Get Off the X. The Exit.
Part III: The Awakening. Personal Field Note.
It was 2016. The workweek was brutal—chest pains, a bad performance review, and my boss’s glare when I showed up late because of a highway accident. It was Saturday, and I met up with a good friend for lunch.
I told him everything about my workweek. The bad review. The micromanaging. When my badge didn’t work, my first thought was, “Did I get fired?” And the panic attacks on Sunday nights. (To read the full story, start with, Part I.)
He listened. Then he made an observation, followed by a question.
“When you’re in battle, you want to avoid or get off the X, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So, when are you going to get off the X?”
The kill zone.
If you’re not familiar with the phrase “Get off the X” it’s used in a military and intelligence setting; the “X” is the place where the enemy lures you for an ambush. The kill zone. In spy novels and tactical thrillers—Patriot Games, the Jack Ryan series—the motorcade is trained to recognize the signs of an ambush and get off the X before it’s too late.
My friend was right. The toxic culture I was living in was the X. It was the kill zone. And I was standing on it for years, taking damage, telling myself I’d find a way out eventually, while fighting off the attacks.
Not yet.
What happened next wasn’t a movie montage. I didn’t walk in Monday morning and quit. I couldn’t. I had a mortgage, a car payment, and $130,000 in student loan debt. Walking away wasn’t an option—not YET.
But the question changed how I viewed my situation. I stopped asking,
“How do I survive this?” and started asking, “How do I get off the X?”
Those are fundamentally two different questions. The first keeps you in the kill zone, optimizing for endurance. The second forces you to look at the terrain, find the exits, and start moving.
For me, the exit plan was two years out. I worked my full-time corporate job and taught college courses on the side (nights & weekends)—eighty-hour weeks—to pay off the student debt that kept me chained up.
In September 2018, I made my final payment. The debt was gone. And when a known toxic leader was assigned to the team, I executed my plan. I resigned.
It was terrifying. Yet, exhilarating. It was also the most free I’d felt in a decade.
The landscape.
I knew the patterns. I'd been researching toxic leadership since 2010, interviewing professionals while living through my own version of their stories. But knowing the terrain and finding your way out of it are two different things.
What struck me wasn't just the pain in their stories. It was the patterns. The same dynamics showed up across industries, across decades, and across every demographic you can think of. The boss who makes promises and never keeps them. The one who praises you in private and shames you in public. The one who steals your work and calls it leadership. The one who punishes you for speaking up and rewards you for silence.
And underneath all of it, the same trap: people who knew they needed to leave but couldn't, because of debt, because of fear, because the toxic environment had eroded their confidence so thoroughly they didn't trust their own judgment anymore. That erosion, the survival strategies that keep us functional but hollow, is what I explored in The Smell of Vulnerability. The Armor. It's not weakness. It's what happens when you spend years in the kill zone.
Ninety-seven percent of the professionals I surveyed reported working for at least one toxic leader. Sixty-two percent endured it for one to three years. Seventeen percent endured it for seven years or more.
These aren’t outliers. This is the landscape.
The terrain.
This is why I built the “Dare to Succeed” community. Not to tell you what to do—I don’t know your situation well enough for that, and anyone who claims to is selling something. But I do know the terrain. I’ve mapped it. Through my own experience, through a decade of research, through hundreds of conversations with people who’ve been exactly where you are.
Here’s what I can offer: stories from people who’ve lived it, so you know you’re not alone. Patterns I’ve identified across all those interviews and surveys, so you can see your situation more clearly. And frameworks for thinking through your options: not one-size-fits-all advice, but tools to help you figure out what makes sense for your life, your constraints, and your definition of freedom.
Because the question my friend asked me on that Saturday isn’t really about quitting your job. It’s about recognizing that you’re in the kill zone, assessing what it’s costing you, deciding whether to stay or go, taking action, and recovering once you’re out. I call it the RADAR pathway: built to help you see clearly before you move.
When are you going to get off the X?
I’m Rhonda. I have a PhD in organizational leadership. I’ve given a TEDx talk on toxic leadership. I’ve spoken at international conferences. But the credential that matters most to me is simpler than any of that: I’ve been where you are, and I found my way through.
