Toxic people, or high-performers – who are you drawn to?

Outliers is an advanced statistical phenomenon, and it’s important to understand if you want to be a high-performer. (I’ll bet you never guessed you could be a higher performer by using a statistical phenomenon!). It essentially says that if you’re significantly different from the group you’re around, you’ll tend to … become more like the group over time. I took 12 credit hours of graduate school statistics and this is the only useful concept I learned!
“Outliers”, a book by Malcome Gladwell describes people who are outliers in their fields. All these people always chose to be around others who were similar to them. Its a form of the law of attraction. Ever notice that high performers choose to be around other high performers, and emotionally toxic people (toxics) like to be around other toxics? So what do you do if you’re a high-performance thinker, but have to spend time with toxics?
Run like a Chinook coming down the Rockies at 60 mph in the spring! Change your environment, or at least minimizing your exposure to the toxic one; it’s is the best thing you can do. If you can’t change environments, or really like some aspect of the toxic environment you’re in (such as your job), consider what one courageous woman is doing. I’ll call her Ann.
Ann had an emotionally toxic boss (let’s say Susan) whose toxicity had spread though the team like a new strain of highly infectious influenza. Ann loved her job, but she could feel the toxicity insidiously infecting her. She and her colleagues had all failed individually when they requested that Susan change her toxic behaviors — and Susan threatened their jobs in the process.
To negate Susan’s toxicity, Ann unified the team to provide documentation for the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that proved Susan was creating a hostile work environment (a lawful violation). As a result, EAP is taking on Susan’s illegal behaviors, the team’s jobs are protected and the toxic cleanup has begun.
This very courageous woman found a way to detox her work environment, and now her hope, laughter, kindness and ethics are spreading. Sometimes it only takes one strong, courageous individual to stop the spread of emotional toxicity.

An outlier is drawn to the mean.
Choose your mean carefully, or positively change
the mean you’re in.

How do you deal with toxic people?