You know the feeling. You walk into a meeting, and your stomach tightens. You see an email in your inbox and brace for what’s coming. You replay a conversation in your head repeatedly, wondering whether you overreacted or underreacted.
Working alongside someone whose behaviour is corrosive is exhausting. It eats into your energy, confidence and capacity to do your best work.
Research by Associate Professor Christine Porath and Professor Christine Pearson found that among those who experienced uncivil behaviour at work, 80% lost work time worrying about the incident, 63% lost time avoiding the offender, and 66% reported a decline in performance1.
The ripple effects of incivility at work are real, measurable and damaging.
Recently, I shared advice about what leaders can do about corrosive workplace behaviour. But what do you do when you’re not the person with the authority to intervene, and you’re the one absorbing the impact?
This isn’t about managing up or winning over a difficult colleague with a perfectly scripted conversation in a meeting room. This is about recognising what you’re dealing with, protecting yourself and making deliberate choices about how you respond.
Name It Accurately
Not all difficult behaviour is the same, and the distinction matters. Is this rudeness? Exclusion? Undermining? Bullying? Or just poor communication from someone under pressure?
Management scholars Dr Lynne Andersson and Professor Christine Pearson, in their seminal 1999 paper in the Academy of Management Review, defined workplace incivility as low-intensity deviant behaviour with ambiguous intent to harm, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect2.
Think eyerolling in meetings, cutting someone off mid-sentence, or ‘forgetting’ to include you in an email chain.
Incivility sits at one end of a spectrum. At the other end is workplace bullying, which typically involves repeated behaviour that harms, intimidates or undermines a person over time. Between the two lie behaviours such as social undermining, exclusion and passive aggression, each carrying a different weight and requiring different responses.
Why does this distinction matter? Because your response needs to match what you’re dealing with. Treating bullying as just a personality clash minimises the harm, while treating a communication style difference as bullying may escalate the situation unnecessarily.
To determine what level of issue you might be facing, ask yourself:
- Is this behaviour a one-off, or is it a pattern?
- Does it happen in front of others, or only behind closed doors?
- Is it directed at you specifically, or does everyone get the same treatment?
- Is the intent clear, or is there genuine ambiguity?
- How is it affecting your work, your wellbeing and your relationships with others?
Naming the behaviour accurately is the first act of taking back control. You can’t address what you can’t define.
The Approach: Recognise, Respond, Record
When you’re on the receiving end of corrosive behaviour, it’s tempting to swing between two extremes: either avoid the person and the conflict entirely, or react in a way that inflames the conflict.
Neither serves you well.
Andersson and Pearson’s research describes what they call an “incivility spiral”, where low-level rude behaviour, left unchecked, escalates through a cycle of retaliation into increasingly aggressive interactions.
Your goal is to break the spiral in a way that matches the issue you are facing.
If you’re dealing with incivility or poor communication, an early, direct conversation may be enough to shift the dynamic.
If it’s persistent undermining or exclusion, you’ll need a more deliberate strategy that combines direct response with documentation.
And if the behaviour meets the threshold of bullying, formal channels and external support become more essential.
The framework that follows, Recognise, Respond, Record, is situationally applied, with different issues shifting the weight you give each move. For example, a one-off rude comment may require recognition and a calm response, while a pattern of targeted behaviour will likely require all three elements.
Move One: Recognise
Pay attention to what’s happening and trust your instincts.
Research consistently shows that people who experience workplace mistreatment often second-guess themselves. They wonder whether they’re being too sensitive or reading too much into it.
If the behaviour is affecting your capacity to do your work, your willingness to speak up, or your sense of safety, that’s a signal worth paying attention to.
Professor Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety reinforces this point3. Psychological safety is the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. When one person’s behaviour consistently makes it unsafe for others to speak up, ask questions or admit mistakes, the entire team’s performance suffers.
Notice the patterns by asking yourself:
- Does the person behave differently depending on who is in the room?
- Do they charm those above them while undermining those alongside or beneath them?
- Are they high-performing in visible ways but corrosive in ways that are harder to measure?
Move Two: Respond Early and Calmly
When you don’t address problematic behaviour early, you’re training the other person to believe the behaviour is acceptable. You’re also training yourself to absorb it. Understanding the person’s style and motivations can help, and working with difficult people is a useful starting point.
So, while avoiding conflict might feel safe in the moment, it always carries a cost.
Where it is safe to do so, address the behaviour directly, calmly and specifically. This is not about delivering a brave speech. It’s about making a clear, factual statement that names what happened and its impact.
For example:
- “When you talked over me in that meeting, it made it difficult for me to share the update the team needed.”
- “I’ve noticed I’m being left off the distribution list for project updates. I need to be included so I can do my job effectively.”
- “That comment felt dismissive. I’d appreciate it if we could discuss this respectfully.”
Notice the structure: what happened, what the impact was, and what you need going forward. Keep your tone steady, and your language factual, precise and unemotional.
Telling someone the truth about how their behaviour is landing is an act of respect, both for yourself and for them.
There are two important caveats to this approach. First, you are never obligated to confront someone whose behaviour feels threatening or unsafe. Safety comes first, always. Second, if the person is senior to you or holds significant power, the dynamics are different, and I’ll address that shortly.
Move Three: Record the Patterns
If the behaviour is persistent, start documenting. This is not about building a case against someone. It’s about creating clarity for yourself and for anyone you may need to involve later.
