Superstar hires don’t make up for toxic employees.
This is the conclusion of a Harvard Business School report. The researchers looked at over 50,000 workers at 11 different firms to evaluate the benefits of highly productive employees versus the cost of toxic ones.
What makes an employee “toxic”? The HBR study defines toxic employees as workers “that engage in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” You can probably come up with one or two (hopefully not more than that) from your career without thinking too hard. We know who they are because of how they effect us, our coworkers, and our customers.
Hopefully you can also identify a few high performers. For the purposes of the study, HBR defined “superstars” as the top 1% most productive workers.
The study found the average cost of employing a “toxic employee” was approximately $12,489, while the average benefit of employing a “superstar” was approximately $5,303. This means you have to hire more than 2 superstars to overcome the cost of just one toxic worker. Not so confident in your ability to hire top 1% superstars? It takes 6 top 25% performers to make up for the cost of one toxic worker.
The takeaway? You will never hire your way out of a toxic worker problem. You need to pay more attention to identifying, coaching, and (if coaching doesn’t work) removing toxic employees. You need to do anything you can to avoid hiring toxic workers in the first place.
The HBR study proposes one key pattern for identifying toxic workers: they are overconfident in their own performance, care more about themselves than others, and will claim rules should be followed (even though they are most likely to break them). From the study:
“In particular, we found consistent evidence that those who seem overconfident in their abilities, who are self-regarding, and who claim rules should be followed, are more likely to become toxic workers and break company and legal rules.”
This Entrepreneur article outlines 5 classic types of toxic employees, their worst traits, and some ideas for coaching them out of their toxic behavior. Here are the highlights:
- The Hot Mess. Defined as incompetent, erratic, and unreliable, the Hot Mess can tank productivity for the whole team. Worst traits: learned helplessness, disorganization, lack of credibility, passivity, resistance to change. Antidotes: offer extra training, introduce improvement plans, foster awareness with frequent check-ins, provide support, encourage screening for ADD and related issues.
- The Slacker. Finding ways to avoid working at work is a full time job, and they don’t seem to care what anyone thinks about it. Worst traits: low motivation, lack or regard for deadlines, bad timekeeping, wasting time online, absenteeism. Antidotes: uncover hidden resentments, provide clear expectations, demand accountability, impose unscheduled visits and reviews, recognize and reward effort.
- The Martyr. Defined as a worker who insists on doing everything themselves. They’re hard workers, and they make sure everyone knows it. Worst traits: doesn’t know limits, complains often, comes to work when sick, undermines confidence or team members, prone to burnout. Antidotes: enforce delegation, foster a collaborative rather than competitive workplace, encourage PTO, introduce stress management measures.
- The Socialite. Funny, entertaining, and everybody’s best friend, the socialite spends most billable hours conversing with coworkers and taking coffee breaks. Worst traits: loud and distracting, lack of focus, immature approach to life, unprofessional affect, fans of office drama. Antidotes: provide regular redirection, define social times and activities, be clear about appropriate behavior, harness communication skills, channel interpersonal energy.
- The Sociopath. Poisons atmosphere and creates a hostile environment for the entire team. Worst traits: bullying behavior, disregard for protocol, issues with authority, interpersonal problems, manipulation and sabotage. Antidotes: provide a safe and supportive environment, take employee complains seriously, trust your instincts, carefully document negative behaviors.
Toxic employees need more of your attention, and tend to create more toxic workers. So it is critical to act on them or remove them. But to decide your next action you must clearly understand what is happening and whether it is coachable or not. As leaders we often find ourselves so busy that we miss problems that are right under our nose. This is why it’s so important to be approachable.
Do you have any experience with toxic employees? Do any of the 5 classic types ring a bell? How about the overconfident, self-regarding and self-proclaimed rule follower? How did you deal with them? Share with us in the comments.
Most leaders can be better.
Many of them actually want to be better too. But even for those visionary leaders, it’s hard to know where to start. There’s a lot of advice out there and quite a bit of it actually conflicts with each other.
