Sensitivity Is a Superpower That Sparks Change
“You’ve been through the ringer,” I said to Rachel. “Tell me about your path of navigating these toxic workplaces and how you got through it all.”
“I’m neurodivergent, and one way that manifests is in being highly sensitive and highly perceptive,” Rachel said, “physically, emotionally, and energetically. Traits like these make people more attuned to dysfunction.
“Those of us who are wired differently often stand out in workplaces, in different ways. Our perceptiveness and sensitivity make us the proverbial canaries in a coal mine—we’re affected by toxicity (among other things) before others are. A great resource on this topic is Ludmila Praslova’s The Canary Code, a book that explores neuroinclusion at work.
“After I left the corporate world, I learned that I had ADHD and some autistic traits. What I’d always known was that my vision, values and ways of operating often clashed with rigid corporate rules and structures. Yet, these same qualities gave me the clarity to recognize when something was deeply wrong—and the courage and moral obligation to act on it.”
Boeing: Surviving a Male-Dominated Culture
“I joined Boeing in 2001,” Rachel said, “right after the world changed forever on 9/11. Hired as a communications specialist in an environment of mostly male, middle-aged lifers, I immediately faced challenges as a young woman.
“Most of them didn’t know what a communications specialist was,” she recalled. “I was called ‘honey,’ asked to get coffee, and even touched inappropriately. It was appalling.”
Boeing’s culture was steeped in toxicity, with executives engaging in extramarital affairs and dismissive attitudes toward women. “The CEO at the time was married to his former secretary—whom he’d had an affair with while married to someone else,” Rachel said. “It set a tone.”
Rachel faced particularly troubling encounters. “One senior director propositioned me,” she said. “He wanted me to be his mistress when he was in town. Another manager put his hand on the back of my neck during a meeting. That entitlement—that he thought that was ok and appropriate behavior—was unbelievable.”
One of the more egregious incidents involved a vice president with a notorious temper. During one meeting, he screamed at her over a simple question. “I walked straight into HR afterwards and told them that was unacceptable,” Rachel said. “To their credit, they agreed with me and took action. His behavior had already pissed off a lot of people. He was fired based on feedback from me and others.”
“I love that you spoke up,” I said to Rachel. “One of the core themes of this book is the power of speaking up and you embodied that fully. Well done.”
“I couldn’t just let his behavior go,” Rachel said. “Despite the toxic culture, I forged some meaningful professional relationships. There were two brilliant women in the air traffic management unit who were experts in their field, and we bonded,” Rachel said. “It was inspiring to work with them, even if the environment was far from ideal.”
Reflecting on her time at Boeing, Rachel acknowledged how different it was from other places she’d worked. “I’d been at startups, nonprofits, at Amazon, and a consulting firm, and in none of those places would that kind of behavior have been tolerated,” she said. “Boeing was a throwback to an era where power dynamics went unchecked. This was before social media or #MeToo.”
“I’ve heard from multiple sources that Boeing is corrupt,” I said to Rachel. “I spoke to a teacher who said her friend was literally devastated from working there and even became hopeless. It seems to be a very lost and pitiful organization.”
“It was definitely one of the most toxic places I’ve worked,” Rachel said.
The Bathroom Stalker
At a large Silicon Valley software company, Rachel encountered dysfunction on another level. Hired as a contractor on a chaotic team, she faced a hostile work environment with an absentee leader.
“One woman on the team took a severe dislike to me,” Rachel said. “She followed me into the bathroom one day and started threatening me, trying to intimidate me into quitting. She got right up in my face. It was frightening.”
“Oh my God,” I said, “that’s unimaginable. I have so much empathy for you here. That must have made you feel beyond awful and so unsafe.”
“It did,” Rachel said. “But, like a lot of victims of bullying, I felt mortified, so I didn’t report it. I didn’t have much confidence that the behavior would be addressed, either, since there were other major problems within the team. When I raised those, nothing happened. The leader either couldn’t be bothered or had no idea what to do, and let the dysfunction continue. I left, and eventually the team fell apart. But she’s been promoted over and over again. She’s a big deal at that company now.”
“That makes me sick,” I said. “This is exactly why we need to share this. I can’t even imagine how many people are out there fearing their colleague just like this insane woman who bullied you.”
Switzerland: A Boss’s Rule of Control
“Boeing and the tech company were just a few examples. I have plenty more,” Rachel said. “I burned myself out severely in a series of roles, and in 2014 ended up quitting my job and moving to rural Peru to start to recover. Then I moved to Ecuador where I lived for a year, then to Portugal for a year and a half. When I returned to the US, I spent several months looking for work that was different from what I’d done before, which proved challenging.
“Finally, I accepted a job offer in Switzerland. It was a tough decision, because I’d also been accepted into a master’s program I was excited about. But grad school was expensive and the job in Switzerland paid well. So I ignored my intuition and my heart (and some red flags) and went with my head, and took the job everyone else thought would be amazing. It was actually a nightmare.”
“I give you so much credit for traveling to all these places and living life to the fullest,” I said. “And I see so much of myself in you. I’ve also worked in Europe, taking the job for the thrill of the opportunity as well as for the money, only for it to be a disaster.”
