Psychologists have finally figured out why your toxic colleagues climb to the top at work
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By Arianne Cohen
Got a toxic coworker? You’re not alone: Google lists?231 million?pages on the topic.
Now researchers from the University of Bonn have finally asked humanity’s burning question: How the hell do workers noted for their greed, unfairness, immodesty, and untruths succeed? They?studied ?203 employee-colleague-supervisor trios, gathering their self-appraisals and coworker evaluations.
The success of toxic people is so common that there’s a phrase for it: the “toxic career model.” It goes like this: A toxic employee schmoozes and charms and politicks, which results in high job performance reviews from superiors. (Peers, meanwhile, often know the ugly truth.) All success revolves around?social?skills. And because the same socializing that can foster strong, healthy work relationships can also be used to deceive others, toxic colleagues are able to use their social skills for their own gain.
“Trickery, disguise and deception are the dark side of social skills,” said study coauthor Gerhard?Blickle, a psychologist at the University of Bonn, in a statement.
In psychological terms, toxic personalities are characterized by low honesty and low modesty. “Such personalities tend to focus on themselves all the time,” says Blickle, who calls toxic people “dark personalities.”
The researchers suggest that?you too?can help stop toxic career climbs (!). If you’re a manager, the trick is to pay attention to team performance (not just task performance), and to separate job performance from good impressions, particularly in jobs that involve attracting attention and interest, such as leadership and sales, where toxic personalities can thrive.
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1 年So, the people with these "dark traits" eventually get their comeuppance. Okay, that's nice. Here's the real problem: how do you rectify the damage these people have caused? Toxic leaders push competent people out of companies. That's a lot of money left on the table. But what's more sinister is that they stifle the career growth of the people that worked under them. How do you calculate losses like that?
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1 年Truer words were never spoken . . .
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1 年I can think of several people who I encountered during my career who were toxic at their level but thought of as charmers in the corporate suite. Why? They deliberately charmed CXOs while being a bully in their office. The problem? We all tolerate it either by choice or because, organizationally, we don’t build systems and processes to call BS (and HR has to carry some of the onus of responsibility inside organization although not entirely). The US culture encourages self promotion but, let’s be careful to not push all the onus on employees to fix this problem.
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1 年I have never met a toxic coworker who was not the boss’s wanna-be best friend. Not all wanna-be best friends are toxic, but every toxic coworker has spent years building their trail of deception. But it is a double edged sword. I happen to be a very social person, and I also work my ass off to not be weird and toxic. As managers, we have to scan the room, or the zoom meeting, and connect with the quiet ones, because the one who is talking the most (rich, since I talk a lot!) is not the one who represents the team. Don’t call the quiet ones out in front of the pack leaders, but seek them out later, and build a relationship with them, because they will know what is really happening within the team and organization.