Employee Relations
Dr Request Machimbira
The conversations on workplace toxicity have created a convenient fall guy, that is, management.
In our righteous pursuit of toxic bosses, we have created a dangerous blind spot. We have refused to confront the toxic employee.
We have allowed a convenient fiction to take root: that toxicity only flows downhill. In my work coaching boards and executive teams across Zimbabwe and the region, I have seen the opposite.
The most corrosive force in many organisations today is not in the corner office.
It is at the next desk. It smiles in meetings, volunteers in the morning and poisons the well by afternoon.
We must talk about it, because what we do not confront, we condone. Toxicity rarely arrives shouting. The most dangerous toxic employees are not the chronic latecomers or the openly insubordinate.
They are often your likeable high performers.
Charm is their camouflage. What defines them is not a single act, but a posture.
A toxic employee comes to work wearing invisible boxing gloves.
Every conversation is a potential bout.
Offer feedback and you get a grievance. Make a business decision and you get a declaration of war.
They live in fight mode and when a person lives to fight, everyone becomes an opponent.
They are, at their core, liars. They lie their way to relevance. They embellish their contribution and erase their part in a failure. They invent a conversation that never happened and they misquote a manager to win an ally. They love name-dropping to prove their proximity to power.
Lies are their currency. In a workplace that runs on trust, a chronic liar is not a minor irritant.
There is counterfeit money in circulation; eventually, the whole economy loses confidence. Their business model is chaotic. If the industrial relations climate is calm, they will manufacture a storm.
I have watched this play out in works councils and workers’ committees.
They light a fire in the morning and then sit in the afternoon meeting as the heroic firefighter. It is the organisational equivalent of infecting the body with a virus and then selling the vaccine.
Management then spends 80 percent of its time managing manufactured crises instead of managing the business. Do not underestimate their reach.
A single toxic employee at supervisor level can set the entire boardroom on fire. He carries half-truths from finance to operations, whispers from marketing to HR.
He pits managers against each other with surgical precision.
Management teams are rarely destroyed by competitors. They are destroyed from within by this toxic intelligence.
Their natural habitat is the grapevine. That is their real office.
The corridor is their boardroom.
They are the rumour mill, breeding speculation, suspicion and negativity. The company is always closing. Someone is always about to be fired. Nothing is ever good. This is not idle gossip; it is psychological pollution.
Good people do not argue with pollution. They just quietly leave to breathe elsewhere. They never attack in the open.
Their method is the corridor confession: “I am telling you this in confidence. Don’t say I told you.”
They bad-mouth a colleague while pretending to protect you. This fake confidentiality is character assassination dressed as concern. Healthy organisations are built on official, transparent feedback.
Toxic ones are built on whispers. And when they befriend you, send the invoice early. Their friendship is transactional.
They collect allies like a politician collects votes, to be cashed in when needed.
When a toxic employee suddenly becomes your closest confidant, be alert. Someone is being set up to fall. For them, “Romeo must die”.
When the going gets tough, when evidence mounts, they play victim. This is the most manipulative turn. Suddenly they are being victimised, bullied, targeted and harassed.
I have seen serious allegations, including sexual harassment, discrimination and victimisation, weaponised not as a cry for justice, but as a shield against accountability.
This is dangerous for two reasons: it trivialises real victims who desperately need protection, and it paralyses well-meaning managers who fear litigation more than they fear cultural decay.
Finally, we must say what HR manuals whisper: personality disorders are real.
Not every difficult person is just having a bad day or needs coaching.
Research shows that narcissistic, Machiavellian and borderline tendencies exist in workplaces. We cannot coach what needs clinical boundaries. A code of conduct does not cure toxicity. It only describes it. You need proactive and reactive interventions that are practical and evidence-based.
Evidence shows past behaviour predicts future toxicity better than qualifications do.
Use validated psychometrics not as exclusion tools, but as risk radars. Know your dark side risks before you promote.
Research shows that toxicity thrives where formal communication is slow and vague.
If rumours travel faster than your memos, your system has failed. Institute a 24-hour rule: major decisions are communicated officially within 24 hours, with context.
Track and measure psychological safety periodically.
Toxicity kills safety first, performance second. Stop managing toxicity in corridors. Document it. Toxic employees thrive in verbal ambiguity and die in written clarity.
Dr Request Machimbira is the executive director of Proficiency Consulting Group and the International Wellness Institute. For feedback, email request @proficiencyinternational.com or phone +263772693404.
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Toxic employees use triangulation; they tell you one thing and tell your peers another. Evidence from family systems therapy shows the cure is a forced alliance. Executive teams must have a weekly 30-minute alignment huddle: “What have you heard this week? Who told you?”
Close the triangle in real time. Consequences for toxicity must be visible. When you tolerate a toxic high performer, you tell your culture that values are just decoration. Performance without values is a debt.
The cost
Keeping one toxic employee is not his salary; it is the five good employees who will quietly disengage and the 10 productive hours managers lose every week. You cannot build a high-performance organisation on a low-trust foundation. Kindness without firmness is cowardice. Empathy without boundaries is self-sabotage. Managers, be alert. Be proactive. Be courageous enough to call toxicity by its name, even when it wears your uniform, smiles in your meetings, and lies with charm.
Dr Request Machimbira is the executive director of Proficiency Consulting Group and the International Wellness Institute. For feedback, email request @proficiencyinternational.com or phone +263772693404.
