Whether you’re a leader or an employee, you want your company to succeed. After all, your paycheck depends on it. But the vast majority of companies—even vibrant organizations that operate with little noticeable dysfunction—are filled with saboteurs. That’s right. Employees at every level do small, seemingly insignificant things to sabotage their own success.
Even the best leaders and the most hardworking employees do these things. They may not seem like anything major, but their cumulative effect can be destructive. One chocolate here and there may not blow your diet, but a handful every time you walk by the candy dish is a different matter. Following are three common behaviors committed by accidental saboteurs.
Relentless negativity.
The next time you’re having lunch in a restaurant, listen in on the conversations at nearby tables. Chances are, you’ll hear people griping about their workloads, difficult clients, annoying coworkers or corporate policy. Everyone does it, but if they realized how harmful it is to their company, perhaps they’d think twice. The solution is to hone the fine art of managing up, which means positioning your people, products or company in a positive light. Help employees understand what can happen when negativity is allowed to breed—good people quit and customers leave—and they’ll be more likely to stop doing it.
Creeping we/they-ism.
Most leaders inadvertently foster what I call the “we/they” phenomenon—as in, “Well, Rick, I fought for your pay raise, but HR makes those decisions”—which has a divisive effect on company culture. This is rarely a deliberate choice, but rather the natural fallback position of someone who hasn’t had formal leadership training. (You don’t want Rick to be mad at you, right?) Problem is, you’re sabotaging your own culture.
Instead of blaming HR, a leader might say, “When I talked to Denise over in HR, she said health insurance premiums have risen 23 percent over the past year, so pay increases must be postponed. The company is working really hard to maintain the best possible coverage for all of us.”
Giving low performers a pass.
Let’s say your employee Carol consistently comes in late, gets “headaches” every other (non-payday) Friday and spends more time chatting up coworkers than she does working. Others will notice—and they’ll be resentful. But turning a blind eye to the Carols in your organization squelches profitability. Why? Because middle performers get pulled down to the low performer level, while high performers either disengage or leave.
This is a problem of omission, not commission. It’s easier not to confront low performers and, trust me, a leader can find 1,000 other things to do. But until you move them either up or out, your company will never advance beyond short-term gains.
It’s not easy to change these acts of subtle sabotage, because they’re natural to some extent. After all, it’s human to want to vent frustration. It’s human to avoid conflict. But change is possible, and the results feel so good that you’ll be motivated to keep working toward excellence. And it’s that ongoing will to improve—combined with the right hardwired behaviors—that creates a high-performance organization.
