7 Toxic Personality Types You MUST Avoid to Achieve Success!

After 14 years of interacting with many people on a regular basis, I can safely conclude these are the character sketches that can be very detrimental to your business and your mindset.

Whether you are working at a job or building your own company, we interact with people on a day-to-day basis. Many of these interactions are a one-off, some are relationships that last the length of a project and some of these relationships include the people we surround ourselves with on a day-to-day basis.

The most important part of being successful at anything is who you choose to surround yourself with. When trying to achieve something, these people can single-handedly make you or break you.

As Warren Buffet once said, “Show me your friends and I will tell you where you will end up 5 years later”

You could be the best at everything, you could have all the intellect and resources and be extremely confident. All of that will count for nothing if the people you are working with and are depending on do not share your mindset.

Now you might be wondering if I mean that everyone should think like you, no I am not. Every person is unique and in most cases, these differences complement all the work that is being done. But this isn’t about that, this is about personality types.

For the past 14 years, I have been through a lot of experiences. All of them were great, I say that because one of the other aspects of being successful is to use negative experiences and people as learnings. They hold their own place in life and are as important as positive experiences.

Through my journey, I have been able to develop a knack to identify the personality types which didn’t really do me much good so that I can steer clear of them. Mind You, I am not advocating that they are bad people, they just didn’t do me any good, knowingly or unknowingly doesn’t matter.

The Know It All

Learning continually, there is always one more thing to learn — Steve Jobs.

This personality type usually behaves as if they know it all (as the name suggests). The world that we are living in is constantly evolving. What was normal yesterday takes a day to become obsolete, and one can never stop learning.

However, this personality type is set in their ways. They like routine, refuse to learn, and more often than not complain about how things aren’t working even though they are not doing anything different.

They have an opinion about everything without really knowing what they are talking about, which will shine through when they dismiss ALL new ideas saying they won’t work.

The Manipulator

These personality types exploit emotion and personal relationships to take advantage of you. They will talk to you as if you are family in order to steer your opinion and influence your decisions.

They are called manipulators because they do not use logical conversation to discuss what can and cannot work, they can’t, hence they try to manipulate their way to get what they want.

The Self Righteous

They are always only interested in themselves and are interested in others only to the degree that others help them feel good about themselves. When someone calls a spade a spade, they get outclassed and panicked not knowing what to do.

This is interlinked to manipulation to a certain degree, as they tend to then use manipulation to get things their way.

The Leech

The word used to define this personality type might be strong, but it is well warranted.

The leech is someone who gives the impression they are doing a lot of work, and will go out of their way to show they are working, but it is just that. A show. There is no substance.

These kinds of people are a new kind of toxic, they will share profits, accolades, etc that come out of working together, but usually shirk responsibilities and answerability.

They also intertwine with Knowing it all, being manipulative and self-righteous.

The Shark

These people are ruthless. They can be brilliant manipulators and ones whose sole intent is to make sure they cannibalize your efforts and ideas.

They make you put in the work, pay a pittance, and take the major chunk of what gets realized through the efforts of others.

The Victim

These people are always blaming others and their circumstances for the results they are getting.

Conversations with these people are usually always negative and sound like the world owes them a lot. They can drain your energy and make you feel like a victim yourself.

The Liability

These people put in the work, but due to not being aware of what needs to be done, they tend to fuck it up. Unfortunately, the effect of fucking it up affects you as well.

For example, if you are a team, when they fuck up, you fuck up. You will notice how they fuck up even the smallest of things because they probably don’t give it enough attention or they are just unaware.

In this case, to each their own I say.

It is important, however, to introspect, before drawing conclusions about anybody else, about whether you have done everything in your power to load your guns and keep your arsenal ready.

Ask yourself if you are learning enough, are you trying enough, and are you putting in the reps to become the best version of yourself on a daily basis?

If you aren’t, you are probably one of the personality types I have mentioned above and you would be the best person to know what to change about yourself.

By all means, steer clear of anyone and everyone who doesn’t serve your combined interests, but don’t be an asshole.

You do not need to deal with anything, just identify who you want around you. Everyone has their own situation so don’t draw conclusions about anybody and don’t judge anybody. You Do You and They Do They.

Chill out, enjoy life, and peace out.

Much Love!