The Behaviors & Traits of People who Destroy Great Teams

You need to be as clear about what you don't want as you are about what you do want.

Photo by jessica rigollot on Unsplash

The post-All Hands survey once again indicated discontent on the team. Several called out leaders and a few commented again that certain policies were not in keeping company’s values when the leadership team had reviewed them twice and clearly addressed the concerns over the quarter.

Savannah, the CEO, was at a loss. She had spent months addressing employee concerns, hired an inclusivity consultant, and developed new ways to communicate more openly and create more dialogue with her staff.

And yet, some team members were pushing for what seemed to be several unreasonable requests. Some were advocating for no deadlines without employee approval. Several wanted to rework compensation policies and allow employees to advocate for different pay based on need. Many couched their requests as steeped in a commitment to equity and to reduce the impacts of systemic bias not necessarily in their organization but in society as a whole.

Savannah and her leadership team of their small, but growing organization were committed to creating an environment that welcomed difference. But many of the requests didn’t make sense to her and she found herself spending more of her time addressing these issues and concerns and less time running the business.

As the months ticked by, revenue growth was slowing and there were early indicators of customer discontent. Savannah was unable to spend time with customers or on new product development as she continued to focus on these employee concerns.

A promising company was being taken off course.

Savannah’s organization was an ambitious start-up committed to positive social change. She had built it from the ground up and wanted to create a culture right from the start that valued people, doing the right thing, and believing that doing right and doing well (financially) were not at odds.

Early revenue wins led to company growth: new functions, a new office, and more staff. The virtuous cycle of more customers and more growth was working.

As Savannah and her HR team recruited new talent, they made a point to highlight their non-traditional values and how they wanted employees who would speak up and create a truly inclusive environment. They highlighted their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and how they involved staff in decision-making.

Candidates loved the message and the HR team was able to bring on new talent that truly diversified the organization.

It felt like a workplace nirvana.

But then the signs that something was wrong started to emerge.

As the team grew, so did their discontent.

Employees started to abuse Savannah’s commitment to open dialogue.

Team meetings were disrupted and taken off course by off-topic concerns, mostly around issues of leadership diversity, manager authority, opaque decision-making practices, and concerns around compensation fairness.

Each of these issues sounded reasonable to assess, however, there were clear indicators that the company was not discriminatory, did not have a culture of false urgency, was highly communicative about decisions, and had a fair compensation process.

Most importantly, these were not the highest priority issues to address in a company with limited resources.

During this same period, the steady revenue growth that the company had experienced at the start of its growth was starting to show some signs of weakness. First-call conversions were slowly declining, sales cycles were increasing, and customer churn was starting to increase.

None of the signals were catastrophic, but they were clear signals that the Savannah and her leadership team needed to focus on revenue health and growth. Instead, they were mired in discussions with staff members who were challenging their decisions and basic operational elements.

Savannah inadvertently let a small group of employees dictate where she focused — a recipe for disaster.

A CEO’s role first and foremost is to make sure the company has the right targets and strategy to get there. When conditions change, it’s the CEO’s responsibility to assess that change and determine what needs to be done to either capitalize on or prevent any negative impact from the shift.

A CEO must process an immense volume of information and navigate, at times, a relentless pace of change to distill what is happening and determine the path forward. No one else in a company holds that responsibility partially because no one else in the company has access to all the information needed.

Instead of paying attention to the shift, Savannah, was being distracted by a small, but highly vocal set of staff members who did not agree with the company’s strategy. Their demands for more transparency, greater autonomy, and a greater focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion appeared to align with where the company was focused, but in fact, they were not.

How did the organization get so off track?

In short, Savannah and her leadership team confused their desire for inclusivity with people-pleasing. They wanted their team to be bought into their work so much that they spent all their time trying to gain everyone’s approval instead of realizing that some of the staff were misaligned with the company’s goals, strategy, and values.

Once they realized their mistake, Savannah and her leadership team took a month to assess why they had gone off course, and how they could reset expectations with their staff.

One of the most important insights from their assessment was the lack of clarity around the values and traits they expected from employees.

In their push to advertise their openness and why they were such a great workplace, Savannah and her leaders didn’t clarify what employee qualities they didn’t want.

In their assessment, they realized that the small, but vocal staff that was distracting Savannah and the leadership team all possessed three qualities:

• Insubordination — Intentionally disobeying orders and/or not showing respect to others, especially those in authority. Disruptive behaviors, often with a tendency to incite unnecessary and unproductive drama and conflict

• Self-Righteousness — Viewing oneself as morally superior to others, leading to judgmental attitudes and difficulty accepting diverse perspectives

• Entitlement — A belief in one’s right to treatment, benefits, and rewards regardless of whether they have earned them

The leadership team realized that by not addressing the impacts of these traits, they were risking not just Savannah’s and the leadership team’s focus, but the performance and health of the entire organization. They accepted responsibility for not setting clear expectations and not reprimanding employees who exhibited these behaviors.

Savannah worked with her HR team to develop policies and practices that helped her leaders set expectations that these behaviors were no longer tolerated. They reset their interview process to screen out candidates with these attributes.

Then they provided their managers with information on how to deal with people on their teams who exhibited behaviors that indicated these qualities.

Finally, they created messaging to share with the entire team why these attributes were no longer welcome in the organization and how to address it when they witnessed someone exhibiting these qualities. They didn’t want to create a top-down culture that was dependent upon leaders having to bear witness to every incident. They wanted to create a self-reinforcing organization where each staff member was authorized to hold each other accountable to these standards.

In all, it took more than a year to fully make the shift — in policies, processes, behaviors, and ultimately in their culture. It took some time to exit all of the employees who were not bought into the shift. In the end, the majority of employees didn’t just stay, they felt more committed as a result of the clarity brought about by the change.

Before Savannah and her leadership team clarified these unacceptable behaviors, employees were confused by why employees exhibiting these disrespectful and distracting behaviors were allowed to persist. In fact, some of the top talent of the company were planning to depart if the leadership team had delayed longer in addressing the issue.

By taking the time to pause and understand what was not working, Savannah and her leadership team saved their organization from disaster. While they lost a year of growth, they were ultimately able to refocus on revenue and profitability.

And a by-product of this process?

The culture of the company was more inclusive and open than ever. Employees didn’t feel silenced by the new policies. Instead, they were empowered to communicate more effectively and with a focus on supporting the goals, strategy, and values of the company.

Identifying insubordination, self-righteousness, and entitlement requires skillfulness, but is well worth tackling.

For compassionate leaders, it can feel daunting to navigate the nuances of each of these attributes. For example, the difference between someone who is standing up to authority and raising issues for the right reasons vs. someone who is being insubordinate might feel subtle, but it isn’t.

Here are some ways to tell the difference between behaviors that should be curtailed vs those that should be encouraged:

• Insubordination vs. Outspoken

  • Insubordinate employees purposefully take meetings and conversations off course, revisit topics that have been closed out, or make their comments personal instead of focused on ideas and proposals

  • Outspoken employees are those who express questions, concerns and ideas respectfully with curiosity as the underpinning of their approach. They seek to understand and to move the conversation forward in a way that is on-topic and aligned with target outcomes

• Self-righteousness vs. Seeking what is right

  • Self-righteousness behavior means staying committed to your point of view even when there may be more than one right answer

  • Seeking what is right means being committed to curiosity with the intent of enabling the organization to realize its goals, keeping in mind that there may be constraints and context you are not aware of

• Entitlement vs. Advocating for oneself

  • Entitlement is characterized by being presumptive about what you deserve

  • Advocating for oneself means asking for what you have earned after you have an understanding of how the company rewards employees for outcomes and behaviors

Managers should look for repeated patterns, but shouldn’t wait to address each instance they observe. Encourage managers to prioritize investigating a situation when they feel something isn’t right and seek out help when they don’t feel clear. Procrastination and avoidance can masquerade as giving someone the benefit of the doubt. By addressing each instance, managers will be setting more clear expectations of what is acceptable and what isn’t.

In addition, as new instances come up, managers should prioritize discussing them with HR and together as a leadership team. Collectively and promptly aligning on real examples will help ensure consistency in definition and action. Consistency will create trust and support a self-reinforcing culture.

When interviewing, ask open-ended questions that give you insight into how candidates assess their actions and behaviors.

Some examples of interview questions that will help you better understand how candidates have behaved and rationalize their behaviors in the past include:

• Insubordination

  • Describe a situation where you disagreed significantly with your manager or leadership on something and how you handled it.

  • How do you define insubordination? Have you witnessed insubordination and how did you react?

• Self-Righteousness

  • Have you ever felt strongly that your manager or organization was making the wrong decision? How did you engage before, during and after the decision was made?

• Entitlement

  • Can you share a time when you felt you were not recognized or rewarded appropriately for your contributions and outcomes? How did you address your concerns?

For these types of values-based interviews, HR should either record them and/or conduct them in pairs with hiring managers so that together, they can debrief afterward and align takeaways. This will reduce bias by providing more than one perspective on these answers.

Some of these questions have the added benefit of being topics managers or HR can verify in reference checks.

Key Takeaways

As a leader, being clear about what your organization wants to avoid in terms of employee characteristics and behaviors is as critical to creating a high-functioning team as highlighting what you want.

Be wary of the 3 most detrimental attributes as you interview candidates and expectations and boundaries with employees:

1. Insubordination

2. Self-righteousness

3. Entitlement

Take the time to align as a leadership team on what each of these means in the context of your organization and what policies and processes you want to put in place to address these in a timely and consistent manner.

To build and sustain a great team, you need to be as relentless in eliminating the behaviors that are detrimental to your team as you are relentless in seeking out and encouraging the behaviors that strengthen your team.

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