How Do You Weed out the Bad Apples?

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss, found that no matter how good the rest of your employees are, having just one uncooperative worker can bring the rest of your team down and ultimately hurt your company.

“Leaders who let a few bad apples in the door—perhaps in exchange for political favors—or look the other way when employees are rude or incompetent are setting the stage for even their most skilled people to fail,” he writes.

Sutton offers several ways to prevent the bad apples from spoiling the good ones. Here are a few examples:

• “Develop a culture that doesn’t tolerate jerks,” writes Sutton. Make this clear during the hiring process.
• If you do hire someone who turns out to be a bad apple, act quickly to deal with the problem, whether that’s by firing them or changing their behavior.
• If, for whatever reason, you can’t remove the negative employee, try to isolate them to minimize the damage they can cause.

Have you ever hired a bad apple? Did they have a negative effect on the rest of your team? How did you deal with the problem?