Leading Personalities: The 10 Types of Toxic Followers

Workplace toxic followers after the boss

“You cannot manage men into battle. You manage things; you lead people.” – Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

The words of Grace Hopper often play through my head. They are as fundamentally sound as any spoken about the difference between leadership and management, with one possible caveat: as a leader, you manage personalities.

Any workplace – whether your team is a group of soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division or gaggle of computer engineers at Honeywell – is going to be an amalgamation of people with various backgrounds, experiences, and personalities. Each has their own individual quirks, their own agenda, and their own motivations. As a leader, a significant part of your job is aligning all that diversity in a common direction with a shared vision of the future. And managing a lot of personalities along the way.

Some people just naturally fit into any workplace. Their personalities – however unique – don’t interfere with their ability or willingness to be a contributing team member. Others can be annoying to the point of inspiring workplace humor, but their habits don’t necessarily impede progress. Then there are the toxic followers. They aren’t just disloyal to the greater cause, they’re actively counterproductive to the organization as a whole, disruptive and destructive in every imaginable way possible. Toxic followers wreak havoc on workplace culture and cohesion, tearing at the tendrils that bind an organization together.

Leading before managing

Dealing with the challenge of toxic followers requires two distinct efforts: one directed toward keeping the rest of your team focused and productive, and the other aimed at minimizing the counterproductive effects of those toxic followers, all while determining the best approach to contending with them on an individual basis.

In a recent Psychology Today article, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Farnell offered a succinct approach to the first of those efforts, which is key to ensuring that the core team stays on task amid the disruptive chaos spurred by toxic followers. First, set the “why.” What’s the vision driving the organization? Why does it matter? Second, establish a culture that acknowledges team members in a way that ensures they feel valued and appreciated. Third, engage your team with positivity. As Colin Powell so famously noted, “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” Fourth, demonstrate the values of the organization each and every day. Be the example that others want to emulate. Finally, put the team first. Your loyalty to them validates their importance to you and serves as a counter to the toxicity that may exist within some corners of the organization.

MANAGING THE PERSONALITIES

With your team focused and prioritized, you can shift your attention to the second effort: managing the counterproductive personalities at work in your organization. In general terms, toxic followers tend to coalesce around 10 unique personality types, each of which requires a slightly different leadership approach to manage. As counterintuitive as that might sound, it captures the nuance of the challenge: you lead people, but you manage personalities.

  1. The whiner is a persistent complainer, the person who always has a better solution to everything. You counter the whiner with constructive feedback, firm expectations, and a clear understanding of consequences.
  2. The bully will force their agenda on others through intimidation, fear, and harassment. While rare, the bully exists. The only effective counter to a bully is a zero-tolerance policy, immediate action, and terminal consequences.
  3. The passive-aggressive is a subtly hostile – and more common – version of the bully. You must address this behavior directly, but additional training in open, respectful communication is an option that doesn’t necessarily exist with a bully.
  4. The pessimist has the same attitude and penchant for complaining you see with the whiner but doesn’t offer any actionable solutions. The sky is falling, and they want everyone to know. Countering the pessimist requires an emphasis on positive contributions and constructive, if sometimes brutal, feedback.
  5. The gossip thrives on rumor and inuendo where leadership communication or accountability might be lacking. Countering the gossip requires a culture of transparency and accountability and consistent leader engagement.
  6. The dramatic is someone whose insatiable need to draw attention to themselves creates disruptive drama and distraction. With the dramatic, you have to set firm, clear boundaries for behavior and refocus their energy on their own productivity and contributions.
  7. The know-it-all dismisses others’ ideas out of course and is never wrong about anything, ever. The know-it-all can be a difficult personality to manage since they likely believe they know more than you. Feedback must focus on collaboration, the importance of diverse perspectives, and consequences.
  8. The credit thief is the blue falcon of the team, quick to steal the work of others or take credit for their ideas. The standard counter for this is public recognition of performance – ensuring that you’re rewarding the responsible individual – and private rebuke of the behavior. I find public rebuke is often necessary for repeat offenders.
  9. The slacker is the team member who seeks the route of least contribution, finding the bare minimum effort required to not get fired. You counter the slacker by holding them accountable for their contributions, setting clear production goals, and monitoring their performance closely.
  10. The resistor functions the same way in a team that it does in a circuit: a passive component that reduces or divides. This is useful in a circuit, less so in the workplace. The resistor passively rejects change; they prefer things to remain the way they always have. You counter resistors by making them part of the change process and encouraging their active participation in new initiatives.

The keys to leading and managing toxic personalities are consistency, expectations, and accountability, all the while remaining cognizant of the urgency. The longer you allow counterproductivity to fester within the team, the more difficult it will be to repair the damage caused. Toxic followers are like ticks: the more time they have to burrow into the fabric of the organization, the longer their toxic effects will endure.

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Steve Leonard is a former senior military strategist and the creative force behind the defense microblog, Doctrine Man!!. A career writer and speaker with a passion for developing and mentoring the next generation of thought leaders, he is a co-founder and emeritus board member of the Military Writers Guild; the co-founder of the national security blog, Divergent Options; a member of the editorial review board of the Arthur D. Simons Center’s Interagency Journal; a member of the editorial advisory panel of Military Strategy Magazine; and an emeritus senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He is the author, co-author, or editor of several books and is a prolific military cartoonist.