How to tell if your business relationship is toxic

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Recognize psychopaths in your business environment and stop working with them.

Marina Osborne Writer, psychologist, video coach. Author of seven books. Facebook profile.

Where did the concept of toxic relationships come from? What is this anyway?

This is a business relationship that is harmful. They lead to cheating on the part of a partner, substitutions, glass ceiling effects and relationships in the spirit of "I can’t with you and I can’t live without you." Healthy relationships are fulfilling, enriching and beneficial. The unhealthy destroy and harm.

The concept of toxic relationships originated on the verge of psychiatry and relationship psychology and is associated with antisocial disorders or cluster B disorders according to the classification of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

The carriers of toxic relationships are people who are called psychopaths and narcissists. In relation to society, psychopaths are often called sociopaths.

If your business partner or boss is acting strange, after talking to him you feel empty, depressed and squeezed like a lemon, the first thing you should read is the DSM-5 collection of the American Psychiatric Association.

Marina Osborne

DSM-5 I consider too specific a book intended primarily for psychiatrists. As a worthy and more affordable alternative, I propose to read the books by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare "Snakes in suits", Robert Hare "Without a conscience", Jackson Mackenzie "Freedom from psychopaths", my book "Antipsychopathy". Here's a complete list of diagnostic psychopaths and narcissists.

Why shouldn't a toxic relationship be underestimated?

One of the cases occurred in a Russian company that celebrated its 25th anniversary. There were two authorities in it: the ambitious CEO and one of the key shareholders and the founder of the company, who held the honorary position of vice president.

The company has always had sales difficulties. The CEO was able to restructure sales and turn the business into a profit. "In gratitude" for this, the founder initiated the dismissal of the general director, and attributed the success at the shareholders' meeting to himself. It was rumored that he began to fear an increase in the power of a successful director and decided to fire him.

Another example: the director of a small firm, a domineering and suspicious person, selects employees according to the criteria of lack of brightness and ability to obey. All employees have only one opinion - the opinion of the director. The director implicated two employees in personal affairs that threaten them with criminal liability. The accountant carries out business espionage, and the technical director forges documents. The firm is 20 years old, but it is not developing.

And there are a lot of such examples of the behavior of a leader showing signs of psychopathic disorder.

How do you define a psychopath? Are there any signs?

Yes, they are. But if you are not a psychiatrist and you do not have a specialist opinion, you cannot diagnose someone as a psychopath or a narcissist. All over the world there are difficulties in making this diagnosis officially. Because one or even several signs can be the result of poor upbringing, the impact of a negative social environment or delusions. But you still need to know these diagnostic markers. If a person has most of them, you need to take measures to protect yourself and your business.

The key signs of psychopaths and narcissists for those over 18 are:

1. An extreme degree of self-centeredness, manifested in personal gain, power, and pleasure.
2. Ignoring social standards, laws, ethical norms.
3. Lack of empathy and remorse for bad deeds.
4. Failure to reciprocate in intimate relationships, as the primary means is exploitation of others, including through deception, coercion, domination and control.
5. Extremely manipulative style of behavior.
6. Pathological lies, false self-image and self-embellishment, fraud.
7. Aggressiveness, sadism, lack of sensitivity to the problems of other people.
8. Hostility, irritability, persistent or frequent outbursts of anger, vile, vile and vindictive behavior.
9. Irresponsibility, disrespect and non-obligation.
10. Impulsiveness, difficulty planning.
11. A constant need for risk, a tendency to boredom, denial of the reality of personal danger.
12. Many violations in the manifestation of personal qualities.

Various authors cite statistics that from 1 to 4% of people have cluster B personality disorder. In prisons, this percentage is higher - from 25 to 40%. In any average company of 100 people, with weak filters at the stages of forming a management team, searching and recruiting personnel, you can find from one to four employees who have most of the listed characteristics.

In addition, Cluster B personality disorder is not a mental illness. Calling such people crazy is incorrect. All of them are socially adapted and give full account of their actions.

Outwardly, such people do not differ in their behavior from normal ones, since in order to achieve their goals they are able to put on those masks and play the roles that are needed at the moment.

Others notice their true essence on the trail of already carried out sabotage and destruction. Or when diagnostic markers are combined with hysterical behavior or alcohol and drug addiction.

In the second example, which was given above, such a phenomenon inherent in psychopaths as the use of "flying monkeys" is clearly manifested. This is what the professional literature calls those people whom psychopaths make their accomplices. Never trusting anyone, psychopaths, through manipulation, receive the highest credit of trust from codependent partners. They become their faithful assistants just for the idea. In case of his failure, the psychopath throws everything on them.

Being in the same team with such a person is very serious. It inevitably leads to problems for the subordinate or partner. In the best case, financial losses can await you. At worst, health problems (heart attack, stroke, diabetes) and even death.

How do toxic relationships manifest in business?

Turn on your inner panic button and end the relationship if the following situations arise regularly in your business life:

1. Your partner or leader allows himself to make statements that devalue you. These are offensive or derogatory characteristics of your professional skills, personality, or mental capacity.
2. Your partner or leader knows how to achieve their goals in discussions by any means, push through, outwit. At the same time, you are regularly visited by the feeling that you did not even understand how he did it again.
3. Your partner or manager flatly refuses to seriously discuss your complaints about his communication style. He says that you feel, or that you are overworked, or that you should not take it so seriously. This behavior of the partner is called gaslighting. Any "tricks" with the disappearance or appearance of some documents, things, objects, letters - all these are also manifestations of gaslighting. In business, this takes the form of document forgery, the invisible replacement of one document with another.
4. Your partner or boss is pushing you to do something wrong. He is not confused about the possible consequences for you. He uses his gift of persuasion to convince you.
5. You have suffered financial losses because of your boss. And when the question of their compensation was raised, we faced gaslighting.
6. Your partner or manager regularly says that he does not practice long-term planning, because you need to live today, every entrepreneur should be able to turn around. You regularly see impulsive decisions that lead to losses. These losses are then passed on to the employees.
7. Your partner is not leading a very moral lifestyle. He regularly suggests that you go to the girls or take stimulants.

