Most of us will experience challenging and downright toxic people at some point in our careers. If you ever have, then you can probably see, in retrospect, how much those individuals differed from ordinary people. Yet, at the time, their impacts may have seemed so upsetting and jarring that it is quite common to question whether we had it wrong or contributed in some way toward the situation.

So, having some strategies for dealing with these people can save your sanity and provide pathways through the issues while also protecting others.

Fortunately, truly toxic people are few and far between. Most people we deal with are generally helpful or at least neutral. Occasionally, we encounter people with challenging personalities: people who unknowingly or deliberately bully, undermine, manipulate, or sabotage work, relationships, and people's self-esteem. Being unaware of these personality types can derail projects and cause high levels of personal distress to ourselves and other team members.

While terms like vindictive, argumentative, and manipulative might begin to describe these people, a more scientific understanding is helpful. The term Dark Triad is used in psychology to describe three negative and harmful personality traits. Some people have one or two of the traits, while others have all three.

Dark-Triad Traits

The dark-triad traits are Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy.

Narcissism

Narcissism is vanity, self-love, and having an overly inflated view of yourself. It is manifested through characteristics such as perceived superiority, entitlement, dominance, and self-admiration. Narcissists are egotistic, often lacking in empathy, overly sensitive to criticism, and have inflated views of themselves. Unfortunately, that self-love and inflated ego mean they generally dress well, interview well, and are happy to talk about their accomplishments, and so get hired into positions of power and influence.

Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is manipulation to get what is wanted. It includes a disregard for morals and the ready use of deception. It is driven by self-interest and is marked by traits such as being self-serving, immoral, deceitful, and cunning. Machiavellian people are often emotionally detached, cynical, and lack principles. They can be domineering and, because they are so sneaky, often do well in office politics, rising to positions of power and influence.

Psychopathy

Psychopathy is having little or no empathy for others, combined with high levels of thrill-seeking, impulsive behavior. Psychopaths exhibit aggressive, antisocial behavior without guilt. They are remorseless but can appear extraverted and superficially charming. Unfortunately, this can lead to—you guessed it— promotions and positions of power and influence.

You probably recognize these personality traits in people you work with, even if you do not apply the same labels. Like all personality traits, they exist on a spectrum. In mild forms or infrequent bursts, they do much less harm than severe or prolonged exposure.

How to Handle These People?

Knowing about these traits is extremely important because it allows us to adjust the "volume control" in terms of how these people impact us. Without understanding these traits, it is easy to be swayed and confused, and even question our contributions toward the conflict and problems these people create. Once we know how to recognize these traits, we can adjust our behavior around and involvement with these people.

A safe default strategy is to disengage and avoid people with dark-triad traits. However, we sometimes manage people with these characteristics, work alongside them, or report to them. In these cases, avoiding them is impossible, so here are some strategies for minimizing their impact.

First, Check if You are the Problem

First, we need to make sure we are not the problem (i.e., that we do not have dark-triad personality traits ourselves). Dr. Peter Jonason and Gregory Webster developed the Dirty Dozen rating scale to roughly assess dark-triad traits. It asks people to rate themselves on a scale from disagreeing to agreeing with these statements:

1. I tend to manipulate others to get my way.
2. I have used deceit or lied to get my way.
3. I have used flattery to get my way.
4. I tend to exploit others toward my own end.
5. I tend to lack remorse.
6. I tend to not be too concerned with morality or the morality of my actions.
7. I tend to be callous or insensitive.
8. I tend to be cynical.
9. I tend to want others to admire me.
10. I tend to want others to pay attention to me.
11. I tend to seek prestige or status.
12. I tend to expect special favors from others.

The higher the score, the higher the concern and the greater the need for some empathy training. Most people continue developing their EI, including empathy, as they age.

I know early in my project-management career, I was liable to employ Machiavellian approaches to increase the success rate of my projects. I did not do anything too sinister, but I would book meeting rooms far in advance, in case we needed them, and claim favorable go-live dates when the best support staff were available. Now, I am much more willing to give up/trade rooms/dates for the organization's greater good or help people out when possible. It was not a monster-to-saint transformation but a more considerate mellowing with age. But let us talk about the real problem cases.

Dealing with Anger, Aggression, and Bullying

These are usually linked to psychopathic traits. If you see people frequently getting angry, shouting, or acting aggressively, or their anger spilling over into bullying, you must act quickly but carefully. Also, be aware that some people suppress their anger and instead brood, sulk, or ignore people. These are passive-aggressive behaviors that also need dealing with.

