How To Deal With A Toxic Employee
Having hired 100’s of team members over the years, I first hand have dealt with my fair share of the handling of toxic teammates. They are culture and performance killers. Don’t waste your time any further and deploy these 5 steps immediately:
- It starts with setting expectations on the front end. Clearly identify and re-visit the character traits that you look for in all of your team members and expect them to exemplify,early and often. Be direct, we do not allow energy vampires here at XYZ company. This will screen out 95% of them but you’ll still have to deal with that sneaky 5% that will slide through.
- Address the issue immediately, do not hesitate. One of the most common mistakes made from leadership is waiting to address the problem after it’s happened time and time again and spread into the entire team like the plague. Make sure you remind them of the expectations that were delivered on the front end prior to them joining the team and throughout training.
- Give them the opportunity to accept responsibility and take accountability. After you have addressed the issue and laid out the game plan for improvement it’s up to them to respond in a positive manner. If they take accountability this could be a huge win/win for the long term. But if they don’t read #5.
- Plan for life without them. Start working on finding their inevitable replacement today. With this outcome looming it will be best to have their replacement in the que so you can minimize the lapse in production.
- Cut your losses and move forward. Letting someone go is never easy but in these types of situation it needs to be one with haste.
Stringing it together; being crystal clear with your expectations right out the gate will help eliminate most of the energy vampires (toxic employees) but your work isn’t done there. Be quick to address the issue as soon as it presents itself and be even faster at cutting your losses. Your culture and team depends on it.
Grind. For. Greatness.