Summary: You know the feeling. Your boss walks into the meeting, and your stomach tightens. Or perhaps you have an idea, but you hesitate before speaking. Tension comes in many flavors, from yelling and passive-aggressive comments to the silent treatment. Eventually, someone says the words everyone has been thinking: “We have a toxic boss.” Maybe you do. Sometimes it’s best to quit, but often there are better ways to make positive change happen.
Dear Dr. Sylvia,
First off, please tell me if I’m making this a bigger deal than necessary. It feels strange for a boss to act the way mine did recently. I am ready to hand in my resignation unless you can point me in a better direction.
The backstory: I was chosen from the team to work 1:1 with our boss on a creative project for a new product. He did not like what I sent him before our initial meeting, and rather than talk it over, he walked into the meeting room and simply said, “I am so angry, I cannot talk with you. So we will sit here, side by side, and I will text you rather than talk directly.”
I attempted to say something, and he put his hand over his mouth, like a sign saying, “No Talking Allowed.”
We sat for TWO HOURS in silence, texting back and forth. Then he stood up, without even a nod to me, and left the room. This happened two days ago. Still no verbal communication from him. Can this be considered normal? My colleagues all agree this behavior is completely toxic. He switches from yelling to silence; it’s like working while on a roller coaster.
Not sure what to do next. Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Signed,
Likes to Talk
What Makes a Boss Toxic?
Dear Likes to Talk,
After more than 35 years working with leaders and teams, I have learned that the word toxic can describe the impact of someone’s behavior without helping us understand what is actually causing it. And if we don’t understand the pattern, we have very little chance of changing what happens next.
Let’s be clear about something first: Not every demanding, impatient, opinionated, or difficult boss is toxic.
Bosses can make a bad decision. Leaders can lose their tempers. Managers can be terrible communicators. Human beings have bad days, including those with impressive titles and corner offices.
The Real Warning Sign of Toxicity is Repetition
A toxic boss repeatedly behaves in ways that create fear, mistrust, humiliation, confusion, or division. They may take credit when things go well and assign blame when they don’t, or play favorites among team members. Many micromanage competent people and often withhold information.
Another form of a toxic boss is one who publicly criticizes employees, changes expectations without warning, pits one person or department against another, or demands loyalty while offering little trust in return. Recent workplace research reinforces how serious this can become. Gallup has identified(opens in new tab) unfair treatment, unclear communication, and lack of manager support among the major causes associated with employee burnout.
But here’s the question I believe we don’t ask often enough: What if the behavior we call toxic is the visible symptom of a pattern that has been operating for years?
When relationships become difficult, our natural instinct is to diagnose the other person. He’s a narcissist. She’s controlling. He’s impossible. She’s toxic. Perhaps some of those descriptions are accurate. But labels have a serious limitation.
Labels Tell Us Who to Blame, Not What To Do
I prefer another question: What pattern am I seeing?
This is what I call Pattern Awareness, the ability to recognize the ingrained behaviors that become especially visible when we’re under pressure.
A controlling boss may be operating from a deeply ingrained need to prevent mistakes. Bully leaders may have learned that strength means dominating before someone dominates you. Rescuers may repeatedly step in and solve everyone’s problems, then become resentful that nobody takes enough responsibility. Pleasers may avoid necessary conflict until frustration erupts.
And the leader who divides people into camps (i.e., “you’re with me or you’re against me“) may have been practicing that pattern long before receiving a leadership title.
Patterns Start Early and Hide In Our Nervous System
Here is a clear way to think about toxic bosses. Long before any of us joined a company, we belonged to another organization: the family. Family is where we first learned about authority, conflict, competition, loyalty, belonging, communication, and power.
For example, look at your own childhood. Who got heard? Who kept the peace? Who had to be perfect? Who rebelled? Who rescued everyone? Who disappeared when conflict began? Who got blamed?
Mostly, we saw what roles were played, and we adapted. Those adaptations helped us belong and navigate our earliest environment. But we don’t leave them neatly behind when we receive our first company ID badge.
