Managing Toxic Employees

I have had some unfortunate experiences dealing with toxic employees and made some mistakes in managing these employees. My objective here is to share the lessons learned through my experiences so you would benefit from not repeating the same mistakes.

Many years ago, I was leading a 6-person team which had one toxic employee. The employee had been in that business unit for more than a decade and had more business experience than anyone else in the team. She was combative, insulting, and keen on demeaning others. While I continued to give the employee some light feedback, I initially didn’t tackle the issue directly in the hope that the matter will gradually get resolved by itself. I was afraid that the employee had many years of business experience in the firm and if I pushed her hard, she might quit the group or the company and we would end up losing an experienced person. However, her difficult personality started to rub on the team. If she was on a project, nobody wanted to be on the same project. She was spending a lot of time during office hours on her phone and I started getting complaints from the top performers that why she was allowed to put so little effort into her work while everyone else was working so hard. Finally, I tacked the situation head on and she was moved to another team. Interestingly, the performance of our team improved dramatically after she left.

Below are the lessons I learned from this and other such experiences:

Recognize the difference between toxic and difficult employee: An employee is toxic when their behavior starts to negatively affect others in the team. These employees put down teammates which in-turn results in lowering of morale, an increase in frustration of team members and an overall lowering of the energy that the group puts in achieving results.
Understand root cause: Take time to understand why is the employee reacting the way they are. Is something going on in their personal lives that’s affecting their behavior. If that’s the situation then give them a chance with support to come out of the problem. In the example I gave above, one issue was that the employee hadn’t been promoted and she was very frustrated to see her teammates over the years getting elevated to higher positions while she remained stuck at the lower level.
Direct feedback: It is extremely important to give direct feedback to such employees quickly. The situation will not self-resolve and a better approach is to deal with facts and their impact on other colleagues. For example, explain the incidence that, ‘the employee yelled at her colleague who felt insulted.’ In this case fact is that she yelled and the consequence is that the colleague felt insulted. In many situations, the toxic employee will deny the feedback outright, and therefore you need to prepare well before giving the feedback.
Prepare before giving feedback: Critical feedback to a toxic employee is extremely hard to give properly. It is very important to stick with facts and their consequences and not let emotions come into the conversation. In these situations, it is best to spend considerable time preparing in advance before giving any feedback. I remember preparing for over a day with my mentor, rehearsing the dialogue, the possible questions and answers that would come up in the meeting.
Be direct on consequences: When giving feedback, create a path for the employee to solve the situation. For example, in my case the path was: change your interactions with the team and over due course of time you will be considered for promotion if you demonstrate solid improvement. Otherwise, there will be no choice but to move you into another team.
Document in detail: The interactions of the toxic employee and their impact needs to be documented thoroughly. Complaints from other employees should be properly noted down along with feedback during evaluations. This is to protect yourself as a manager and to protect your company in case the employee is off-hired.
Separate the employee: In some situations, the employee’s behavior doesn’t violate a legal policy and thus the employee can’t be let go. In this case it is best to separate the employee from other team members. This can be done by giving the employee a project which they can run without interacting with other team members.
Change teams: Sometimes employees can perform better under different responsibilities and work settings. This option is particularly useful if the employee has some good qualities that can possibly be utilized under a different manager and team. This approach can also be taken if it is not possible to off-hire the employee for one reason or other.
Nourish your energy: Managing a toxic employee is extremely taxing on energy. The decreased energy can easily distract the manager from their critical job functions. It is best to follow a disciplined plan during this time which enables your mind to relax. For me, I have found running in the morning and praying to be very useful.

See also my article on managing difficult employees.

References:

https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-to-manage-a-toxic-employee

https://hbr.org/2017/09/how-to-help-an-employee-who-rubs-people-the-wrong-way