Leading Teams Out of the Toxic Swamp: Leadership Lessons from the Trenches
In our age of hyper-individualism, the malignant colleague is more of a rule than an exception. Here are the five characters of toxic teammates and how to deal with them.
There are few things more demoralizing than stepping into a leadership role and realizing you’ve inherited a toxic team. I’ve been there, a couple times. I’ve walked into rooms thick with unspoken resentments, watched meetings derail because of unchecked egos, and had to navigate the daily reality of people who were more interested in their own power plays than in doing good work.
In our age of hyper-individualism, the toxic colleague is more of a rule than an exception. We have to have tactics to deal with them. There’s a popular belief that good leadership can turn any team around, but I’ve found that’s not always true. Sometimes, no matter how much effort you put in, the toxicity doesn’t disappear. Sometimes, the best you can do is manage around the problem, shield the people who want to do good work, and decide when to walk away.
The Five Characters of Toxic Teammates (And How I Dealt With Them)
Over the years, I’ve encountered five archetypes of dysfunctional teammates. Each one operates differently, but they all have the same impact: they destroy morale, erode trust, and make collaboration a nightmare. Here’s how I’ve handled them.
1. The Saboteur
This person actively works against the success of others. Whether it's withholding information, spreading misinformation, or undermining teammates, their goal is control. I encountered this person at a very large software company, where fiefdoms were the norm, and when anyone treads on someone else’s territory, a silent war-cry is issued.
How I Dealt With It: I documented everything. I kept a paper trail of all interactions and made sure that my hands stayed clean, above all else. The saboteur is looking for a way to throw you under the bus, so caution is critical.
Transparency is the best antidote to sabotage. I made sure to openly recognize the work of others, taking away this individual's power to manipulate narratives. But in the end, the only real fix was removing them—or myself—from the team. When leadership wasn’t willing to intervene, I had to decide whether the environment was worth staying in. (It wasn’t.)
2. The Eternal Victim
Nothing is ever their fault. They are always under-appreciated, always suffering, always pointing fingers elsewhere. Their negativity drains the team. The Eternal Victim is a poison that no one on wants to go anywhere near. So they are often working alone, on one-man projects, and happy to be there. (Unless you want something from them. Then they are a victim!)
How I Dealt With It: I listened but set clear boundaries. Empathy is important, but so is accountability. When they tried to blame others, I redirected the conversation to what they could do differently. I tried to instill some distance between us—both physical and relational. Some took it as a wake-up call. Others just found a new person to complain to. Which was fine with me, as long as they weren’t complaining to me.
3. The Credit Thief
They swoop in at the last moment to take ownership of successes they had little to do with. They present ideas as their own and expect to be rewarded for the work of others.
Most people I’ve worked with have been generous, credit-giving colleagues who want to help and acknowledge the help they’ve received. But now and then I meet the Credit Thief. Usually someone climbing the corporate ladder who really, really wants to be important. Those individuals shoulder others out of the way to prove how wonderful they are—even when they’ve done little to no work on the project.
How I Dealt With It: Lot’s of public acknowledgment of contributions for the people who did do the work. I made sure my team was vocal about their accomplishments and gave credit where it was due.
On occasion, I also had direct conversations when needed: “I noticed you presented this as your initiative, but I want to make sure we’re recognizing the team’s contributions accurately.” It can be uncomfortable, but it sets a precedent. This is a team effort!
4. The Gatekeeper
They hoard knowledge and power, making themselves indispensable while ensuring no one else can operate without them. They resist change because it threatens their control. Like the saboteur, the Gatekeeper is all about controlling their little domaines. They are at heart, insecure about their own competency, so they don’t want anyone peaking in at what they’re doing.
How I Dealt With It: If you can, bypass them entirely. Instead of asking for their permission, I documented processes, shared knowledge freely, and built redundancy into the team so that no individual controlled any single area of work. That way, when the Gatekeeper wants to close the gate and keep the team from getting work done, there are others who can take over.
In one case, when this person saw his influence shrinking, he adapted and started to work with other team members. Eventually, he turned into a productive colleague. But another time, the Gatekeeper doubled down and became angry and resentful, but at least the team wasn’t held hostage by them anymore.
5. The Passive-Aggressive Obstructionist
They never say no outright, but they delay, resist, and slow everything to a crawl with feigned confusion, miscommunication, and vague noncommittal responses.
How I Dealt With It: The only way to deal with the Passive-Aggressive Obstructionist is to force clarity. Start documenting requests, write down clear deadlines, and get agreements in writing. (Email and text messages are writing!) That way you have something to refer to when your “confused” colleague acts like they’ve never discussed any project or deadline.
I asked direct questions they can't wiggle out of. E.g. “Will this be done by Friday?” Their tactics don't work as well when accountability is crystal clear.
When It’s Time to Walk Away
Unfortunately, not every team can be fixed. If your leadership allows destructive behaviors to fester, or worse, encourages it (at a toxic company managers and directors can be the worst, they got those promotions because of their backstabbing habits), then no amount of good leadership can turn things around. At some point, you’ll have to ask: Is this fight worth it?
When I’ve been there, sometimes the answer was yes, and I stayed to protect my team as much as I could. Other times, the only healthy choice was to walk away, and I did. But not without some residual sense of failure.
The Hard Truth: Dysfunctional Companies Are Us
We often talk about toxic workplaces as if they are an inevitable force of nature, something that just happens. But that’s not true. Corrosive companies exist because we allow them to. Sometimes we are the caustic colleague. Did you recognize yourself in any of these archetypes? If so, can you figure out what drove you to those behaviors? Often we become contaminated ourselves the longer we stay in unhealthy teams, purely as a defense mechanism.
If leadership won’t change organizations from the top down, we have to change things from the bottom up. That means supporting each other, not just looking out for ourselves. It means recognizing who is doing the real work and making sure they get credit. It means shutting down gossip, standing up for our colleagues, and refusing to let the worst people in the room set the tone. And resisting the natural pull to conform when it means compromising our highest ideals, choosing instead to challenge the status quo and push for a better, healthier workplace.
The best teams I’ve worked with weren’t perfect, but they understood one thing: culture isn’t dictated solely by leadership—it’s built every day by the people in the trenches. And that means we have the power to make it better.
Even in the hardest environments, that’s something worth fighting for.