The bad apple…

The bad apple…

Well ... a CareerBuilder survey conducted on 6,000 hiring managers and HR professionals, discovered that 27% of U.S. employers who had employed a ‘bad apple’, claimed that one bad hire eventually cost their business more than $50,000. This is a financial strain no business should bear. Additionally, we can surmise the majority of businesses have more than just one bad apple in their ranks.

For us as leaders, it is extremely important to realize that the money involving an underperformer go far beyond the effects it has on that particular employee – bad behavior can easily ‘spill over’ into the minds of the other employees. If organizations choose to under-appreciate the consequences of these spill-overs, a few bad apples can infect any strong team culture.

“Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one” – Perry Belcher

“I measure my own success as a leader by how well the people who work for me succeed.” – Maria Shi

W.E. Deming said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time."

"Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be." - Elizabeth Gilbert

“My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.” and “CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.” – Jack Welch

Some pretty bold statements which have generally been true throughout my entire career.  How do we deal with and handle the bad apples?

Sometimes the bad apples are good people in the wrong jobs.  The solution: help them find the right jobs.  Sometimes the bad apples are … well … just bad apples.

We have all worked with co-workers our customers complain about.  Or maybe they are always: negative, appear unmotivated, lack engagement, resent authority, passive-aggressive, make big issues from little issues, waste company time, dishonest, or even violate company policies.  Our teams know who they are, the bad apples know who they are, and I would challenge, we (as leaders) know who they are.

If one of our employees is a bad apple and not pulling their weight, or actively working against the company, it can throw a wrench into our well-oiled machine and disrupt all of our team and our operations.  If nothing is done to improve their performance, bad employees will drag down our team and can end up poisoning their coworker attitudes resulting in serious damage to our team’s performance and culture. 

Knowing what our expectations are will let them know what behavior is appropriate - and will give them direction and purpose.  When we focus on finding the right fit between an employee’s strengths and the job she is asked to perform, success is almost guaranteed to follow. Coach employees to develop a plan that will help them reach their goals. Provide abundant feedback and celebrate their achievements. 

We can’t “fix” employees the way we can a leaking garden hose. These are the people we decided to hire or retain at our organizations, and we are responsible for identifying what may be causing them to act in a manner that we’ve decided makes them “difficult.” 

I’m not saying that we should tolerate employees who are insubordinate, violent or threatening—those are grounds for immediate termination. But such cases are few and far between.  Sometimes the “difficult” employee isn’t the problem; it’s our organization’s culture. Other times, the employee is just a bad apple, and we need to help them be happy—somewhere else.

Never take anything at face value. We may think that the associate is being difficult, but in reality, there is a legitimate reason for his/her frustration. If we can work through the issue, we may be able to turn the situation around.   Be patient and treat the associate with sensitivity. We don’t know what others are going through in their personal lives. Usually, people are being difficult as a cry for help. Try to get them to respond reasonably rather than emotionally.

By understanding how and why co-workers make similar choices about committing misconduct can help us into preventing misconduct. Misconduct is a product of social interaction and given its nature, knowledge and social norms - it may be difficult to spot at first. Generally speaking, if we can achieve the level of understanding required to why co-workers behave in similar ways has enormous implications for understanding how our team culture is shaped and how we can help steer it in the right direction.

Listen. Listen more. Often, when an employee is difficult, we stop paying attention to what's actually going on. In reality (as Ms. Gilbert stated, “we need a backbone”) we need to double down on giving clear, behavioral feedback; providing real-time examples when they occur; documenting what is happening; ensuring we are being consistent; establishing consequences, understanding our company processes/policies; and making sure we do not negative talk about this employee to others.  Maybe even separating said employee from the others. 

Sometimes, difficult employees just need more attention from us as leaders. Their “toxic” behavior can sometimes be fixed with the right approach and suitable management style to fulfill their potentials. Other times we may just need to cut our losses and let them go find a better environment for their talents. Of course, we should always hope that the person can change but not everyone will respond to the tactics listed above. 

A professor at Kellogg School of Managment (Dylan Minor) is researching toxic doctors and says that early results indicate that some are either unable or unwilling to change. A professor at Georgetown (Christine Porath) research on incivility has found that 4% of people engage in this kind of behavior just because it’s fun and they believe they can get away with it.” In those extreme cases, we should recognize that we won’t be able to fix the problem and begin to exit strategies for these employees.

As a business leader, we need to develop our teams and to also identify the bad apples and deal with them in a way that can help us lead our teams toward success.  While the goal is to improve our employee’s behavior so that our team can happy and productive together, realistically there will be times when that isn’t possible. If our previous interventions haven’t had the desired effect and the team member is unwilling to change their behavior, we need to follow our company’s termination procedure and cut your losses.

Together.  We.  Win.

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