How to get out of a toxic relationship?

In business, it is not always possible to immediately or even quickly exit a business relationship with a toxic partner. This is often associated with a high risk of losing your assets, customer base, established business relationships, reputation, and sometimes the risk of a complete collapse of the company.

Destruction is what any union with a psychopath leads to. They are saboteurs and destroyers by nature.

Therefore, the first thing to do, as soon as you have doubts about a business partner or one of the members of the management team, is to check where you have already violated the boundaries in the relationship. If possible, restore them or build new ones. Manipulators very quickly understand when their victim is trying to jump off the hook. Therefore, the tactics of interaction with them should be different at different stages of the relationship.

If you have not signed important documents yet, have not sealed your agreements with a word or a seal, make sure you are as safe as possible. Psychopaths will find a thousand and one reasons to avoid responsibility and obligation. It often becomes a real challenge to get their signature on an important document.

Immediately clearly discuss all the conditions, preferably in the presence of a third party, or record on a dictaphone or camera. Otherwise, you may later come across assurances that “this was not the case,” “I didn’t say that,” “I didn’t do that.”

All the conditions and your boundaries that are impermissible to violate, designate from the very beginning.

When trying to violate boundaries, decisively put your partner out of place. The psychopath must realize from the start that there is nothing to take from you. His motivation is based on personal goals, by himself established rules and laws.

If you fail to find a solution that satisfies both parties, it is better to refuse any cooperation with a person who seems slippery, unpredictable, too impulsive to you, on your mind. There was one businessman who liked to say the phrase: “My word. I want - I give, I want - I take it back. This is the motto of a psychopath in business and any other relationship.

If at the stage of the existing relationship everything went wrong, you urgently need to involve a good lawyer. Losses are inevitable.

Marina Osborne

In my practice, there was one lost lawsuit, where a psychopath sued my company, colluded with my lawyer and the top manager of my main VIP client. I had to close this enterprise and open a new one at the cost of great financial losses and tarnished reputation. Then for many years I was restoring the business, but I could no longer return to the previous results in my city. Therefore, look for a reliable and highly professional lawyer with a good reputation. And collect as many documents and evidence as possible that will help you protect yourself in the future. Unfortunately, the experience of people who have suffered from psychopaths shows the incredible luck and dexterity of the latter.

Relationships with such people usually start out too perfect. This is one of the signs of a toxic relationship. As soon as you begin to notice warning signs in your established relationship, immediately take screenshots of important messages. Make copies of documents, change passwords, change the storage location of vital documents, clean up documents, create backups of the client database, close key contacts with important business partners. And be on the lookout.

The actions of a psychopath are like a viral attack. Toxic partners introduce malicious and destructive programs into the victim's consciousness and subconsciousness. Under the influence of these programs, the victim changes his attitude towards himself and the world around him.

The image of a toxic partner quickly fills all thoughts and feelings.

During the idealization phase, the victim develops euphoria, joy, delight, hope, inspiration, and a surge of energy. But over time, euphoria gives way to despondency, joy - sadness, delight - anger, hope - resentment, inspiration - complete impotence, and a surge of energy - devastation and depression.

This is similar to how a virus destroys all programs, and as a result, the computer stops working. The anti-virus finds the places where malicious files have entered, and then destroys them. Then you can defragment your hard drive and install new programs.

A psychopathic victim has to do the same with his mental computer. The scale of destruction, alien thoughts, attitudes and triggers that triggered the process of destructive states are recognized. After that, the victim inevitably breaks up with the psychopath, and a feeling of emptiness is added to these feelings.

Next begins the removal, replacement and modification of all mental programs and files. All this changes the state of the victim. New programs, habits, relationships, rituals are laid and formed.

The complete healing process depends on the duration of the toxic relationship, on the degree of destructiveness of the psychopath's actions, and on the initial state of the victim herself. In any case, from the moment of the breakup to complete healing, it is not months, but years.

How to forget about toxic relationships and start a new life?

Those who encounter toxic people usually gain experience, which one representative of cluster B put it this way: "With me you will learn a lesson that you can never forget." And so it happens.

Someone commits suicide, someone becomes a downshifter. The strongest start a business or career from scratch.

Here are the most effective ways to start a new life:

1. Training and retraining. Realizing yourself in a new business, new job, career.
2. Any kind of creativity: writing, painting, drawing, composing music, songs, doing it yourself (modeling, knitting, embroidery).
3. Participation in various social projects and movements.
4. New healthy relationships.
5. Achieving goals that previously seemed incredible.
6. Participation in various professional and creative competitions.
7. Creating a new image of yourself and your lifestyle.
8. Moving to another city or country.
9. Learning something completely new. For example, learning foreign languages.
10. Create your own professional blog or YouTube channel.

We wish you to avoid toxic relationships, or at least be prepared for them. Be ready not only to protect yourself and your business, but also to find the strength to refuse such a relationship. May strength and love be with you.