A System for Managing Toxic Behaviour
You are not the problem. But you are the only thing you can change.
Course intro • 2 min
An overview of the Toxicum framework and how the course is structured.
Most people spend their lives reacting to difficult colleagues, controlling partners, and stressful environments β without ever understanding what is actually happening. This course teaches a different approach: understanding toxic behaviour, managing your response to it, and regaining control of the situations that define your life.
16 Structured Modules • 7 Key Strategies • Built on the Toxicum Framework
Situations
If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone β and the situation is not random.
A colleague or a boss brings stress to every interaction. The dynamic never changes. You feel managed around, undermined, or caught in a pattern of conflict that no one addresses but everyone works around.
Conversations you dread define the relationship. You have tried to explain how you feel, you have tried setting boundaries β it does not work. You wonder if the problem is you, or them, or simply the two of you together.
You understand the theory. You have read the books, done the courses, told yourself the same things over and over. But your reaction in the moment stays the same. Insight alone has not produced change.
This is not a personality flaw. This is the absence of a system.
What Improve My World Is
A framework, not advice.
Improve My World is built on a structured learning system built on the Toxicum Framework. It teaches you to recognise toxic behaviour in real time, understand what is driving it, and apply specific strategies to manage your response. It is built for people who have already consumed generic self-help and found that information alone does not produce lasting change.
Naming the behaviour you are experiencing, so you can act on it.
Understanding why it is happening β in you and in them.
The 7 applied approaches to managing toxic dynamics.
What It Is Not
If you are looking for any of the following, this is the wrong place.
The Founders
Vernon Sankey &
Katey Lockwood
Vernon spent decades as the CEO of a major international corporation. He saw toxic behaviour at every scale β from one-on-one conflict to organisational dysfunction at the executive level. Katey brings a background in cognitive psychology, NLP, hypnotherapy, and EQ assessment. Together they have co-authored Toxicum: Managing Toxic People, The Stairway to Happiness, and The Way: Finding Peace in Turbulent Times.
They built Improve My World after concluding that most personal development fails for a simple reason: it offers insight without a structured system to apply it.
The Flagship Course
Managing Toxic People
The complete system, delivered in 16 structured modules with the 7 key strategies, real case studies, and tools for ongoing application.
paced
For Organisations
Toxicity is rarely individual. It is structural.
If your organisation is dealing with team misalignment, leadership conflict, dysfunctional communication patterns, or stress-driven turnover β the cause is rarely a single individual. It is the absence of a shared framework for understanding and managing behaviour.
Book a Strategy CallImprove My World delivers the Toxicum system to organisations as structured training for executives, managers, and teams. We work directly with founders, leadership, and senior management to deploy it in the environments where behaviour is affecting performance.
The situations are not going to change on their own. Your understanding of them has to.
The Flagship Course
Managing Toxic People
A structured, self-paced video course that teaches the Toxicum framework and the 7 key strategies for recognising, understanding, and managing toxic behaviour in real-world situations.
Pay once. Lifetime access. β That pricing TBD
- 16 video modules
- 7 key strategies, taught individually with case examples
- The Toxicum Framework, taught in full
- Lifetime access
- Optional bundle with the Toxicum book at checkout
This is built for you if β
You are dealing with a toxic colleague, manager, partner, or family member and the strategies you have tried so far have not worked.
You have read the books, listened to the podcasts, and still react the same way every time.
You suspect your own reactions are part of the problem and you want to understand why.
You are responsible for managing other people and want a structured framework for handling difficult dynamics.
You are tired of self-help that produces insight without change.
You want a system, not advice.
Curriculum
16 Modules. 7 Strategies. One System.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
PLACEHOLDER β final strategy name and description to be confirmed with Vernon and Kaley.
How the course is delivered.
Pay once. Lifetime access on Kajabi. The Toxicum book can be bundled at checkout.
Self-paced video, with downloadable strategy summaries and exercises. Most students complete the foundational modules in two to three weeks.
The course is not finished when the videos end. The application is ongoing. The system is designed to be returned to, in real situations, for the rest of your working life.
Add the book to your enrollment.
Toxicum: Managing Toxic People is the written companion to the course. The book deepens the framework, expands the case studies, and serves as a reference you can return to long after completing the modules. Available as a bundle add-on at checkout.
Read more about the bookFrequently asked.
You can keep reacting. Or you can build the system.
The Toxicum Framework
A structured way to understand human behaviour β starting with your own.
The Toxicum framework is the intellectual core of Improve My World. It is a behavioural system, not a philosophy. It maps how toxicity operates, how ego drives conflict, and where the leverage points are for changing the dynamic. The 7 key strategies are the applied layer of the framework.
The premise the framework is built on.
Most people who experience repeated conflict, stress, or difficult relationships believe the cause is external. They believe the problem is the other person, the situation, or the environment.
This is partly true. But it is the part you cannot change.