Time magazine put together a list of 7 TED Talks to become a better leader. Each TED Talk brings its own message. Here they are:
- Own Your Title – Drew Dudley: “Our society spends a lot of time idolizing people who achieve what very few can, making leadership feel like some far-off, earth-shattering thing that you’ll someday be worthy of. ‘Who am I to lead?’ Who are you not to lead? Your first act as manager should be casting aside any signs of imposter syndrome.”
- Find Your First Follower – Derek Sivers: “‘The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.’ It only takes one person to support what you’re doing to bring along more followers, so long as you embrace them as equals and let them be partners in your plan.”
- Don’t Favor the All Stars – Margaret Heffernan: ‘Margaret Heffernan cites evolutionary biology, which shows that extreme Darwinian environments full of only star players and top performers actually create such fierce competition that innovation and collaboration can’t happen.”
- Baby Steps Can Be More Effective Than Big Leaps – Matt Cutts: “Look for small opportunities to optimize and little ways to shift existing processes for the better, and the momentum of those wins can help power the changes needed for your larger vision.”
- Ask People Not to Check Their Passions at the Door – Emilie Wapnick: “If you want an innovative team and happy, fulfilled employees, make room for people to pursue their diverse interests and find ways for those out-of-office passions – whether it’s music, architecture, comedy, knitting, kayaking or psychology – to inspire their work inside the office.”
- Don’t Assume Money is the Best Motivator – Dan Pink: “For purely mechanical tasks, sure, people can be motivated to fold neater or sort faster for a cash bonus. But for anything cognitive – tasks that require mental energy like creativity, problem solving and innovation – cash incentives don’t work. They actually make people perform worse.”
- Say No MAS (Mindless Accept Syndrome) to Excessive Meetings – David Grady: “Embrace the ‘tentative’ button, and ask for details about why meetings are being calls, who really needs to be there, and whether the meeting needs to happen at all. With some critical thinking, your team and your department can start to be more mindful about meetings, leaving more time for team bonding, creativity and productivity.”
Click here to see the full article with video snippets from each of the TED Talks.
How do you feel about this advice? Do you have anything you would add to the list? Or take off? Tell us about it in the comments.
Power distance killed Nokia. Not Apple, Microsoft or Android. A recent study investigates just how it happened.
It is almost impossible to believe, but the iPhone isn’t even 10 years old. If you used a cell phone before 2007 you almost certainly owned a Nokia product at some point. They were THE mobile phone company.
But Nokia is gone now. Microsoft bought them in 2013 after the company’s market value dropped by 90% over just six years. Many reasons are given for Nokia’s decline. Most observers blame the iPhone or the fact that Nokia just didn’t have the capacity to keep up.
But those stories don’t add up. Nokia was once worth $150 billion. Nokia had the creativity and the money to keep up with Apple. Nokia’s problem was cultural.
Nokia’s leaders never took Apple seriously until it was way too late. A key reason for this misstep was that mid-level managers did not feel safe confronting their leaders. There was too big a power distance gap between top leaders and other coworkers.
Power Distance in Organizations
Power distance is a concept developed by professor Geert Hofstede to help explain differences between cultures. The basic idea is that some cultures (like Eastern and Latin countries) place a high value on hierarchy and defer to power while other cultures (Western and European countries) do not.
In high power distance cultures lower power people are less likely to confront higher power ones. In lower power distance cultures people are much more willing to confront powerful people. Which brings us back to Nokia.
A recent study interviewed numerous former Nokia employees to learn what caused the company to collapse. The story told over and over by employees at all levels of the company was that top leaders mocked the iPhone. They simply refused to accept that the iPhone would ever threaten Nokia’s products.
This stance from the leaders froze the organization. Nokia became “grounded in a culture of temperamental leaders and frightened middle managers, scared of telling the truth.” In the end this refusal doomed Nokia and probably helped Apple’s product accomplish its meteoric rise.
It’s not hard to imagine. Your company is on top. Your leaders think you’re unbeatable. Competition develops. Top level managers explain away the early signs of trouble. Anybody who suggests that the competitor is a serious threat is mocked or ignored (or even fired). Nobody will buck the leaders. The pattern repeats over and over and communication goes from bad to non-existent. By the time the truth becomes clear it is too late.
This is a power distance gap. It destroys companies. This is why good leaders have a responsibility to bridge the gap. We teach leaders how to do this in our Approachable Leadership Workshop.
7 Ways to Know if You Have a Power Distance Gap
- Be on the lookout for power distance. Most leaders with a gap don’t even know it exists – they don’t take the time to notice power distance with coworkers. Step one is to look for it. If you notice power distance issues consider one or more of the tips below.
- Note your “baseline” relationship with each coworker. One way to identify a gap is to notice a change in behavior. But how will you notice a change if you don’t have a baseline? Set a baseline for each individual coworker. Some may interact with you a lot – others not much at all. Just try to notice what your “normal” relationship is like.
- Notice changes in behavior. Below are a few specifics to look for, but any change from “normal” is worth noting and bringing up. That change could be positive (shrinking the gap) or negative (widening the gap). Either way, mention what you’ve noticed to your coworker – that often leads to a very positive discussion.
- Look for evasive behaviors. Do coworkers avoid you? Do they keep at a physical distance? Do they seem reserved or indirect? Do they avoid eye contact? Do they seem uncomfortable? These are all behaviors that can signal a gap. Look for them.
- Listen for mitigated speech. Are your coworkers comfortable speaking up around you? Are they direct? Do they use declarative statements or do they beat around the bush? Are they willing to disagree? Do they stand up for themselves or do they seem to give in easily? Do they seem overly formal? These are ways to tell that someone is concerned about directly confronting someone in power.
- Create a safe space. Make sure coworkers know it is OK to disagree with you. Ask them to play devil’s advocate or to help you come up with reasons why something might not work. Role play what cold go wrong together. This helps create a more comfortable space where coworkers are more likely to speak up.
- Tell a feedback story with a happy ending. Tell a story or two about times other coworkers disagreed with you and how you appreciated and acted on that feedback. Give details that might even be a little embarrassing. This shows you are approachable, and stories often work at a much deeper level than just directly asking for feedback.
You don’t have to be someone’s best friend to be a good boss (in fact that’s a terrible idea). But you do have to make coworkers feel safe and comfortable talking to you about their concerns and dreams. Your coworkers will not talk with you if you aren’t approachable. And that’s a problem.
Just ask Nokia.
What do you think? Do you have any examples of how power distance has caused problems in your company? Have you seen major problems avoided because someone was willing to step up and confront someone in power? Let us know in the comments. Please share this article on your social networks!
“Helping others can actually create the sense of meaning we’re seeking. Rather than ruminating on what makes our life worthwhile as we work toward burnout, we can find the answer outside ourselves, in human connection.” Elizabeth Hopper, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Berkeley
How do we live a virtuous life of meaning and purpose? This is a deep question. It is one philosophers, religious leaders and other thoughtful people have struggled to answer since… well, since ever. It is a question (I’ll speak for myself) we should probably struggle with more often.
One of the big promises of Approachable Leadership is that approachability doesn’t just improve your leadership. It improves connections in all areas of your life. Now you can add to that list that helping others provides a sense of meaning and purpose to your life.
Professor Hopper’s research suggests there are two types of well-being: “hedonic well-being (a sense of happiness) and eudaimonic well-being (a sense of meaning and purpose).” Hedonic well-being is short-lived and fleeting. What can you do to achieve the second kind of well-being?
One study looked at those differences and found that while “having strong social connections was important for both happiness and meaningfulness… helping others in need and identifying oneself as a ‘giver’ in relationships were related to meaning alone.”
According to a different study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, this is because “when we choose to engage in prosocial actions, it helps to meet our basic psychological needs: for autonomy (feeling that we have freely chosen our actions), competence (feeling that we are good and capable), and relatedness (feeling close to others).”
Who wants to feel they are living a life of purpose and meaning? Everyone. Understanding this is especially important for us as leaders.
Think of your own life. Have you ever been down in the dumps? Maybe you were fighting with a family member or a friend. Maybe you felt overwhelmed, or spinning your wheels. Maybe you felt lost and unappreciated. How engaged were you with your work at that time? Were you excited to be there or were things barely getting done?
It happens to all of us. We’re human. As much as we try to keep everything in its own compartment it’s impossible. What happens in one area of life affects all the others.
This is why the job of a leader, whether you’re managing a warehouse, supervising nurses, or overseeing the engineering department, is about much more than just getting the work done. You need to be helping others and building connections. If you want your people to do their best work, you need to help them find their best self.
5 Tips for Helping Others Grow
Building these kinds of connections are natural byproducts of being an approachable leader. Here are 5 tips on helping others grow these kinds of relationships with those you lead (not to mention everyone else in your life):
- Remember availability, warmth and receptivity: These are the three cornerstone behaviors of creating a connection through approachable leadership. Does your physical space and appearance have “curb appeal”? Are you warm and understanding? Do you ask for feedback and act on suggestions?
- Ask better questions: One of the three questions of approachable leadership is: “Where are you going?” The assumption behind this question is people want to make progress, and it is based on exciting research around the progress principle. Learn more about this and other key questions of approachable leaders using our three questions tool.
- Volunteer: Look for ways to volunteer in your community. Contribute time to charities or causes that you believe in. Invest time helping others. For busy people (speaking for myself here, but you may relate) this can seem like a real distraction from what you’re “supposed’ to be doing. But when you take some time for others it feels great and builds connections.
- Mentor: Is there someone in your company or network you can mentor? You will probably find that you benefit at least as much (if not more) than your mentee. This can be a professional relationship, but some of the most rewarding mentee relationships I’ve had are with students. It’s kind of like what I imagine being a grandparent is like: you get to share most of the highlight experiences of teaching, but then get to send them back to their regular teachers.
- Open your approachability window: The only way to build connections is to be vulnerable with others. Share stories from your past that expose your faults and flaws. Invite others to share with you. Ask for feedback, even if it is sometimes uncomfortable.
Believe in others. Expect them to be great and understand they want to feel like you want to feel: part of something meaningful and important. Let the space you share with them be that kind of place. If you do, you will find not only are you improving their life, but you are improving your life as well.
Being a leader is a gift and a great responsibility. Use it to develop and grow you and all those you touch.
[ted id=2435]
Need better conversation skills?
Most leaders understand their number one influence tool is their conversation skills. And most of the leaders we work with wish they had better conversation skills. Celeste Headlee has been a radio host for decades, so she knows a few things about how to have a great conversation. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having a better conversation.
Spoiler alert… here are the 10 ways to have a better conversation:
- Don’t multitask – be present
- Don’t pontificate (she suggests writing a blog instead 🙂 ) “Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t” (Bill Nye)
- Ask open ended questions – start with who, what, when, where, why or how
- Go with the flow – whatever you think of, let it go
- If you don’t know, say that you don’t know
- Don’t equate your experience with theirs – all experiences are individual – it is NOT about you
- Try not to repeat yourself – it’s condescending and boring
- Stay out of the weeds
- LISTEN – the most important one – “If your mouth is open you’re not learning” (Buddha) – “Nobody ever listened his way out of a job” (Calvin Coolidge)
- Be brief
Her best advice: “A good conversation is like a miniskirt – short enough to retain interest but long enough to cover the subject” (Celesete Headlee’s sister)
Check out the her TED talk here.
