Battling fear and toxicity in the workplace

I’m thrilled & excited to welcome Heather Newman as our latest guest on the Microsoft 365 Voice podcast! Heather is an entrepreneur, thought leader, marketing executive, and Microsoft Power Platform Community Success Team Lead. She’s also a fantastic human that I’m proud to call friend.

Over the past several years, Heather has written a popular blog post series on Battling Fear and Toxicity in the Workplace. Heather brings life experiences as an entrepreneur, executive, theater major, empath, and mentor to the series. It’s raw, personal, insightful, and blunt.

The series has had a powerful impact on my personal development and career growth. Fear and toxicity in the workplace crosses all boundaries – gender, sexual orientation, industry/vertical, job grade, experience level, etc. And life is circular. Just when we think we’ve learned how to succeed and thrive in difficult work situations, we’re thrown into a new challenge and have to re-learn it all over again.

We cover a wide range of topics in this episode, including:

Why toxic people are dangerous (sashay away)
We have choices! We can follow the path of least resistance, the path of confrontation, or the path of ‘I’m done’
Know the importance of building allies and relationships at work
Learn when it’s time to leave a job or organization
Be a lifelong learner and achiever. Never stop working on your personal growth & evolution
Be curious. Ask questions. Be kind
Build high-trust work relationships with people that will give you the unvarnished truth

We hope you enjoy the episode!