\n<\/p>\n
A strange thing happened at my company: Three people, from the same team, all took stress-related sick leave within six months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, a client came to meet with that team. The senior project manager, Mark, snapped at our own production team \u2014 undermining their work in front of the client. When Mark\u2019s manager pulled him aside, Mark didn\u2019t flinch. \u201cYou should be glad I work here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe only have these customers because of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I should have fired Mark that day. But I didn\u2019t. Which made me<\/em> the problem.<\/p>\n Toxic workers are a huge problem. A report from Harvard Business School found that when a company gets rid of a toxic worker, it\u2019s more\u00a0than twice as valuable<\/em> as hiring a superstar. Toxic workers cause 78% of coworkers to decrease their commitment\u00a0to the company.<\/p>\n So why can\u2019t managers just get rid of them? Here\u2019s my personal experience: It\u2019s a combination of fear and complacency.<\/p>\n Mark was our highest performer; he\u2019d delivered major client engagements and had superior technical knowledge. At first, he was so good that nobody cared about his rough edges. Then he started hoarding client relationships, making himself the only person who understood key accounts. By the time he was openly undermining leadership, I\u2019d already normalized it. I\u2019d heard myself say, \u201cThat\u2019s just Mark.\u201d<\/p>\n But for the benefit of my company, I finally realized: Mark had to go.<\/p>\n After I fired him, reactions from our team were split. His mentees, who\u2019d only seen his brilliance, marched into HR to insist we\u2019d fired our best performer. A second group of people came quietly, saying they\u2019d been afraid to speak up for months. (One project manager told me he\u2019d been updating his resume, because he just couldn\u2019t deal with Mark anymore.) That reaction haunts me, because their silence was my fault.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019d clearly built a system that measured what people produced<\/em>\u2026but ignored how they treated each other. As a result,\u00a0we were effectively rewarding bad behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s when I realized: Removing Mark wasn\u2019t enough. We needed to fix our system.<\/p>\n First, in every performance review, we started weighing behavior metrics equally alongside performance metrics. Did you share knowledge or hoard it? Did colleagues seek you out or avoid you? These became hard requirements. Now, every manager can use them as a tool to address behavior when it shows up \u2014 and not just during a crisis.<\/p>\n Next, we ran quarterly sessions to teach managers and HR what good behavior looks like, and what bad behavior\u00a0we won\u2019t tolerate.<\/p>\n Once implemented, I started to see true changes. The good workers, who\u2019d watched bad behavior get excused for years, started stepping up.<\/p>\n Here was a great example: In a meeting a few months later, a junior employee questioned a project manager\u2019s decision. In response, the project manager paused and said, \u201cGood catch, let\u2019s rethink this.\u201d<\/p>\n That would have never happened with Mark in the room. Back then, that junior employee would have stayed quiet. The project would have been worse as a result.<\/p>\n Stress-related sick leave vanished. Teams that hadn\u2019t worked together in months started solving problems on their own \u2014 no program, no initiative.<\/p>\n Now, whenever I talk with leaders, I tell them this story and ask them: How many of your best people are ready to leave you because of a toxic worker? How many have already left?<\/em> Because\u00a0if behavior doesn\u2019t carry the same weight as results in your organization, you\u2019re not measuring performance. You\u2019re measuring half of it and hoping the rest takes care of itself.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n A strange thing happened at my company: Three people, from the same team, all took stress-related sick leave within six months.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, a client came to meet with that team. The senior project manager, Mark, snapped at our own production team \u2014 undermining their work in front of the client. When Mark\u2019s manager pulled him aside, Mark didn\u2019t flinch. \u201cYou should be glad I work here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe only have these customers because of me.\u201d<\/p>\n