Maybe you have heard the phrase “that one bad apple can ruin the whole barrel”. This adage has been used for centuries to relate individual behaviour to the ability of a rotten piece of fruit to spoil an entire barrel of unspoiled fruit. You may even have used this word picture to illustrate the need to beware of bringing toxic individuals into your teams and workplaces.
Unfortunately in virtually every organization there is one individual regarded as detrimental to the mission, vision, values and strategies of the organization. This is a person who comes to work every day intent on being disruptive and uncooperative. No organization needs a team member like this. If one of two employees exhibit toxic behaviour, that behaviour will show up across the entire organization.
As a leader, you must have the ability to identify toxic members of your organization and you must be introspective enough to recognize if you are creating and/or enabling a toxic environment that hinders a collaborative and cooperative work environment. This is why the sole key indication of an organization’s effectiveness is individual leader behaviour.
Using your skill of Positive Presence you understand ‘your natural human energy’ (or as you say in the business world, ‘your 20 square feet’) and you quickly become aware of a person’s negative energy when you enter into their biofield, or on the flip of that, you recognize when a negative person enters into your biofield. As a leader, your goal is to help others replace their negative with the positive through your influence using your skill and language of the skill of Positive Presence to drive a collaborative work environment.
Just as if you brought a bad apple into a good barrel, the same result would occur in bringing good apples into a bad barrel. The end result is a toxic environment, exhibiting dysfunctional and disruptive behaviour. Whether you have bad apples or bad barrels, you must recognize that negative work place behaviour will never drive performance and will always harm patients, drive down morale and create toxic environments, because negative behaviour will never bring people together to create anything of value.
The cure is collaboration, without it negative competition and conflict reign – two conditions in which medical error are likely to occur. Likewise staff morale and motivation are low, performance is inconsistent and unreliable, and communication and cooperation are non-existent. Who wants to work in this kind environment? As leaders if you want to succeed and create a workplace that promotes the goals of your organizations that exhibits the mission, vision and purpose, then you do so by first creating a culture of collaboration.
Catherine is the President and CEO of CORPORATE HARMONY, providing virtual solutions for leadership development and organizational culture change. Her leadership and coaching experience as a Project Manager in an ever-changing, fast moving technological organization with unrelenting demands drove her to the realization that a positive mindset and strength-building behaviors are essential for today’s complex and chaotic organizational systems. CORPORATE HARMONY’s virtual platform of programs, coaching and performance measurement, is an innovative online technology of tested proprietary content. The world-class content of CORPORATE HARMONY’s Positive Presence Program develops the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and the necessary ‘Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies’ for maintaining a positive and energized mindset and increased performance in today’s complex work environment, and leading to a culture of collaboration and connection. Catherine’s vision for Corporate Harmony is to bring the skill of “Positive Presence” to the corporate world as it becomes more complex, ambiguous and chaotic. Catherine is uniquely positioned to impact organizations’ productivity and long term success, with her powerful vision of eliminating bad stress from every workplace around the globe, bringing purpose into the people equation to promote healthy, productive and meaningful work cultures and turn the tide on the neglect of mental health on a global scale. Catherine is author of the book: “CORPORATE HARMONY – The Performance Link for Today’s Modern Organization” Catherine can be reached at: Catherine.Osborne@corporateharmony.ca or go to ‘contact us’ on our website www.corporateharmony.ca. Catherine is available for consultation, and can be reached by 519-695-3407.