HBR Guide to Navigating the Toxic Workplace

CHAPTER 2

Four Ways to Deal with a Toxic Coworker

by Abby Curnow-Chavez

There have been bad coworkers since the beginning of organized work. But in today’s matrixed work environments, their impact feels bigger and more destructive. Businesses need teamwork to function. And teams need to be more collaborative, adaptable, and proactive than ever. The days of top-down decision-making are long gone in many companies and industries, replaced by grassroots innovation that’s unleashed through coworkers openly networking and sharing information across boundaries. Because of this new dynamic, dysfunctional teammates can damage the results of a whole team in a way that was much harder to do in the old, siloed models of working.

The most common and destructive ...