4 Reasons You Can’t Fix a Toxic Coworker

Licensed therapists spending ten sessions with a patient only see improvement 50% of the time.¹ So, it’s unrealistic to think you’ll get a toxic coworker to improve their behavior after a few minutes of conversation. Here are four reasons you’re likely to fail.

1) People Aren’t Self-Aware

People only change their behavior when they believe the benefits of changing outweigh the effort to change.² Toxic coworkers are unlikely to see any benefits in changing because they probably don’t see their behavior as an issue. Self-awareness is a limited resource, and people tend to believe they are far better at something than they are. A person’s lack of self-awareness can extend to their emotional intelligence (EI), which links directly to interpersonal skills.³

The Components of Emotional Intelligence⁴

• Perceiving emotions – social-awareness
• Understanding emotions – self-awareness
• Managing emotions – self-regulation
• Appropriate use of emotions in interpersonal relationships – interpersonal skills

2) The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Unfortunately, people with the worst interpersonal skills are the people most likely to overestimate their level of EI.³ This overestimation results from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that the less a person knows about a subject, the more confident they are about their subject knowledge. Your toxic coworker is probably blind to how others view their conduct, so they are confident their actions are acceptable behavior.^5,6 They are likely to feel secure about their perfect sense of self, and providing feedback to them is unlikely to translate into change.^7,8

“People don’t resist change; people resist being changed.”

Alfie Kohn

3) The Toxic Cycle

When a toxic corker needs an ego boost, they might try to socially engage with others. However, their insensitive behavior and cold approach will likely result in people rebuffing their efforts. The result is the toxic coworker will search for an alternative solution to enhance their ego, such as abusive behaviors (insults, yelling, etc.). When the ego boost from their abusive behavior wears off, the toxic coworker will eventually need to repeat the toxic cycle to get another boost.⁹

4) People Resist Being Changed

“People don’t resist change; people resist being changed.”¹⁰ People are generally not receptive to feedback and will seek ways to protect their self-view.¹¹ If you tried once to change a toxic coworker’s behavior and they declined, they are even more unlikely to change when you persist. Suppose you manage to persuade them the behavior is an issue, and they agree the behavior is distressing. In that case, there is a chance they might change their behavior to coincide with their newly stated opinion. However, if they disagrees with you about the inappropriateness of their behavior and you continue to press them about it until they agree, they are far less likely to change.¹²

Don’t try to force a toxic coworker to change. It will only end in frustration. Remember, people only change their behavior when they believe the benefits of changing outweigh the effort it will take.²

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References

1. Lambert MJ, Bergin AE, Garfield SL. The effectiveness of psychotherapy. Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy. 1994;1.
2. Mason PT, Kreger R. Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder. New Harbinger Publications; 2010.
3. Ames DR, Kammrath LK. Mind-reading and metacognition: Narcissism, not actual competence, predicts self-estimated ability. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 2004;28(3):187-209.
4. Sheldon OJ, Dunning D, Ames DR. Emotionally unskilled, unaware, and uninterested in learning more: Reactions to feedback about deficits in emotional intelligence. Journal of Applied Psychology. 2014;99(1):125.
5. Wilson TD. Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard University Press; 2004.
6. Kruger J, Dunning D. Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology. 1999;77(6):1121.
7. Heath C, Heath D. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Random House of Canada; 2010.
8. Dunning D. The Dunning–Kruger effect: On being ignorant of one’s own ignorance. In: Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol 44. Elsevier; 2011:247-296.
9. Morf CC, Rhodewalt F. Unraveling the paradoxes of narcissism: A dynamic self-regulatory processing model. Psychological inquiry. 2001;12(4):177-196.
10. Kohn A. Punished by Rewards: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. HMH Books; 1999.
11. Mele AR. Real self-deception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1998;20(1):91-102.
12. Festinger L, Carlsmith JM. Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The journal of abnormal and social psychology. 1959;58(2):203.