Dealing with Toxic Friendships at Work!

I have clients, who complain that their friends at work are sapping their energy, interfering with their work, and making it difficult for them to succeed. These friends are their peers, colleagues, and others who work in the same work group as my client. They engage in skullduggery, subterfuge, and back-stabbing all the while they sport a broad smile as they greet you each day at work! These relationships become particularly toxic when the friend is more focused on getting what they want at your expense and sweet-talking you into believing that they are doing it to help you.

When you ask them how this is going to help, they condescendingly respond by saying youll see! When you go to them and raise your concerns about what is happening to you and to your career as a result of their help, their immediate knee-jerk response is as your friend let me tell how this is going to work well for you. They are good at clubbing you with their friendship to shut you up.

Hmmm!

What makes this difficult for some of my clients is their colleagues charm, cunning, and strong communication skills when it comes to having a discussion about their relationships. They are really good at making you feel inferior and using that advantage to one-up you. Some of them even use their relationships with their bosses to further their agenda under the guise of this friendship. So, what is my guidance to my clients in such situations?

Here is a summary of what works:

1. The first step in this toxic and destructive relationship spiral is your being aware of it that this is happening. Many go through their lives thinking that what is happening to them must be a good thing because their friend is taking care of them. So, the first step in recovery is awareness. If they constantly make you feel inferior in your relationship with them remember what Eleanor Roosevelt said: No one makes you feel inferior without your consent!
2. It is difficult to suddenly change your relationship with your friend because of a variety of factors, including your willingness to confront head-on what is happening. A better first step is for you to remove yourself from the close relationship with your friend by looking to join other work groups within your company and starting with building new relationships. Now that you are aware of keeping your distance you can start a fresh relationship with new colleagues and being cautious in how you build new relationship in this group.
3. If joining another work-group is not workable, try slowly changing your relationship with your friend by first dealing with more benign issues that arise in your everyday interactions. Once you develop your confidence in standing on your own, build your immunity to deal with their arguments, you can ratchet up your narrative and start being increasingly direct and forthright about what is bothering you and how you plan to disabuse your relationship with them.
4. Keep your relationship with your friend strictly on business terms. Do not engage in gossip or rumors and if they initiate such dialog excuse yourself quickly from such discussions by saying, Oh! I need to send an email for someone who is waiting, etc.
5. As you start distancing yourself from everyday interactions with your friend they may respond by trying to make up by asking you to lunch or coffee. Without saying no, see if you can buy some time before you get sucked into such a trap.
6. If your friend enjoys a strong relationship with your boss and the higher-ups, do not go to your boss or others complaining about the problems you have with them. You can safely assume that any discussion will filter back to your friend, making it more difficult for you to deal with the issue on your own. Take charge and start asserting your voice to disabuse the off-track relationship.
7. Start building relationships with others in your work group and keep them growing on the right footing. Once your friend sees that in addition to your increasing distance with them youre also nurturing relationships with others they will start getting the message.
8. Many are tempted to leave their job when such relationships become increasingly toxic and unbearable. Often, my advice to clients in such dire situations is that running away from a problem to which they contributed is not going to change things for them even in a new job; the same pattern will repeat after a while. I urge them to deal with the situation where they are and to conquer it before they decide to move on.
9. Yet another avenue to assert your independence, in addition to the above, is to demonstrate strong job performance on your own. Once you start getting recognition as a strong performer your friends grip on your relationship becomes less important.
10. If none of these suggestions work after your valiant efforts, then try looking for an outside job, and when you start your new job be vigilant about building new relationships in light of this experience.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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