File 001: Why good leaders tolerate bad behavior for too long
If I had to name one challenge that all leaders universally face, it's the struggle of dealing with a difficult employee. I don't plan to cover how you should manage such a scenario, as you could search this topic online and find a hundred similar takes on how to tactically approach this problem.
I'd rather help you identify how and why this happens so you can address the root cause.
Let's set the stage by looking at the typical progression of difficult employee behavior.
Small behavior is overlooked
That behavior becomes normalized
Colleagues adapt
The leader adapts
Organizational standards slowly shift
The behavior is embedded and challenging to root out
Professional sitting at desk, frustrated
This may feel like too cut-and-dried of a take, but it actually is that simple when you remove the nuances of a given specific example. As we get into this, I encourage you to contemplate these questions with a healthy sense of detachment, as a curious observer rather than as someone who's embroiled in the challenging situation.
So, the million dollar questions:
Why does this happen? Why is it so hard to address bad behavior?
For one thing, corporate and work culture tends to be laser-focused on obviously egregious behaviors. Most of us have no problem recognizing sexual harassment, prejudiced conduct, and egregious violations of workplace etiquette. The tangibility of the line-crossing in these examples provides clarity around how to document and report it.
However, the vast majority of the time, bad behavior doesn't clearly cross well-defined lines of misconduct. It flies under the radar, making it harder to identify and articulate. Colleagues and coworkers feel the pain of the bad behavior, but they've also learned that nothing will be done about it. The pattern is work around it, overlook it, complain behind closed doors, but ultimately tolerate it.
Those who behave professionally wonder why the offender keeps offending, and why repeated conversations with the offender don't result in change.
Quite simply, it's because the offender has been shown that there are no consequences. They've been able to do what they do without anything more serious than a "please stop doing that" conversation.
And we seriously wonder why they don't stop? Would you expect a toddler's behavior to change if the only thing that ever happened was a plea from a desperate parent to "please stop!"? Of course not.
As a leader, you operate from a place of high standards for your personal behavior. You've come to expect high standards of personal conduct from the employees who've shown you can trust them to do the same.
Why are you okay with expecting less from someone who doesn't care to do or be better?
If you're dealing with a toxic employee who's bringing down team morale, I want you to pause here for a moment. Instead of asking "How do I deal with this difficult employee?" Ask yourself:
"What have I become conditioned to tolerate?"
Conditioning quietly erodes standards. It normalizes behaviors that aren't appropriate. It creates a workplace culture of tolerating mediocrity, where those who are showing up and doing good work are held to a different standard than those who don't.
As a leader, I know you care. You may spend a lot of time thinking about this difficult employee and giving them grace for whatever hard time they're going through or life experience they're having. It's appropriate to be situationally sensitive to what our fellow human beings are going through and the challenges that life serves up.
It's also important to be discerning about when an employee operates from victim mindset and uses life as an excuse for poor conduct on a regular basis.
Maybe the struggle is that this person is perceived as indispensable, knows a lot about a particular subject, or shines in some areas of work, making it necessary to put up with the bad so you can benefit from the good. But output doesn't trump conduct. What this person produces doesn't negate the toxic atmosphere everyone in their wake is expected to tolerate.
Finding difficult employees hard to manage doesn't make you a bad leader. There is a lot that goes into what we're conditioned to put up with, including your specific organizational culture and its tolerance for bad behavior as the backdrop to what your team is experiencing. You may feel like an outlier for deciding that even though the organization has a history of putting up with shitty behavior, you'd rather not. Therein lies the difference: willingness to do what's right rather than what's always been done separates anxious leaders from effective ones.
So, be the outlier. Operate from a place of integrity rather than conformity. Effective leaders prioritize what's best for their team, even when the work to do that feels hard.