Managing Your Employees in 2023: Toxic and Other Employees Who Have Attitude Issues

Managing Your Employees in 2023

Most organizations have employees who on occasion:
   -Complain and gossip excessively
   -Use inappropriate language
   -Are mildly insubordinate

But Toxic Employees have interpersonal styles that demonstrate a pattern of counter-productive work behaviors. They cause significant overt, covert, people-related and financial damage with their visible behavior just being the tip of the iceberg. However, Emotionally Intelligent employees being aware of their feelings and those of others exhibit a pattern of appropriate self- management.

Join us this May to learn about the Human and Financial costs resulting from toxic Employees. You will learn the effective approaches for addressing and preventing toxicity in your workplace.

What Research Shows

The toxic employee problem is surprisingly prevalent with research showing:
   -95% of employees have and 64% are currently working with a toxic employee
   -50% of employees have thought of quitting and 12% did because of a toxic employee
   -25% of employees have reduced their work effort due to a toxic employee
   -20% of employees feel they are a target weekly and 10% of employees see toxic behavior daily

Why You Should Attend

You will learn to identify how the clever toxic employees:
   -Utilize their technical expertise to intimidate and manipulate
   -Know who to flatter and who they can abuse
   -Turn their toxicity on and off depending on the impression they want to make

Unfortunately, organizations can work against themselves and even promote toxicity by:
   -Restructuring his/her job to accommodate a toxic employee
   -Tolerating toxic employees who have valued expertise
   -Not assertively seeking employee feedback as to whether there is toxic behavior in the workplace
   -Not communicating to all employees the specific interpersonal behaviors that will not be tolerated – with the associated consequences
   -Managers sometimes attempt to fix this type of problem by addressing a toxic employee's attitude

While a toxic employee's attitude certainly affects his/her behavior, managers usually find that controlling an employee's attitude is next to impossible.

Managers can be much more effective by:
   -Discussing the specific behaviors that are negatively impacting other employees and/or the organization
   -Using positive and negative consequences to influence that behavior

What You will Learn

I. Toxic Employees Create:
   -Chaos and unnecessary complexity
   -Overt damage
   -Covert damage
   -Strife, stress and emotional damage
   -Productivity, quality and financial losses

II. The A, B, C’s Related to Toxic Employees
   -Employee attitudes
   -Employee behaviors
   -Consequences that managers can exert

III. The Psyche of a Toxic Employee
   -Frequently seen toxic behaviors
   -Utilize ‘star status’ and technical expertise to intimidate and manipulate
   -Chameleon who knows who to flatter and who he/she can abuse
   -Turn their toxicity on and off depending on the impression they want to make
   -Three common forms of toxic behavior

IV. Common Reactions to Toxic Employees That Frequently Don’t Work
   -Restructuring his/her job to accommodate the toxic employee
   -Tolerating toxic employees who bring rare expertise or experience
   -Not assertively seeking feedback from employees as to whether there is toxic behavior in the workplace
   -Not communicating to all employees, the specific behaviors that will not be tolerated with associated consequences

V. Effective Approaches for Addressing and Preventing Toxicity

Organization-wide strategies:
   -Making positive interpersonal behavior an organizational value
   -Evaluating interpersonal behavior as a part of the performance appraisal system
   -Training leaders in how to address toxic behavior
   -Using behavioral-based interview questions to screen toxic applicants
   -Exit interviewing to identify any toxic behavior in the workplace

Departmental and team strategies:
   -Defining appropriate interpersonal interactions with behavior-specific descriptions and standards
   -Using team discussions and role plays to clarify the application of the behavioral descriptions and standards
   -Utilizing a 360-degree feedback process to assess the work environment

One-on-one strategies:
   -Stating explicitly that the behavior is not acceptable and why
   -Describing both the unacceptable and acceptable behavior
   -Asking the employee to commit to and describe how he/she will change his/her behavior
   -Frequent, targeted counseling feedback
   -Executive coaches
   -Progressive discipline
   -Termination

But even terminations are not a cure-all because the:

   -Toxic-enabling people and organizational culture tendencies may remain
   -Employees may still be resentful of the way they were treated by the employee and the time it took the organization to react
   -Expertise and experience of the toxic employee are lost

Who will Benefit

   -Managers
   -HR professionals
   -Leadership professionals
   -Anyone with managerial or leadership responsibility