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. Scientifically, it’s because functional people exude a flow of positive energy and instinctively try to suppress and change the negative energy of a dysfunctional individual, unaware that negative energy is often stronger in its immediate impact and magnetism. Interestingly, 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 the power of disruption. Basically, dysfunctional people lack the essential skills of self-awareness, self-management and collaboration that that are necessary skills for lasting personal change.
Also, if you attempt to challenge the status quo of a disruptive individual, they will erupt—particularly if they are having to function within a culture of accountability. In lieu of the single best tactic which is to immediately remove them from the work place, the next best tactic is to pressure them into a choice: change or leave. This means dealing quickly and head-on with an inappropriate attitude and/or behaviour, or both, and is critical in holding them accountable for their disruptive behaviour. 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. More harm is done the longer they remain in your organization, 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 ample time to build an employment history they will use against you in court.
Furthermore, the longer it takes to recognize when an individual is lacking in behaviour skill, or is not coachable or teachable, the longer you allow them to undermine the technical-skill performance of their team members. As their leader, you get what you create or what you allow in performance of your team members. When you allow a proverbial “jerk at work” to mess with the brains of their team members, they inevitably mess with overall team performance too.
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 beware of spending too much time trying to coach the negative attitudes of problem employees. Focus on 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.
Injecting your culture of accountability with the skill of Positive Presence™ and the Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies is a game changer when it comes to recognizing when an individual is chronically lacking in behaviour skill, or is un-coachable or un-teachable. Positive Presence is an innovative thought model connecting workplace behaviour to emotional energy and provides a systematic, programmatic methodology for equipping leaders and their people with the knowledge and understanding necessary for effectively dealing with negative attitudes of problem employees.
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?”… 
To quote from Peter Drucker in his book “Managing in the Next Society” (page 124), “… A knowledge based workforce is qualitatively different … survival, of every business will depend on the performance of its knowledge workforce – and the only way an organization in a knowledge-based economy and society can excel is through getting more out of the same kind of people; that is, through managing its knowledge workers for greater productivity. It is, to repeat an old saying, ‘to make ordinary people do extraordinary things.’”
Many organizations possess great potential for creating high levels of organizational performance excellence, but are missing the one key ingredient for excellence – trust among the senior leadership team. This is reflected in the safety, quality, service, and financial performance indicators of the organization. The impact of low levels of trust ripples through the entire organization. 
No other aspect of effective leadership is more apparent than the loss of trust through bad behaviour. Building and sustaining trust is critical to accomplishing tasks, achieving goals and creating a performance driven culture. This is true for any enterprise, whether for-profit or not-for-profit. In this way, trust is an operational and collaborative imperative. A lack of trust in any organization leads to below-average safety, quality, and overall low performance. 
Staying in a positive mindset is greatly challenged in today’s complex and ever-changing work environment and for many of us it is a constant daily practice. One of the techniques used for maintaining a positive mindset is what my friend and colleague, Sharon Campbell-Rayment (www.sharoncampbellrayment .com), calls the ‘APB’ (no, not the police jargon) … it is the acronym for “Awareness, Pause, Breathe”. The APB is one of many strategies that Sharon developed during her journey back from a severe concussive brain injury.
The findings coming forward from the neuro-sciences have huge implications for business organizations on a global scale. And in fact, these findings call for a gigantic shift in how the modern organization develops its employees, its leaders, and the overall organization, in order to succeed in today’s global knowledge-based economy.
A key focus of research on human performance seeks to understand the complexity and function of the human brain and its impact on performance in relationship to how people respond to leadership and colleague behaviour. Research highlights why you must consistently monitor and manage the impact your behaviour has on the performance outcomes of your team’s production and the experiential emotional memory, or EEM, your behaviour creates. 
You have probably heard the saying, “A truly great leader is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget.” The same adage holds for bad leaders too, at least the “impossible to forget” part — this also holds for colleagues as well. Did you ever wonder why?