How to Spot a Toxic Boss Who Could Ruin Your Career
And three ways you can deal with it
If you have a sneaky feeling that your boss is up to no good and stuffing up your career prospects, you could be right.
Those hard-won years of building a solid reputation could be going down the gurgler quick smart if you don’t spot what’s happening and take action.
It can be hard to spot toxicity at first. What these bosses say seems to make sense. They are confident and often blind you with jargon and business-speak that sounds OK at the time.
But behind the smile and the apparent concern for the team’s well-being, they could well be plotting your demise. OK, maybe not your actual death, but your work demise in the form of redundancy, demotion, or pay cut.
Their toxicity is hard to pin down as they may present like Doris Day, while inside, they have the cruel, twisted heart of Cruella de Vil.
“Toxic bosses often exhibit narcissistic and psychopathic traits. They abuse their positions of power and they lack empathy for other workers.” — Study Reveals How Damaging a Toxic Boss Really Can Be, Forbes.com
According to Inc.com, working for a toxic boss can damage your health too. Researchers at the Stress Institute at Stockholm University found that the risk of angina, heart attack and death is increased by working for a toxic boss. Worryingly, those who had worked for a poor boss for more than four years had a 64% higher risk of heart disease.
All is not lost, though. The first step in saving your career is knowing if your boss is truly toxic. Once you know, you can decide what to do and get your career back on track.
You can survive a toxic boss. I’ve done it, and so can you.
So how do you spot them? And what can you do about it all?
The worst thing that a toxic boss does to you
“Sharks don’t eat fish because of anything the fish do. They don’t eat fish because those fish aren’t good enough fish, or because those fish aren’t nice enough to the sharks. Sharks eat fish because they are sharks.” ― Drenda Keesee
A strange thing happens when you work for a toxic boss. Suddenly you become crap at your job. Almost overnight, you go from a competent and experienced professional to someone that can barely write an email.
Before, you led projects, had the senior team’s ear, and mentored junior staff; now, everything you do is somehow ill-thought-out and foolish.
How did this happen? How did you go from being competent to useless so suddenly? A toxic boss happened, that’s what.
If your boss is nit-picking your every email, ridiculing your ideas and openly doubting your professional expertise, you are being subjected to the mind numbing toxicity of having your confidence stolen.
If you let this go on too long, you will start to believe all the lies.
What you can do: Look at the facts. If you were good at your job last month, chances are, you still are. What is being criticized? Is the criticism justified or not? Would it have happened under one of your past good bosses?
Are you being monitored much more than is reasonable for your level of expertise?
If your work performance has not changed, you are likely being bullied and have a toxic boss. Believe in yourself and know that it’s not you. It’s them.
How toxic bosses get their kicks
“When dealing with two-faced people, it is difficult to know which face is uglier, the real one or the manufactured one.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo
Snuggling up to the top brass and bullying those below them is the hallmark of a toxic boss. By dint of them being your boss, they have more access to the senior team than you do. More access equals more snuggle time.
What happens while they are sucking up to the exec team? They are talking you down and casting doubt on the validity of your work. Usually to make themselves look better.
If you already have a solid reputation with the exec team, it may take a while for you to suffer real damage. Especially if the toxic boss isn’t that good at their job. But if they are passably competent and the other execs don’t see what you do, your reputation can slowly erode.
The real damage is caused when new managers or execs join the company. They are given a heads-up that you are rubbish at your job, and being a newbie, they believe the hype and treat you accordingly.
A few months of this treatment and you become yesterday’s news quicker than a politician caught with his pants down in a brothel.
What you can do: Check to see if anyone is treating you differently. You will have to use your gut feel for this as it’s hard to know what is said in meetings that you are not a party to.
Notice any changes in behavior from the exec or other managers. Are you being left out of meetings or projects you would usually be playing a leading role in? Are you beginning to feel like an outsider? Is your expertise no longer being sought out or not listened to?
Without becoming paranoid, listen to your gut feeling. It’s usually right.
Toxic bosses act irrationally
“Bosses shape how people spend their days and whether they experience joy or despair, perform well or badly, or are healthy or sick. Unfortunately, there are hoards of mediocre and downright rotten bosses out there, and big gaps between the best and the worst.” ― Robert I. Sutton
Toxic bosses have their own agenda, and it isn’t necessarily the same as the company goal sheet. Once these bosses decide that you are a threat or they just plain don’t like you, they lose all sense of reason.
Unbelievably, they would rather make you look bad than have a win for the team. If your project flops, your boss’s opinion of you becomes fact and is out in the open for all to see.
Sabotage is a strong word, but that is what could be happening.
- Are you being left out of meetings crucial to the success of your work?
- Are essential emails that you used to receive instead of going to your boss?
- Are resources you need for your job being withheld?
- Have you been told not to deal directly with people and instructed to always go through your boss instead?
