Toxic Workplace!: Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power

"The day this person left our company is considered an annualholiday!"

This quote, taken from Kusy and Holloway's research on toxicpersonalities, echoes the frustration and confusion that come fromworking with or managing an extremely difficult person. Just onetoxic person has the capacity to debilitate individuals, teams, andeven organizations.

Toxic Workplace! is the first book to tackle the underlyingsystems issues that enable a toxic person to create a path ofdestruction in an organization, pervading others' thoughts andenergies, even undermining their very sense of well-being. Based onall-new research with over 400 leaders, many from the Fortune 500list, this book illustrates how to manage existing toxic behaviors,create norms that prevent the growth or regrowth of toxicenvironments, and ultimately design organizational communities ofrespectful engagement.

Kusy and Holloway's research reveals the warning signs thatindicate a serious behavioral problem and identifies how thistoxicity spreads in systems with long-term effects onorganizational climate, even after the person has left. Theirtwo-year, cutting-edge research study provides very specificactions that leaders need to take to reduce both the intensity andfrequency of toxic personalities at work. No other book providesthis menu of options from a systems perspective with practicalrelevance in real work situations.

You'll learn how to identify the toxic personality and describethe leader reactions and approaches that typically don't work.Toxic Workplace! provides hands-on approaches that work withresearch-based strategies at the individual, team, andorganizational level.Toxic Workplace! will provide new insights onhow leaders lead, how organizational cultures sustain themselves,and how teams deal with toxic personalities.