Five Ways to Deal with Toxic Personalities in the Workplace

As a project manager, encountering difficult team members is inevitable. Toxic personalities within a team can lead to reduced productivity, workflow disruption, low morale, employee churn, and customer churn. To manage difficult team members, project managers should start by reflecting on their own behavior as the team leader. They should also identify the root cause of the problem, get to know each team member, and try to understand why a particular team member is behaving in a certain way. The next step is to have a one-on-one meeting with the difficult employee to discuss a solution together. Finally, managers should follow up and give time to track the changes in the team member's behavior.