10 Tips on How to Deal with Toxic Coworkers

David has over 15 years of supervisory experience and has extensive knowledge of how to handle personnel issues across many areas.

Dealing With Toxic Coworkers

A coworker is someone you work with at your job. It can be someone in your organization that you talk to on the phone, see in passing on the way to your office, or someone in the cubicle next to yours that you work with on a daily basis.

Someone could be a toxic coworker just because you see them that way. That doesn't mean they are truly bad, it just means you have to approach them differently.

This article covers how you can handle toxic coworkers.

Tips on Dealing with Difficult Coworkers

Below are some tips when dealing with your coworkers:

1. Don't take sides. If there is an argument or disagreement between coworkers, don't take sides. If your boss intervenes, advise your boss of what happened. Taking sides only creates rifts in the workplace.
2. Avoid office gossip. You can't believe everything you hear, and that goes double for office gossip. While there could be a hint of truth in the gossip, engaging in it only makes you look bad and causes some hurt feelings.
3. Don't brown-nose. If your coworkers see you fawning over your boss, they will see you as a brown-noser. This may seem like you will turn them in for anything, which leads to the next point.
4. Be honest about your coworkers mistakes. A lot of people don't want to be the tattletale in the office. They see a coworker doing something wrong, but they don't wish to report it. The problem with that is that it makes it worse, and can make the job harder on you. Typically difficult coworkers are bad workers.
5. Don't share your social network information. If you post a picture on Twitter or Facebook of you dancing on a table while drunk, you can be sure others will see that photo. It would make you look bad.
6. Be careful how you socialize with your coworkers. Seeing your coworkers at a company event is acceptable, but be very careful of going drinking with a coworker. You never know what could happen that damages your reputation or even costs you your job.
7. Help your new coworkers. Even if someone is trained in a certain profession, they may not be trained in how your organization does things. So show them the ropes of the office. They will appreciate it later on and will feel more at ease.
8. Be nice to your coworkers. You never know who could become your future boss, so always treat your coworkers with respect. They will remember this in the future and treat you with the same courtesy.
9. Do favors for your coworkers. Lets say one of your coworkers wants a day off and needs you to cover for them. Go ahead and do it. You can cash that favor in at a later time when you need some time off.
10. Look out for yourself. While you want to help and be friendly to your coworkers, you need to look out for yourself. A good supervisor will judge you on your performance, and not what your coworkers say about you. So you need to ensure you do your job and not let your coworkers do anything to mess that up.

Notice a lot of these don't involve what to do against your toxic coworker. Most of these tips involve being careful so you don't give this bad coworker ammunition to use against you. On top of that, you kill them with kindness, making you the better person overall.

If necessary, go to your supervisor, human resources, or union to deal with the toxic coworker. If the situation is resulting in harassment of some kind, the business is typically required to deal with it. Don't feel bad about making a complaint, even if it results in the other person being fired. If you are experiencing harassment, report it.

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This article is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.

© 2013 David Livermore

Comments

torrilynn on March 14, 2013:

david,

i agree with you on some of the benefits and cons of working with others

sometimes you might not always agree on the same thing or they simply just

don't like you there are plenty of variables anyway thanks for the information

Voted up