncover the factors that appear to come together, like the human equivalent of a perfect storm, to produce people who manage to leave an indelible imprint in the memories of those with whom they interacted, as well as an often long-lasting and profound effect on those organisations which, in many cases, they played a lead role in destroying.