What you can do: Document why you need access to emails, meetings, people, and resources and email it to your boss.
If the shit hits the fan, you can prove that you didn’t have the resources you needed. Keep hard copies of all the emails as well as soft copies on your PC.
Unsavory obsessions
“You can’t control other people’s behavior, but you can conrol your responses to it.” ― Roberta Cava
A common trait of toxic bosses is they can smother you. They are so all-encompassing it’s hard to breathe. If you feel that your boss is watching your every move, you may be right.
Every email is criticized. Your grammar, content, and tone. Who you sent the email to, who you copied in and when you sent it. All examined closely with you being the recipient of your boss’s nasty observations.
Your performance at meetings is picked apart — what you said, how you looked, and the room’s responses, all examined under a microscope.
The toxic boss is not content with giving you a real-time commentary on your work. Your personal appearance, clothes, hobbies, weight, and how you arrange your desk will also come under fire. Anything you are good at will be discussed at length.
For example, if you eat healthily, there will be much talk about how good you are for cutting up all those carrot sticks and bringing them to work. It doesn’t feel like a compliment, though. It feels like a put-down.
Your comings and goings will be watched. Who you chat to and your connections will be monitored.
Congratulations! Like a butterfly with its wings pinned down, you are being minutely examined and are at the mercy of a deranged manager.
What you can do: List all the critical comments about your work as well as unprofessional remarks about your personal life. Make sure you date each comment and note who else was present and how it made you feel.
Your list serves two purposes. It will stop you from going mad and thinking you have imagined the whole thing and will be evidence if you choose to make a complaint about your boss.
What next?
“Having a bad boss isn’t your fault. Staying with one is.” — Nora Denzel
By now, you should know if your worst fears are confirmed and you have a toxic boss.
It’s a horrible fact to have to face up to, but at least you know where you are and can take action.
When we were cave people, and a wild animal jumped out and wanted to kill us, we had three choices: Fight, Flight, and Freeze.
You have those same three choices when faced with a toxic boss who is hell-bent on killing your career, reputation, and livelihood.
Fight — Report your line manager to the HR team for bullying
If you have the stomach for it, this is an option.
In NZ, the behaviors I have described would be classed as either overt or covert bullying. You can easily check the law in your country with a quick Google search.
Not everyone is up for this sort of fight. If you are, you need evidence to take to the HR team in writing:
- What happened
- What was said by all parties
- The date and time
- The location
- Who else was there, e.g., possible witnesses
- How you felt about what happened
- The context or circumstance
- What you want to happen as a result of your complaint
You will have to assess whether it is worth it to lodge a complaint. Will your boss’s line manager, the Managing Director, and the HR team take your complaint seriously? Or will you become a scapegoat?
Only you know the environment you are in and whether it is worth the risk.
Flight — Find another job
This is the most common reaction, and it’s common knowledge that people join organizations and leave bosses.
Of course, getting another job depends on a lot of factors. Are you able to get another job? Can you get the same pay rate, or would you have to take a cut? How badly has your industry been affected by Covid?
I made the mistake of staying in my job when I had a couple of toxic bosses and suffered the consequences. I thought it would be too hard to get another job to accommodate my life as a single mother.
Eventually, those toxic bosses left, and I ended up with good line managers. Still, if the same situation happened to me again, I would go.
According to a survey by Seek, poor management is the number one people leave a job.
Hindsight and experience are wonderful things!
Freeze — Do nothing and hope the boss leaves.
This could be a risk as it takes a while for toxic bosses to be exited from a business. Sometimes if your boss’s boss is also toxic or there’s a whole satanic clutch of them, you will have no hope of the boss being tossed out on their ear.
Instead, the whole crazy circus will go on day after day.
If you stay, you may risk your mental health, your self-confidence and damage your career.
Redundancy, a pay cut, demotion, or reputation loss is the price you could pay for staying. If your boss is really determined, they could put you on a performance improvement plan and aim for the ultimate prize: Getting you fired.
Only you can decide if it is worth staying.
Summary
If your boss is doing the following, they are likely toxic:
- Picking your work apart so severely you doubt your own confidence
- Trashing your reputation to anyone who will listen
- Sabotaging your work
- Invading your personal space and criticizing who you are outside of work, as well as in work
The great thing is, you now know where you stand. You can take back control and take action.
Your choices are:
1. Make a formal complaint to the HR team
2. Leave
3. Do nothing and hope for the best
Only you can assess the situation and all the personalities involved and work out which option to take.
Whatever you choose, I wish you the best of luck.
I write about leadership & training, and I’ve designed The New Leader’s Starter Kit to help leaders better communicate with their teams. Get your free copy here — The New Leader’s Starter Kit takes you through how to run One-to-Ones and Constructive Feedback sessions & develop effective listening skills — a printable one-to-one form, feedback form and listening skills checklist included.
