Spotting the saboteurs
Insidious employees can slowly wreak havoc. How to recognize them.
We can all spot terrible employees: They’re argumentative, they’re lazy, they don’t work well with others, they are shockingly incompetent. But in many cases, it isn’t the obviously bad employees who cause the biggest problems. The truly insidious employees slowly erode the company culture and undermine fellow employees, and bosses may be reluctant to take action against them because their behavior isn’t always noticeably damaging.
It’s vital to learn to spot these troublesome types and work to change their bad behavior — or rid your company of them. Here are some hallmarks of these workers and how they can damage your culture: They thrive on gossip: Before a meeting I once attended, a few employees were talking about supervisors in another department when the new boss looked up and said: “Stop. From now on we will never say anything bad about anyone unless they are actually in the room. Period.”
Until then, I had never thought of gossip as a part of a company’s culture; gossip just was. We all did it. But saying, “Did you hear what he did?” is like saying, “I have nothing better to do than talk about other people.”
Not only do employees who create a culture of gossip waste time better spent on productive conversations, they also cause other people to respect their co-workers a little less — and anything that diminishes the dignity or respect of any employee should never be tolerated. They lead the meeting after the meeting: You have a meeting. Issues are raised, concerns are shared and decisions are made. Everyone in attendance fully supports those decisions. Then someone holds the after-meeting. Now she talks about issues she didn’t share earlier. Now he disagrees with the decisions that were made.
And sometimes these people even say to their teams: “Look, I think this is a terrible idea, but we’ve been told to do it, so I guess we need to give it a shot.”
And now, what was going to happen never will. They say, “That’s not my job”: The smaller the company, the more important it is that employees think on their feet, adapt quickly to shifting priorities and do whatever it takes, regardless of role or position, to get things done.
Even if that means a manager has to help load a truck or someone who’s not in a client-facing role has to step in because the account manager is ill or a graphic designer has to edit a document. Any task an employee is asked to do — as long as it isn’t unethical, immoral, or illegal — is a task that employee should be willing to do.
The “not my job” attitude destroys overall performance because it quickly turns what might have been a cohesive team into a dysfunctional group of individuals. They think they’ve paid their dues: An employee did great things last year, last month or even yesterday. You’re appreciative. Still, today is a new day. The only real measure of any employee’s value is the tangible contribution he or she makes on a daily basis.
Saying “I’ve paid my dues” is like saying “I no longer need to work as hard.” And suddenly, before you know it, other employees start to feel they’ve earned the right to coast, too. They think experience is everything: Experience is important, but experience that doesn’t translate into better skills, better performance and greater achievement is worthless.
Example: A colleague once said to younger supervisors, “My role is to be a resource.” He then sat in his office all day waiting for us to come by so he could dispense his pearls of wisdom. Of course, none of us did. They use peer pressure: The new employee works hard. She’s hitting targets and exceeding expectations. She rocks. And then she hears from an employee who’s been there awhile: “You’re working too hard and making the rest of us look bad.”
Bad employees don’t want to do more and they want others to do less. They don’t want to win; they just want others to make sure they don’t lose. Saying “You’re working too hard” is like saying “No one should work hard, because I don’t want to work hard.” And pretty soon very few people do. They hurry to grab the credit: OK, maybe he did do all the work. Maybe he did overcome every obstacle, but probably not. Nothing important is ever accomplished alone, even if some people act as though it is.
A good employee and good team player shares the glory. That’s especially true for an employee in a leadership position. They throw others under the bus: A vendor complains. A customer feels shortchanged. But no matter what has happened, there’s typically an employee who insists it’s someone else’s fault.
Whatever the issue and regardless of who is actually at fault, some people step in and take the hit. They willingly accept the criticism or abuse, because they know they can handle it (and they know that maybe the person actually at fault cannot). Few acts are more selfless than taking the undeserved hit. And few acts better cement a relationship. Jeff Haden is a business author, ghostwriter and speaker.