“Yeah, I knew within a week that I’d made a huge mistake,” Rachel said. “My boss, a VP who should’ve had more important things to do, treated employees like children, controlling every aspect of our work. At one point, she gathered the four of us directors, her leadership team, to discuss and dissect the negative results of an employee engagement survey—she was trying to figure out who wrote which comments. At one point, I had to say, ‘I wrote that,’ because she was accusing someone else unfairly.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s way over boundaries and out of line. Those results are supposed to be anonymous.”
“I pointed that out. There was a lot going on there that was way out of line. But no one said anything. There was a group of employees who’d been working with her for a while, and they all went out drinking together regularly. They were the ‘in’ crowd, and I think a few were a little afraid of getting on the wrong side of her,” Rachel said. “I found out later that she slandered people who left.”
“It’s mind-blowing how similar this is to my experience working at a highly toxic company in Rotterdam,” I said. “It’s all about being in the group or you’re considered an outcast. Tell me more.”
“This company’s rules were absurd,” Rachel said. “Employees were allowed only one personal item on their desks, and we had nowhere to keep anything else. If the CEO decided to make the rounds to check on us, the VP put a meeting on all our calendars for an hour to clean up (find places to hide stuff) before he came in. If we ever wanted to bring a cup of coffee down to our desks from the canteen upstairs, we had to carry it on a tray, and the trays required two hands. So you couldn’t hold onto the railing on the steep stairs. We actually got scolded if we tried to carry a cup without a tray. And the guy making all these rules was the CEO and owner—of a company with more than 50,000 employees worldwide—who was in his eighties. It was insane.
“Although I saw the problems immediately, I tried hard to make it work. I’d given up my place in the grad program, waited months without pay for my visa, which kept getting delayed, and moved halfway around the world for this job. The stuff I’d had shipped from the US hadn’t even arrived yet. After about two months of this toxicity, though, I couldn’t hold back any longer, and I finally quit. I had to give four months’ notice both to my employer and to the property manager of the apartment I was renting, standard in Switzerland. I was able to negotiate both down a bit,” she said, “but I counted down every day until I was out of there.”
Monterey: A CEO’s Impossible Demands
Backtracking a bit in Rachel’s career, she has another experience worth sharing with us. In 2005, Rachel took a role as a managing editor for a small publisher in Monterey, California. It was, she said, another colossal mistake.
“The CEO was a huge guy, with a shaved head and intimidating presence,” Rachel explained. “From day one, I realized this wasn’t going to work. He was paranoid, controlling, and completely out of touch with reality. He made ridiculous rules, like deciding I couldn’t wear jeans to work—even though he and I and two employees were the only ones in the office and we had no visitors. And I had to email him every question I had 24 hours in advance or he’d refuse to answer it.”
Rachel described a bizarre demand from the CEO: “He wanted my employee and me to sneak onto commercial aircraft of different airlines with tiny spy cameras to take photos of the seats and send them to scientists at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT so they could somehow figure out the seat measurements. I thought, ‘This is fucking insane.’”
After ten weeks, Rachel put in her notice and offered to help find her replacement, but the CEO demanded she leave immediately. He handed her a box and followed her around the office as she packed up her things. “It was a little scary,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“I’m so sorry you dealt with all this,” I said. “Why do you think a CEO like this becomes this way?”
“He was good at one very specific thing,” Rachel said, “and it was worth money to his clients. He got TV appearances and interviews for his specialized expertise. And since the company was very small and the other people who worked for him didn’t have to interact with him the same way I did, they just ignored the craziness. He never had to develop any real leadership skills.”
Accessing Quantum-Level Solutions By Entering Into Possibility
Rachel’s experiences have fueled her passion for helping others leave toxic environments.
“Your sanity and mental health are worth more than any job,” she said. “You’re not broken, you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.”
Rachel works with highly perceptive women leaders, empowering them to recognize their worth and find healthy, psychologically safe and inclusive environments that align with their goals and values. She encourages people to ask for help.
“The women I work with are typically extremely responsible and hyper-conscientious. They feel like they have to do it all. But you can’t do it all alone,” she said. “Help often comes from unexpected places. You just have to open yourself to the possibilities.
“Sometimes, the best option is to leave your job—but this isn’t always possible, for a variety of reasons. Can you talk to someone else at your company—maybe move to another team? Can you cut down and/or shift your hours so that you’re not interacting as much with particular people who are causing the difficulties? What can you do to alleviate some of the challenges, permanently or until you can find a long-term solution?”
Rachel’s advice is grounded in mindfulness and self-awareness. “When you’re feeling hopeless – when you feel like you have no options, you’re overwhelmed, and everything sucks – do something to raise your frequency. What brings you joy? Go for a walk, listen to music, dance, write, make some art, whatever lifts you up physically, emotionally, mentally. Once you’re in a better headspace, you’ll see options you couldn’t see before. When you feel freer, you become more open to other opportunities that you can’t access otherwise.
“So much of it is mindset. I’m not talking about spiritual bypassing or toxic positivity; it’s not about running from your emotions or pretending the bad stuff isn’t happening. It’s about taking care of yourself and asking for help. By doing this, we open ourselves up to possibilities we might never have imagined.”
A Message of Hope
Rachel’s journey is a testament to resilience, self-advocacy, and the power of saying, “Enough.” Her advice to anyone feeling trapped in a toxic job?
“Value yourself. Take care of your mental and emotional health. And remember that you always have options—even when it feels like you don’t.”
Rachel Radway is an executive & leadership coach, author and speaker who has lived and worked all over the world. She helps women leaders who’re wired a little differently create the conditions they need to thrive.
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