Under normal circumstances, mature adults can keep many of these patterns in check. Then pressure arrives. A deadline is missed. Revenue drops. Someone challenges the boss publicly. A valued employee resigns. Suddenly the polished executive disappears for a moment, and the old pattern takes the wheel.
There’s Another Pattern to Notice: Yours
This is where dealing with a toxic boss becomes more interesting, and more useful. You may not be able to change your boss, but you can become aware of what your boss activates in you.
Does criticism turn you into a Pleaser who works harder and harder for approval? Perhaps control awakens your Rebel? Think about whether conflict turns you into an Avoider? Does your boss’s distress activate the Rescuer in you? Do you become the Victim, convinced you have no power? Many join coworkers in creating sides, gossiping, and building alliances against the boss.
Now two patterns are interacting. It’s like a Zen thought: you have to have two hands to clap. And that’s when workplace relationships can become remarkably difficult. Their pattern triggers your pattern. Your reaction reinforces their pattern. And before long, everyone believes the other person is the problem.
This is how organizations can repeat the same conflicts with different people for years.
Here’s How To Deal With a Toxic Boss
Start by separating behavior from identity. Instead of “He’s a toxic person,” try “When he feels challenged, he becomes controlling and dismisses opposing viewpoints.” That’s something you can observe. Next, notice the pattern rather than the isolated incident.
Ask yourself what else is going on when this pattern arises. Pressure? Criticism? Uncertainty? Loss of control? Competition? Fear of failure?
Then comes the harder question: What else is happening inside me? Your immediate reaction contains valuable information. Before sending the angry email, shutting down, complaining to your coworkers, agreeing just to keep the peace, or marching into HR, create a small space between the trigger and your response.
That space matters. You cannot always choose what triggers you, but you can choose what you do next.
Look for the GLIMMER
Most of us recognize triggers. Far fewer of us have been taught to recognize GLIMMERS.
I use the word GLIMMER for a moment of awareness(opens in new tab), when the internal signal that allows us to interrupt an automatic pattern before it takes over. It may be physical: your jaw tightens, your heart races, your stomach contracts. Or it may be emotional: you feel a sudden urge to attack, retreat, please, rescue, prove, blame, or disappear.
Instead of ignoring that signal, become curious about it. Take the time to pause and observe. That’s the moment. Not five minutes later when you’re replaying the conversation, or that evening when you’re telling your partner what your horrible boss did. Right there.
The GLIMMER creates an opening between reaction and choice. And choice is where change begins.
What Pattern Are You Willing to Change?
This does not mean tolerating abuse. Pattern Awareness should never become an excuse for harassment, discrimination, threats, retaliation, or genuinely harmful behavior.
Some situations require documentation, HR involvement, senior leadership intervention, legal guidance, or leaving an unhealthy workplace. Research on toxic management likewise distinguishes between a difficult manager whose shortcomings can sometimes be navigated and recurring harmful behavior that may require protecting yourself and considering an exit.
Understanding someone’s pattern does not require accepting their behavior. It simply gives you something more powerful than a label. It gives you information, and information creates options.
The GLIMMER Moment
Ask: What pattern am I seeing? Then ask the question that requires considerably more courage: What pattern is this activating in me?
Notice the signal before the automatic response. Pause. Get curious. Choose what happens next. Because the most important change may not begin when your boss finally behaves differently. Pattern awareness begins when you ask the right questions. That is at the heart of The GLIMMERS Effect™: learning to recognize the signals that help us move from automatic reaction to conscious choice.
I explore this process more deeply in my forthcoming book, GLIMMERS at WORK: The Self-Aware Leader’s Advantage(opens in new tab), because the patterns we don’t recognize have an uncanny way of continuing to run the show. And sometimes, the first GLIMMER is simply realizing, “I’ve been here before. This time, I can respond differently.”
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
P.S. Uncover the leadership pattern(opens in new tab) running you behind the scenes with my quiz, then reach out to me for your next steps.