First, stay safe: do not put yourself in a situation with physical conflict. It is always better to walk away and engage HR. However, assuming the anger levels are lower, such issues must be dealt with. Resist the temptation to match the person's raised voice; instead, listen dispassionately and try to diagnose the cause of their issues. Techniques like questioning, active listening, and appreciative inquiry might help reveal why they behave as they are. If not, it may be time to recommend counseling, either directly to the person, if they acknowledge the issue, or to HR, if they will not.

When bullying is involved, be it verbal abuse, threatening behavior, or just unnecessary criticism, it is crucial to support the victim in addition to addressing the perpetrator. Leaders should listen for concerns both formally and informally. We are closer to team members than the senior level and can better spot shifts and pattern changes in behavior.

When someone does something you feel is disrespectful, have a conversation with them about it (if you feel it is safe to do so). We cannot assume that someone is a bully if we have not told them their behavior appeared disrespectful because we have not allowed them to understand our view and the opportunity to change.

We must also walk the talk, treating all stakeholders respectfully and encouraging respectful interactions through all communication channels. We often set the tone for workplace behavior, and people watch us for cues.

We should arrange, support, and attend training, then provide ongoing training on respectful workplace interactions. Having people acknowledge workplace policies during orientation is not enough. Everyone needs to know specific acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and be trained to handle aggression and bullying when it occurs.

Tackling Manipulation and Double-Dealing

These are Machiavellian traits. Manipulative people are skilled at hiding their behavior. They often present one face when it serves them well and then another, altogether different persona when that serves them better.

Look for people who will not take no for an answer, always have reasons and excuses for their hurtful behavior, or switch personas to suit their circumstances. Due to their chameleon-like nature, we need to be specific about pointing out what behaviors we have noticed and how they negatively impact the team.

Talk to them privately first. If you see manipulative behaviour in a meeting, hallway, or desk conversation, try calling out the manipulator in private first. It allows them to explain (but be prepared to see a different persona) and change their ways.

If that does not work, call out the behavior publicly to show that it will not be tolerated. This reduces the opportunity for the manipulator to lie or play dumb about the situation. It also shows everyone what is going on and builds allies for additional intervention and support. Follow up with them in private again, clearly explaining how their behavior must change, and consider implementing conduct agreements or performance agreements to hold them accountable.

Manipulators are often driven by insecurity. They are trying to build power through knowledge and connections. They often start out acting friendly with people to learn about them and gain personal information they can potentially use later for their own purposes.

An effective strategy for disarming them of power and influence is to form closer relationships with other people in their network. If the manipulator is a network architect, have lunch with some of the other network architects and the manipulator's boss. Once they see their source of power dwindling, they feel threatened and switch from manipulating others to defending their own career which they believe is linked to their connections and knowledge.

Ultimately, we want offenders to see the greater good of the team members and the organization they work in. Information does not become less valuable as it is shared. Helping others is a more powerful strategy for self-promotion than undermining them—it just takes longer to germinate.

Handling Entitlement and a "How Does That Help Me?" Mentality

These are signs of narcissism. There is less to worry about here. Excessive use of I and me language, as opposed to us and we language, is a telltale sign that we are dealing with a narcissist who can upset team harmony and performance.

With big egos often comes the denial of fault and an expectation of not being challenged, so it is essential to be direct and specific about how their actions impact team performance. Confront the perpetrators and explain the impact of their behavior. Come prepared with feedback and recent examples or evidence of their selfish actions. Suggest how to be more inclusive and supporting and better serve the team.

Follow up with team members to see if they are keeping these characteristics in check. They will unlikely transform into selfless servant leaders, so toning their behavior down to tolerable levels is often the best we can hope for.

Summary

Unfortunately, manipulative, nasty people are part of life. Being aware of the dark-triad traits can help us spot them a little earlier, somewhat negate their impacts, and provide us with some strategies for dealing with them.

The traits include the following:

• Narcissism is characterized by self-love, superiority, dominance, and an inflated view of oneself.
• Machiavellianism is characterized by a disregard for morals, the use of deception, and cynicism and cunning.
• Psychopathy is characterized by thrill-seeking, impulsive behavior, aggression, and a lack of empathy and remorse or guilt.

Review the Dirty Dozen categories to see if 'we are surrounded by gullible idiots' (i.e., you are the problem) and, assuming you are not the problem, ask yourself if you see those characteristics exhibited by others. Bullying needs to be dealt with, and HR should often get involved. Double-dealing often stems from insecurity, which can be used to rein people in and neutralize their impact.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. In other words, knowing a little about toxic people can help us avoid them or reduce their impact.

[This post is an extract from my book Beyond Agile– a hybrid model for blending agile with additional emotional intelligence and leadership skills. You can read much more about the Power Skills to build and troubleshoot high-performing teams in the rest of the book ]