Why Leaders Fail Reason #7: They Tolerate Intolerable Individuals

Note: This excerpt is from my upcoming book: Trust-Based Leadership?: Marine Corps Leadership Concepts for Today’s Business Leaders

They Tolerate Intolerable Individuals

Leaders can fail when they tolerate three types of people who can become toxic elements within their organizations. I categorize these individuals as:

• Prima donnas
• Posers
• Poisonous Personalities

Prima donnas: These individuals are often quite competent; they may be your top salesperson, a highly accomplished engineer, or another individual whom everybody respects for their knowledge and expertise. What makes them “prima donnas” is the fact that they are quite often very temperamental people, with an inflated view of their importance to the team. They are prone to emotional outbursts and demanding special treatment because they are, in their minds, “a very special person.”

There’s often a very fine line between leaders appropriately recognizing their top performers with well-deserved rewards, privileges, and perquisites and the creation of a “spoiled brat” whose demands for special treatment and different standards become never-ending. These prima donnas, like their counterparts in Hollywood, professional sports, and many other professions, often throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their way.

Needless to say, the presence of individuals who are prima donnas in the worst sense of the term can have a very destructive effect. Left unchecked, they can cause a team’s stagnation or demise because they do not consider themselves to be a member of the team—instead, they have a singular focus on themselves.

Beware the prima donnas that may exist within your team!

Posers: There are posers are in almost every company, department and team. All of us have observed a teammate over a period of time and thought, "He’s incompetent/lazy/untrustworthy, etc.” or “He doesn't produce quality work” or “She's a poor teammate and a bully toward others.”

Likewise, we’ve all thought to ourselves, Doesn't Fred see this? or Why does Fred allow her to get away with this? Unfortunately, in too many instances like this, the boss—Fred—is oblivious to this individual’s true nature. Worse, he may see the truth regarding one of his teammates but avoid conflict (which shows a lack of moral courage) and simply overlook the incompetence, poor behavior, or other lapses of character demonstrated by a poser.

Much like the destructive effect that a prima donna can have on a team, the presence of posers can be equally damaging. The fatal flaw is when everyone on the team knows that their leader is aware of the posers within the ranks but he or she takes no action to remedy the situation. This never ends well for anyone involved. This includes the leader, who will ultimately be found to be deficient in various ways; most notably perceived as lacking moral courage and the will to take care of the well-being of his teammates.

Poisonous Personalities: These people may exhibit some of the same traits and behavior as prima donnas and posers and, like the former, they are sometimes some of your most competent and high-performing teammates. When experienced in everyday life, they may be very fine, whip-smart people with pleasant personalities. You might even enjoy having a beer or two with them during a Friday afternoon happy hour.

However, when placed in the work environment—for whatever reasons—these individuals exhibit entirely different personalities, attitudes, and behaviors. They become the individual whom I refer to as “That Person.”

We’ve all dealt with “That Person” in the past. He’s the guy who causes everyone to walk on eggshells because one never knows if the “nice guy” came to work that day or if his “Evil Twin” did!

He’s that person who is the perpetual cynic, naysayer, and “glass-half-empty” whiner who never wants to try a new idea—unless it’s his idea. He’s not a teammate. Far from it, he’s a toxic element that nobody, regardless of their role or title, wants to deal with because he is impossible to reason with. His presence is a dark cloud that hangs over the entire team every day.

Now, these poisonous personalities are bad enough in their own right, but a leader who tolerates them sets up the organization for failure. When this happens, the leader rarely survives the aftermath because, of course, a leader is responsible for everything that happens or does not happen within an organization he or she is in charge of.

I’ve seen this happen many times. And sadly, typically before the poisonous personalities are outed and dealt with and the leader is fired for being weak and incompetent, most of the very best people within the team have already voted with their feet and sought new, healthier work environments in which to apply their talent and passion.

Leaders: beware the poisonous personalities that may exist within your organization. Left unchecked, they will infect your team with a disease that damages all who come in contact with them.

Rational people will start looking at what’s happening and eventually it becomes clear that, "Hey, everybody knew this person had a poisonous personality." He or she's been tolerated for months or years and a leader knew about it but failed to act. These analysts realize “That's why half of our good employees have left.” And the remaining half may lack motivation and engagement. They're just tired of it. Productivity suffers because of one individual’s personality.

The main lesson regarding all three of these problematic personality types is that leaders must be fully aware of what is happening at every level the organization. My experience is that nothing good ever happens when these people are allowed to roam free and wreak havoc within the work environment—but plenty of bad things happen. One of them is often a leader getting fired for tolerating these folks and allowing them to harm the team and its mission.