Toxic Employees Poison Culture: Get Rid of Them
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Toxic employees poison the well for the rest of a team and company.
Everyone knows it, and not enough companies or leaders do anything about it.
Nothing wreaks havoc on culture, or destroys morale and retention more than tolerating toxic behavior from anyone on a team, including/especially leaders.
An unfortunate truth is that some people are cancerous for teams and culture. Whether they are miserable in their job and as a result making others miserable too. or they love to stir up drama and negativity, or they dislike their leaders, coworkers, job, or life — some people are bad for teams and need to move on.
Far too many companies and leaders either ignore that this is happening, or waste a lot of time (again, and again, and again) tiptoeing around these types of people trying to figure out what to do about them.
A very easy way to improve the experience of employees across the board is to get rid of anyone who is actively poisoning your culture.
Here’s the truth — you’re going to lose people either way.
Here are two scenarios:
A) You fire a toxic, badly behaving employee and you find someone else to do their job who is happy about coming to work, gets along well with others, doesn’t create drama, and enjoyable to have on your team. You stop paying a salary to someone who is actively making your culture and the experience of other staff worse. You also stop wasting hours upon hours of paid time for your higher paid “higher ups” and HR people to have meetings and plans about how to deal with this toxic person.
B) You keep bad actors on your payroll, they continue to cause issues and drive out your otherwise happy, well performing employees who look for and find other jobs because their experience of working with a toxic coworker isn’t worth it — even if they love their job or the company. If they don’t leave, they grow resentful towards the company for not recognizing or doing anything about this poorly behaving coworker, which tanks their job performance because no one performs well when their morale or love for the company is at zero. You have now lost a good employee.
The better choice is obvious. If you’re going to lose employees either way, don’t lose your best ones.
What you allow, you endorse.
The truth is, when you continually tolerate toxic behavior, you negatively impact the rest of your team and damage your relationship with them by enabling the sabotage of your work environment.
If you are aware of bad behavior and do nothing about it, you send a clear message that you think it’s acceptable.
Leaders have to step up.
Employees can’t fire one another, or hold each other accountable the same way that leadership can. Leaders have to understand that part of their role is to look out for their employees — including making sure that if someone is damaging the overall morale and culture of the team, that gets addressed and corrected.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for letting folks go with no warning or being a harsh, punitive leader. It’s a leader’s responsibility to have conversations and guide people way before firing them to coach up their behavior and help them turn things around.
But when you’ve had clear, direct conversations with someone about their behavior, and they refuse to take responsibility and ownership for themselves and their impact or make improvements, and you’ve given them multiple chances to change then it’s time to let them go.
The silver lining.
I know this can feel harsh and letting someone go is the hardest thing a leader will ever have to do, but it’s actually a productive, positive course of action in the end because getting rid of toxic employees protects culture, morale, etc. It also gives that person a chance to make a change for themselves and find somewhere new that they can hopefully thrive.
Organizations and leaders need to be heavily indexed on this because it’s important to support and go to bat for the folks that are just doing their jobs.
Let that toxic person go and let someone who actually wants their job fill the position. Don’t be the leader or company that tolerates bad behavior for way too long, or at all. You have to have a zero-tolerance policy for asshole behavior, toxic drama, and bullshit. Make it known, and prove it, that your people are expected to show up, be kind, and contribute to the culture in a positive way.
If someone is poisoning the well, they need to go.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop