What Leaders Can Do When They Have Bad Apples On Their Team
In our last blog you learned the shocking stats that “bad apples behavior” drags team performance down 30 to 40%. Here’s what to do when you have a “bad apple” on your team.
In our last blog you learned the shocking stats that “bad apples behavior” drags team performance down 30 to 40%. Here’s what to do when you have a “bad apple” on your team.
When you are leading a team that has a dysfunctional team member, you know performance drops. You might be surprised by how much!
We’ve lived in our house since 1989. At that time, I covered the walls with wallpaper that I loved – but am weary of now. Every year, I’d select a room and put it on my “to do” list to strip the wallpaper and then paint the room. And every year, for the longest time, nothing would happen.
Many of you who follow this blog know that I’ve been diligently learning to swim so that I could compete in my first sprint triathlon. Well – last Saturday was the day! The weather was splendid and the crowd was young. The best news – I finished with dignity – in fact I sprinted at the end. Here’s some of what I learned in this journey.
Problem solving works great if there is a solution. Is awesome for technical problems. Is wonderful if what you had before needs a tune-up and not an overhaul. However, it does not work at all for situations which have no immediate fix, for which there is not a known solution and that requires new fresh thinking.
My Mother, a very wise woman, taught me that, “Practice makes perfect.” However, after 5 months of diligent (swimming) practice, I was not getting close to passable, let alone perfection. And if that adage was truly the case, the folks on the job that had done it the longest would be the best. Clearly not my experience in swimming or in life.
Intention and perception often run a collision course. I think I am being helpful, my employees see it as micromanaging. I think I am empowering someone, they think I have abandoned them. I believe we’ve had a solid two-way dialogue, the other person believes that I talked too much and listened too little.
A Gallop poll indicated that only 15% of employees in corporate America could articulate the purpose of their company or how their job contributed to it.
I was working with a client, a young entrepreneur who had quite successfully grown his business from nothing to a several million dollar enterprise. We had an interesting dilemma – he could see very clearly where he was taking the company. And yet, without fail, his employees told me that not only was the direction fuzzy for the company, but they weren’t sure of what they needed to do.
It has become clear that since 1998, Penn State leaders had multiple chances to take a stand for their values. Unfortunately, the discussion went like this…
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