Types of Toxic Colleagues: 7 You’ve Probably Worked With

The Subtle Blamer. The Meeting Hijacker. The Emotional Landmine. They might sound like strange little nicknames, but if you’ve spent any time in an office, you’ve almost certainly worked with at least one of them. These are some of the most common types of toxic colleagues, and the catch is that not all of them shout or dominate; some smile sweetly while quietly draining your energy. What follows is a field guide to all seven, because once you can name the pattern, it loses its hold on your headspace.

We’ve all had that one colleague who just gets under your skin. But not all toxic people shout or dominate. Some smile sweetly while quietly messing with your sanity. So here are seven types of toxic colleagues you’ve probably met, and knowledge is power: once you can name them, they lose their hold on your headspace.

The 7 types of toxic colleagues

1. The Subtle Blamer. They don’t yell or criticise outright. But somehow, it’s never their fault. Their need to protect their self-image overrides their ability to reflect, and the team suffers in silence.

2. The Scatterbrain. Fun, creative, full of ideas, but deadlines? Not their thing. They flit from one thing to another, never quite finishing. Great in a brainstorm, frustrating when you need follow-through.

3. The Kiss-Up / Kick-Down. The boss thinks they’re a star. But behind closed doors, they’re snide, sarcastic, and often belittling. They know how to perform when it matters, and how to get away with bad behaviour when it doesn’t.

4. The Micromanager. Everything is urgent. Everything is important. And it all must be done their way. They invade your time, your inbox, your workflow, leaving you overworked and underproductive. If your boss is a micromanager, chances are you work the hardest and get the least done.

5. The Meeting Hijacker. You’re giving a quick update, and suddenly it’s a TED Talk. They dominate every discussion, derail agendas, and drain the energy from collaboration. They don’t want a meeting; they want an audience.

6. The Free Rider. Excellent at taking credit, terrible at taking accountability. They volunteer for low-effort, high-visibility tasks, and disappear when real work begins. They thrive in group projects where no one can tell who did what.

7. The Emotional Landmine. One word, one look, and boom. Offended. You’re constantly walking on eggshells around their moods. They don’t need a reason. They need regulation.

How to deal with toxic colleagues

Spotting these patterns is step one. Not taking them personally is step two. Naming the pattern helps because it moves the problem out of your head and onto the table. Once you can see that a colleague is a Subtle Blamer or a Meeting Hijacker, their behaviour stops feeling like a personal verdict on you and starts looking like what it is: their own way of protecting themselves. Most toxic behaviour is driven by insecurity, not by anything you did.

From there, focus on what you can actually control. Set clear boundaries around your time and your work, keep a light record of who committed to what, and stop rewarding the behaviour with the reaction it is looking for. Where the dynamic is more about power than personality, like a Kiss-Up/Kick-Down or a manager who belittles people behind closed doors, that is a psychological safety issue for leadership to own, not something you should have to absorb alone. Naming it early, before it hardens into a pattern the whole team walks around, is part of the slow work of humanising the workplace.

And when a colleague’s behaviour crosses from difficult into genuinely harmful, closer to workplace bullying than a personality clash, naming it to a manager or HR is not being difficult. It is protecting the culture everyone else has to work in.

So it’s worth asking honestly: which of these types have you worked with, and what would change if you stopped taking their behaviour personally?

Written by Sneha Shah, psychologist, co-founder of ISRA, and one of only 17 Heal Your Life® Master Trainers worldwide, with 19+ years of experience across 40+ countries.

Frequently asked questions