It can help to take note of the following details:
- Date and time of each incident
- What happened, using factual, specific language (not interpretations)
- Who was present at the interaction
- The impact on you and your work
- Any action you took in response
Keep this documentation in a secure personal location, not on a shared drive or company device that others can access.
Why does this matter? Because patterns are harder to dismiss than single incidents. If you ever need to escalate formally, through HR, your manager, or a formal complaints process, you will be taken more seriously with documented evidence than with a generalised feeling that “things aren’t right.”
Documentation also helps you maintain perspective. When you’re inside a difficult dynamic, it can be hard to tell whether things are getting worse or whether you’re becoming more sensitised.
A factual record gives you something objective to return to. You can sense-check your thinking, separate feeling from fact, and use the details to work through the issue with an impartial person whom you trust deeply. This can be helpful because you will want to be open to owning your part in the relationship dynamic.
When Organisational Politics Protects the Behaviour
Researchers Michael Housman and Dylan Minor examined data from over 50,000 workers across 11 firms and found that avoiding a toxic worker, or converting them to an average worker, enhanced performance far more than replacing an average worker with a superstar4.
In other words, the damage done by one toxic high performer outweighs the value created by a top performer.
Yet organisations routinely protect their toxic rock stars. The star salesperson who hits every target but leaves a trail of broken relationships. The brilliant strategist who publicly humiliates colleagues. The senior partner who gets results while driving turnover in their team.
If the corrosive person in your working life is a high performer or holds a senior position, recognise this reality: the system may be set up to protect them, not you. This doesn’t mean you’re powerless. It does mean that you need to be strategic.
Here’s what to consider:
- Build alliances, not grievances. Are others experiencing the same behaviour? You don’t need to organise a campaign, but knowing you’re not alone changes your position. Shared patterns are harder to dismiss.
- Use formal channels deliberately. If your organisation has a complaints process, use it. If you’re concerned about retaliation, document that concern as part of your formal record. Many jurisdictions have protections against reprisal for raising workplace concerns.
- Know your rights. In many countries, workplace bullying and harassment are covered by occupational health and safety legislation. Familiarise yourself with the protections available to you.
- Protect your professional reputation. When someone is corrosive, it can be tempting to vent to colleagues. Be careful. Channel your energy into doing your work well, building relationships with people who respect you, and ensuring your contributions are visible to those who matter.
When the Leader Sees It and Still Does Nothing
Perhaps the most demoralising scenario is when your leader is aware of the corrosive behaviour and chooses to avoid it. You’ve raised the issue, they’ve nodded, and yet nothing changes.
Leadership research consistently shows that what leaders tolerate, they endorse. And when senior leaders treat their direct reports badly, that dysfunction cascades through the organisation. The trickle-down effect works both ways: leaders who tolerate bad behaviour signal that the behaviour is acceptable.
If you find yourself in this position, you have several choices:
- Escalate further. If your direct leader isn’t willing or able to act, consider reaching out to someone above them or the HR function. Frame the issue in terms the organisation cares about: impact on productivity, risk to retention, and potential legal exposure.
- Set boundaries. You can limit your exposure to the corrosive person without withdrawing from your role. This might mean declining social invitations, minimising one-on-one interactions, or restructuring how you collaborate.
- Make a longer-term plan. Sometimes the most strategic move is to recognise that the culture won’t change and to start planning your next step. This isn’t defeat, but a deliberate choice to invest your energy in an environment that deserves your expertise.
- Seek external support. A trusted mentor outside the organisation, an executive coach, or an employee assistance programme can help you think clearly when you’re in the thick of it.
Protect Your Energy
Dealing with corrosive behaviour takes a toll.
The research on bystanders to workplace bullying shows that even witnessing persistent mistreatment is associated with lower well-being, increased stress and higher turnover intentions. You don’t have to be the direct target to feel the effects.
Protecting your energy is essential. This means being intentional about recovery, noticing when you’re ruminating, and choosing to redirect your attention. It means investing in relationships that fill you up, not just those that drain you. If the relationship has any foundation worth rebuilding, building trust with a colleague you don’t trust offers a practical place to start.
Remember, this situation does not define your worth or career. So, be honest with yourself about how much you can absorb.
There is no award for enduring a toxic dynamic longer than necessary. Sometimes the bravest, most strategic move is to walk away and redirect your talent somewhere it will be valued.
The Choice Is Always Yours
You can’t control another person’s behaviour, but you can control how you respond to it.
Every day, you make choices about how you show up, what you tolerate and where you invest your energy. Those choices accumulate and shape your career, well-being, and reputation.
When you’re dealing with a corrosive colleague, the path forward isn’t always clear. But the principles are: recognise what’s happening, respond with clarity and calm, record the patterns, and protect what matters most: your integrity, health, and future.
You may not be able to change the person. But you can change how you navigate what’s in front of you, clearly, deliberately and on your own terms.
Getting you ready for tomorrow, today®
Award-winning author and global workplace expert, Dr Michelle Gibbings, helps leaders, teams and organisations unlock strategic influence to accelerate progress.
References
- Porath, C. L., & Pearson, C. M. (2013). The price of incivility. Harvard Business Review, 91(1-2), 114-121. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23390745/
- Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiralling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452-471. https://asu.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/tit-for-tat-the-spiraling-effect-of-incivility-in-the-workplace/
- Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf
- Housman, M., & Minor, D. (2015). Toxic workers. Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-057. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf