Build Your Best Workplace Now

How often do we ask ourselves, “How do I create the best possible workplace where people wake up in the middle of the night disappointed it is not time to go to work yet?”… Now that you have finished laughing consider the ramifications of the question. For most of us the answer starts with environmental satisfiers – the tangibles. The actual answer lies with motivators – the intangibles – specifically, individual leader behaviour, the level of individual engagement, and the ability of people to manage stress, frustration, and conflict in the workplace. As Dr. Henry Cloud has reflected, leaders are ridiculously in charge. The results they get from the people on their teams is exactly what they create or allow. Once we embrace that idea, we can start to tackle the tough issues that are preventing leaders from creating lasting performance and success in their organizations.

One of the greatest hurdles to success in the workplace is dysfunctional employees. The sad fact for whatever reason, every work office has someone or a group of individuals that hamper the productivity of your workplace environments. Try as we may, even the best screening procedures don’t catch the people that will be disruptive, and we often don’t see this behaviour until after we hire them. Here is a great adage to remember – hire to value not to technical skill. Be slow to hire and fast to fire.

The sad fact about chronically disruptive people is that they are rarely coachable or teachable. Human behaviour research shows us that functional environments will become dysfunctional as a result of disruptive employees. Rarely if ever does the opposite occur. This is because functional people, in an attempt to be the rational individuals they are, will placate the behaviour of dysfunctional individuals to try and create a sense of peace or unity. Dysfunctional people rarely if ever change on their own accord because they don’t think anything is wrong with them or their behaviour and they thrive on their power for disruption. They lack the essential skills of self-awareness, self-management and collaboration that prevent them from changing on their own.

Sadly, if you try to challenge their status quo, they will erupt—especially when you decide to create a culture of accountability. The single best tactic is to remove them from the work place or to pressure them into a choice: change or leave. The inability to directly deal with their disruptive behaviour will be a major obstacle in preventing you from creating the best workplace possible. The longer you retain an individual who is not coachable or teachable in behaviour skill, the longer you allow them to undermine the technical skill performance of their team members. You get what you create or what you allow in performance of your team members. You allow a proverbial “jerk at work” to mess with the brains of their team members and they will mess with performance too.

Don’t misunderstand this point – the ability of performance coaching and development to achieve optimal performance outcomes is indisputable. Providing resources and training to people with the right attitude will help them learn and grow, allowing them to be highly productive. But we spend far too much time trying to coach the negative attitudes of problem employees than we do with those employees who want to improve their skills, who desire to contribute to the greater good of the organization, but who simply lack the requisite skill or knowledge to do so effectively.

Virtually all the advice on getting people to engage in their work and increase their productivity is predicated on a false assumption, namely that any form of outside influence will result in lasting internal change, stimulating pride, purpose, motivation and a positive attitude. Unlike animals, human beings have the power to choose inappropriate behaviour and substandard performance, and willfully do so, even in the face of overwhelming negative consequences. Consequently, the current model for how to manage these employees is ineffective. We need to focus our leadership energy on the high- and mid-level performers rather than investing ourselves in those who are choosing substandard attitudes and behaviours.

We would like to believe that the individuals we hire already have an understanding of the values and ethics required to be successful in our workplaces. Unfortunately, some people are working only for their paycheck regardless of their capability to perform tasks to standards and regardless of their pitiful attitude and toxic behaviour toward others.

I love the quotation from Ghandi, “be the change you want to see in the world.” I absolutely believe leaders must lead by example, in their own behaviour, to create monumental impact and culture change. However, it works with rational, functional, productive employees. Dysfunction only breeds further dysfunction. Toxic employees who never desire to alter unproductive and harmful behaviour lack the ability and desire to change. Even under the best leaders and best circumstances.

If you think for a minute that you have a responsibility to rehabilitate these people, or that recruiting and training a new hire to replace them will be too costly, you are wrong. Unless you have a willingness to hold them accountable for their dysfunctional behaviour, they will remain in your organization far too long, requiring hours of documentation for your human resources department and labor attorney. Eventually, when you are compelled to fire these people, you very well may still face a lawsuit because you have given them time to build an employment history they will use against you in court.

No amount of encouragement, incentive, coaching, counseling, positive reinforcement, discipline, or “how-positive-I-am-in-my-belief” that they can change has any impact on these people. Until they choose to become a different person, a more positive person, a more caring person, a less selfish person, a less bitter person, a less angry person, a less “the world owes me” kind of person, we are left with little choice but to remove them from our organizations as quickly as possible. When we do, teamwork will improve within and across department lines. There will be an immediate release of creativity and prudent risk taking and innovation to improve processes and drive performance to higher levels.