Managing Millennials is a hot topic. Just ask Google: there are nearly one-million web pages devoted to “managing millennials.” I’ve got some great tips. But before we get to that, take this quick quiz:
QUIZ: Match the religious denomination with the best description of its typical member:
| Ambitious and Idealistic? | Roman Catholic |
| Skeptical and Self-Reliant | Southern Baptist |
| Tenacious and Entrepreneurial | Lutheran |
Do those questions make you uncomfortable? I hope so. What if you replaced the religious denominations with different racial groups. Outrageous, right? Of course it is. That’s because labeling people this way is ridiculous.
What if I changed the religious denominations in the example above to generations like Baby Boomers, Generation X or Millennials? Do you feel the same outrage?
The stereotypes above come from a report on managing Millennials. In this report Millennials are labeled tenacious and entrepreneurial. Generation X is labeled as skeptical and self-reliant. Baby Boomers are labeled ambitious and idealistic.
Let me ask a couple more quiz questions. Do you know any ambitious or idealistic Millennials? How about entrepreneurial Generation Xers? Tenacious Baby Boomers? I thought so.
Stop Generational Profiling
Targeting someone because of their race is called profiling. Targeting someone based on their age is no different. It’s called it Generational Profiling and we are in the middle of an epidemic.
For some reason people who should know better have built a cottage industry around teaching people how to get all these generations to work together. However, most of what I’ve seen about managing Millennials is a hodgepodge of worse than useless advice. It focuses managers on exactly the wrong things. It focuses on the often meaningless differences between people, instead of looking at the massive number of things we have in common.
In her book Retiring the Generation Gap Jennifer Deal discusses a study of 3000 people across generations. Her finding is that the differences between generations are minor compared to the things we all share in common. For example, all three generations want to feel respected at work. They want leaders they trust. They dislike change (yes, even Millennials). They want to learn and receive feedback.
Don’t get me wrong. I think diversity training and helping people from different backgrounds work together is really important. I am also not blind. Younger people can differ significantly from older ones (the older I get the more I’m becoming aware of this). I’m pretty sure virtually every person reading this article has at one point in their lives complained about how the generation before or after them just don’t “get it” (and those other generations say the same thing about them). But is that helpful to leaders? No.
Tips for Managing Millennials (and Every Generation)
This is why I encourage leaders to forget about generational differences. That’s right. Completely ignore them. Instead of looking for and trying to manage around supposed differences, ask these three questions (and listen carefully to the answers):
- “Do you have what do you need?” Instead of going through your list of what Millennials want (or Boomers or Xers for that matter), just ask if they need something. This simple question is very powerful (check out our Three Questions Tool to learn more about different ways to use this question). The best part? You don’t have to guess about whether you’re getting it right. People will tell you what they need if you ask.
- “What would make work better?” Instead of focusing on generational stereotypes, focus on constraints. If you try to structure your business to appeal to Generations X, Y or Z, you may end up implementing practices or technologies that can kill your company (even if the generation du jour loves the new program). Instead of focusing on generational differences, focus on bottlenecks in your business. This moves attention to where it is most needed. What you’ll find is that the generational cadre will come up with practices or tools they’re comfortable with – all the while you can be reassured with the knowledge that business is moving forward.
- “Where are you going?” By taking an active interest in the development of top talent, you keep folks engaged and happy to go above and beyond in their current role. They do so because they see that as the quickest way to advance to their next step within the company. I even teach clients to turn around “hard-case” employees who are upset with pay or benefits by switching those conversations over to development opportunities. Again, this has nothing to do with generational differences and everything to do with individual uniqueness.
- Focus on individuals – not generations. One of the biggest complaints employees make in our employee engagement research is that companies don’t provide individualized praise, feedback, and coaching. This is true across every generation. If you want to truly engage employees, don’t try to pigeon-hole them into generational boxes; instead, focus on each person as a unique individual. When people feel like they aren’t valued as individuals they get demoralized. It’s when they believe you care about them as a person that they will run through a brick wall for you.
The good news is that Approachable Leaders naturally get this right. It doesn’t require stereotyping or mind-reading. When you focus on being available, understanding, and receptive to employees they will tell you how to engage them in their work. The great news? This is so much simpler than trying to figure out what generational bucket someone fits in.