The Toxicum framework is built on a different premise: you are not in control of what happens around you, but you are responsible for how you interpret and respond to it. Once you understand the structure of your own reaction, the situation stops being random. It becomes something you can manage.
The framework makes that possible.
The Framework
Four layers, applied in sequence.
Most toxicity is invisible until it is named. The first layer of the framework is recognition: identifying the specific patterns of behaviour you are dealing with, in others and in yourself, with enough precision to do something about them.
Recognition without explanation produces frustration. The second layer explains why toxicity occurs β the role of the ego, the structure of emotional reaction, the internal triggers that get pulled, the external behaviours that pull them.
The 7 key strategies are the applied tools of the system. Each strategy is matched to a specific type of toxic behaviour and a specific kind of situation. They are not affirmations. They are responses, deployed deliberately, that change the dynamic.
The framework only matters if it is used. The fourth layer is the practice of applying the system in real situations until it becomes automatic.
The 7 Strategies
The 7 strategies are the working layer of the Toxicum framework. Each one addresses a different category of toxic behaviour, a different type of situation, and a different kind of internal reaction.
See how the strategies are taught in the coursePLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
PLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
PLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
PLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
PLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
PLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
PLACEHOLDER β strategy name to be confirmed.
Why this is not self-help.
Self-help is built on motivation. The Toxicum framework is built on behaviour.
Self-help offers advice. The framework provides a system.
Self-help promises change. The framework requires reflection and application.
Self-help is consumed. The framework is used.
Understanding is not enough. The system has to be applied.
The Founders
Vernon Sankey & Katey Lockwood
Improve My World is built by two people with deep, complementary experience in human behaviour β one shaped by leading at the highest levels of corporate life, the other by decades of clinical and psychological practice.
Vernon Sankey
Vernon spent decades as the CEO of a major international corporation. Across that career he saw toxicity at every level β interpersonal, team-wide, organisational, executive. He saw how it affected performance, retention, and the lives of the people inside it. And he saw how rarely it was named, understood, or managed deliberately.
After leaving corporate life he co-founded Improve My World with Katey to build the framework he wished had existed earlier. He is the co-author of Toxicum: Managing Toxic People, The Stairway to Happiness, and The Way: Finding Peace in Turbulent Times.
Katey Lockwood
Katey is a behavioural specialist with a background in cognitive psychology, NLP, hypnotherapy, and EQ assessment. Her work focuses on the internal mechanics of reaction β what drives behaviour at the level of the individual, and how to intervene with structured techniques rather than generic advice.
She is the co-architect of the Toxicum framework and co-author of the Improve My World book series. She is present throughout the course videos and is the lead instructor on the internal-response strategies within the system.
Why they built Improve My World.
After publishing several books and watching the same problem play out across thousands of corporate environments, leadership teams, and personal relationships, Vernon and Katey concluded that the problem is not a lack of information.
There is no shortage of books, podcasts, courses, and retreats on personal development. People consume them constantly and continue to react the same way in difficult situations.
The problem is the absence of a system. People understand the ideas. They cannot apply them. There is a gap between insight and behaviour, and almost nothing in the personal development industry is built to close that gap.
Improve My World was built to close it.
The Books
Published work.
The Way: Finding Peace in Turbulent Times
On managing the internal response to external instability.
Buy on Amazon βThe framework is built. The system is taught. What remains is application.
For Organisations
Toxicity in your organisation is not a personality issue. It is a structural one.
Misalignment, leadership conflict, communication breakdowns, stress-driven turnover β these are not symptoms of difficult individuals. They are symptoms of an organisation operating without a shared framework for understanding and managing behaviour. Improve My World provides the framework.
Book a Strategy CallIf your organisation is experiencing any of the following, the Toxicum system is built to address it.
What an organisational engagement includes.
Who we work with.
We work with organisations whose leadership has decided that behaviour is affecting performance and that the situation requires a structured intervention rather than another round of training. We work with HR leaders, founders, executive teams, and senior managers. We work with companies of all sizes β but we work with seriousness. The shared trait of our clients is willingness to address the issue directly.
Book a Strategy Call.
A 30-minute conversation with Vernon to understand the dynamics in your organisation and assess whether the Toxicum framework is the right fit. No pitch. No deck. A direct conversation about what is happening and whether we can help.
Or email vernon@improvemyworld.com directly.
The behaviour in your organisation will continue until it is addressed deliberately. The Toxicum framework is how you address it.
The Book
Toxicum: Managing Toxic People
The written foundation of the Improve My World system. Toxicum maps the structure of toxic behaviour, the mechanics of reaction, and the early architecture of the 7 key strategies. The course extends and applies what the book establishes.
Inside the Book
What the book covers.
Read it alongside the course.
Most students who get the most from Improve My World read Toxicum in parallel with the course modules. The book reinforces the framework. The modules teach the application. Bundle the two together at checkout.
Bundle at checkout