Workplace toxic person / case practice

Question

Hello,

I’ve been working on a project with a manager and a senior associate for a year. Everything was fine until the senior joined and started acting like a “partner.” We’ve had conflicts, and while the manager helped at first, her toxic behavior continues.

I’m a junior consultant at a niche strategy firm but overqualified for my role. I’ve been considering leaving because this situation is affecting me, but management advised me to adapt. The project isn’t demanding, and I can use the time to prepare for case interviews for top consulting firms. I don’t have enough money in the bank to leave and also don’t have a lot of flexibility (I am an immigrant and need work paper to stay in Europe) .

I am trying to ignore the person and not respond to her comments to try to focus on the job itself and on my case practice but it is still impacting me emotionally.

I’m feeling stuck—what should I do?

Answer 1

Hi there,

Sorry to hear!

It's not so easy to provide detailed feedback without knowing the details of the story.

A couple of thoughts/questions:

An important component you left out is the timeline. How long will the project continue in this setup? If it's over in 3 months, it's probably better to live with it until then. If it's another year, that's not an option.
You did not say much about your own attempts to reconcile the situation. Besides the manager, did you make some efforts to talk and discuss with the person (maybe in a more casual setting during lunch, dinner, etc.)?
Think about what motivates the person to act that way and learn to react to it appropriately. A great book to learn more about people and how to deal with "special characters" is Laws of Human Nature. Worth a shot to investigate this a bit further.

All the best,

Florian

Answer 2

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