7 ms·

Just read the study itself and am kind of scratching my head. I think the authors really just fail to consider the concept that the real problem with toxic empl

Just read the study itself and am kind of scratching my head. I think the authors really just fail to consider the concept that the real problem with toxic employees is that they usually figure out to have their productivity measured very positively. The authors build their thesis around a dichotomy between "toxic employees" and "superstars" (not "rock stars" as claimed in the article summarizing the study). The authors rather woodenly make their way through various analyses that make productivity the dependent variable, while also delving into the question of whether toxicity is contagious within workplaces. Overall I get the impression that the study authors have never actually spent time in toxic workplaces. The most toxic employees are not those who "[engage] in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people" -- as another commenter mentioned, this is a comically tautological definition. Rather, toxic employees are those who convince their boss that they are a superstar while making the company a worse place to work. A toxic employee isn't, as the study seems to imply, somebody who writes mean graffiti in the employee bathroom -- it's someone who berates junior staffers under the auspices of demanding excellent execution, and who finishes the year with sales growth in his division up 23%.

dasil003 8y ago
Yeah, the problem with this kind of study is that workplace politics are highly contextual to the individuals you are dealing with. And I can think of no situation where citing a study about “toxic” individuals is going to change the mind of any executive. At this level of abstraction senior leaders already have beliefs about the human dynamics in their org and how they should be managed; the way to influence them is with specifics in the context they know rather than broad proclamations based on a raft of dubious assumptions.
diminoten 8y ago
But from a company's perspective, isn't that 23% the only number that matters? The point of the study (and I have some issues with it too) is that the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee, or at the very least 23% is still doable without them, even though it seems like it isn't because they're better than average.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  I get the concept of what you're saying with, "the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee", but I think that unfortunately is not true in a lot of cases. There are a lot of really talented, hard-working people who are also toxic leaders (some maybe not fully intentionally), and the challenge of dealing with them in an organization is that, as you point out, measurable performance is often all that matters. I think the cost-benefit in an example like this is usually not so much "replace the asshole and get a 7% bump in growth"....it's more like, "it'll cost you a point or two of sales growth but that'll more than pay for itself in terms of lower turnover because we'll save $200k a year in recruiters fees because we won't have to pay them to find replacements for miserable junior people who don't stick around for very long".
  - munchbunny 8y ago
    This isn't exactly what you were talking about, but one of the best pieces of advice I've heard was this: It's never worth promoting a potentially toxic manager into a managerial role, even if they're great in their current role. If you do, the whole team suffers. If you don't and they leave because you didn't promote them, they weren't going to let you keep them as an IC anyway. Best case is you reform them, but do that before and not after you promote them. I've seen this pattern more than I'd like.
- kevingadd 8y ago
  There are many ways to raise your short or even mid-term numbers that have a net negative effect on the company over the long term. For example, if you want to get monthly active users up over the course of 3-6 months to get a promotion, there are lots of ways to do it - you can do discount promotions, or even pay users to download and install and use your app. But the moment you stop doing that your numbers are going to tank, and in the long run you just cost the company money while also doing damage to how people perceive it. The massive drop in numbers after that is going to demoralize the team, as well. I've worked on a couple different teams where leadership did short-term-focused things like this to get numbers up and then the company paid for it later (typically after the leadership had exited or been pushed out). This is a type of superstar toxicity that can be really harmful to your company even if people aren't quitting in droves because of the toxic employee.
Zimahl 8y ago
In college I worked at an environmental testing company. I worked there for 3 summers. The first summer I worked there I worked closely with a woman named Shawn (name not changed because fuck her). I'm not saying she was bipolar, but she would wildly swing from having good days and having bad ones. Good days were fine sometimes really great, the entire department would be productive. Bad days were fucking terrible, she brought everyone down with her attitude, nit-pickyness, and comments (mind you she wasn't a manager). Fast forward to the next summer, I was dreading working there because of her. But they gave me a raise to come back and I needed the money for college so I sucked it up. Day one - she's not there! She was pregnant, close to her due date, and was taking time off. That summer the office ran like clockwork. A few ups and downs here and there, but very even keeled. I spent another summer there and she never returned, I guess she decided to be a stay at home mom for a while. Even years later it's hard to pinpoint just what exactly she did that was insanely toxic, it was just a number of things. But it was clear as day it was happening and made it easy to spot at other places where I've worked.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  The one thing I value in co-workers is consistency, I'd sooner someone be a consistent dick than wildly swing about the place like a wrecking ball, I can route around dickheads when I know where they'll be at that point in time..
sleepysysadmin 8y ago
I've worked in a couple toxic MSPs. There was 1 guy who had been working there for 10 years. He was a 'senior' guy who was more intermediate and took days to work on fixes that would take a couple hours for most others. Early in my time there I was given a client of his. I was working hand in hand with him. All decisions were bounced off him and agreed upon. The customer complained and when I explained to the boss that I had been working with him all along, he denied it and let me take the fall. Then another day, couple other techs were given a ticket to work on. They determined a new NAS needed to be deployed because the backups arent working. I was sent onsite to deploy a new nas; that's what I did. I email everyone involved including him, he was on vacation. He replies all but excludes me; and I'm told he took me down a notch and bad mouthed me badly. Mind you I just did what I was told. He then publicly in front of me told everyone that I was screwing over his client. So I replied instantly, "For the record, I was told to deploy a NAS. I did as I'm told. I did got above and beyond and see if I could get that vmhost back alive; I couldn't and so I agree with the techs who recommended a NAS. He did this kind of shit often to people; but he was the only person who could work on the internal network. The owners of the MSP loved him. He then got promoted to be the IT manager. This pretty much started the process of literally everyone quitting. Of note, right after he got promoted. There was another coworker who was beyond angry that he got promoted. He was flipping his lid and tells me that he is going to kill the new IT manager. I report this death threat and I got fired the next day. I was apparently the toxic one.

dasil003 8y ago

Yeah, the problem with this kind of study is that workplace politics are highly contextual to the individuals you are dealing with. And I can think of no situation where citing a study about “toxic” individuals is going to change the mind of any executive. At this level of abstraction senior leaders already have beliefs about the human dynamics in their org and how they should be managed; the way to influence them is with specifics in the context they know rather than broad proclamations based on a raft of dubious assumptions.

diminoten 8y ago

But from a company's perspective, isn't that 23% the only number that matters? The point of the study (and I have some issues with it too) is that the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee, or at the very least 23% is still doable without them, even though it seems like it isn't because they're better than average.

leroy_masochist 8y ago
I get the concept of what you're saying with, "the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee", but I think that unfortunately is not true in a lot of cases. There are a lot of really talented, hard-working people who are also toxic leaders (some maybe not fully intentionally), and the challenge of dealing with them in an organization is that, as you point out, measurable performance is often all that matters. I think the cost-benefit in an example like this is usually not so much "replace the asshole and get a 7% bump in growth"....it's more like, "it'll cost you a point or two of sales growth but that'll more than pay for itself in terms of lower turnover because we'll save $200k a year in recruiters fees because we won't have to pay them to find replacements for miserable junior people who don't stick around for very long".
- munchbunny 8y ago
  This isn't exactly what you were talking about, but one of the best pieces of advice I've heard was this: It's never worth promoting a potentially toxic manager into a managerial role, even if they're great in their current role. If you do, the whole team suffers. If you don't and they leave because you didn't promote them, they weren't going to let you keep them as an IC anyway. Best case is you reform them, but do that before and not after you promote them. I've seen this pattern more than I'd like.
kevingadd 8y ago
There are many ways to raise your short or even mid-term numbers that have a net negative effect on the company over the long term. For example, if you want to get monthly active users up over the course of 3-6 months to get a promotion, there are lots of ways to do it - you can do discount promotions, or even pay users to download and install and use your app. But the moment you stop doing that your numbers are going to tank, and in the long run you just cost the company money while also doing damage to how people perceive it. The massive drop in numbers after that is going to demoralize the team, as well. I've worked on a couple different teams where leadership did short-term-focused things like this to get numbers up and then the company paid for it later (typically after the leadership had exited or been pushed out). This is a type of superstar toxicity that can be really harmful to your company even if people aren't quitting in droves because of the toxic employee.

Zimahl 8y ago

In college I worked at an environmental testing company. I worked there for 3 summers. The first summer I worked there I worked closely with a woman named Shawn (name not changed because fuck her). I'm not saying she was bipolar, but she would wildly swing from having good days and having bad ones. Good days were fine sometimes really great, the entire department would be productive. Bad days were fucking terrible, she brought everyone down with her attitude, nit-pickyness, and comments (mind you she wasn't a manager). Fast forward to the next summer, I was dreading working there because of her. But they gave me a raise to come back and I needed the money for college so I sucked it up. Day one - she's not there! She was pregnant, close to her due date, and was taking time off. That summer the office ran like clockwork. A few ups and downs here and there, but very even keeled. I spent another summer there and she never returned, I guess she decided to be a stay at home mom for a while. Even years later it's hard to pinpoint just what exactly she did that was insanely toxic, it was just a number of things. But it was clear as day it was happening and made it easy to spot at other places where I've worked.

noir_lord 8y ago
The one thing I value in co-workers is consistency, I'd sooner someone be a consistent dick than wildly swing about the place like a wrecking ball, I can route around dickheads when I know where they'll be at that point in time..

sleepysysadmin 8y ago

I've worked in a couple toxic MSPs. There was 1 guy who had been working there for 10 years. He was a 'senior' guy who was more intermediate and took days to work on fixes that would take a couple hours for most others. Early in my time there I was given a client of his. I was working hand in hand with him. All decisions were bounced off him and agreed upon. The customer complained and when I explained to the boss that I had been working with him all along, he denied it and let me take the fall. Then another day, couple other techs were given a ticket to work on. They determined a new NAS needed to be deployed because the backups arent working. I was sent onsite to deploy a new nas; that's what I did. I email everyone involved including him, he was on vacation. He replies all but excludes me; and I'm told he took me down a notch and bad mouthed me badly. Mind you I just did what I was told. He then publicly in front of me told everyone that I was screwing over his client. So I replied instantly, "For the record, I was told to deploy a NAS. I did as I'm told. I did got above and beyond and see if I could get that vmhost back alive; I couldn't and so I agree with the techs who recommended a NAS. He did this kind of shit often to people; but he was the only person who could work on the internal network. The owners of the MSP loved him. He then got promoted to be the IT manager. This pretty much started the process of literally everyone quitting. Of note, right after he got promoted. There was another coworker who was beyond angry that he got promoted. He was flipping his lid and tells me that he is going to kill the new IT manager. I report this death threat and I got fired the next day. I was apparently the toxic one.