Dealing with Disruptive People at Work

A couple of weeks back (too long ago!) someone asked me a question - due to the nature of the question, I won't identify who they are. Here is the question . . .

Sometimes due to regional manpower shortage we are forced to keep the disrupters on the job which promotes more disrupters. They are low performers who do not care about organization vision & values.

Since all your efforts are unsuccessful to bring those individuals back on the track. What should be the long term plan to deal with those individuals without jeopardizing the business?

Options, which one is better:

- It is difficult to get equivalent experience worker so hire apprentice & get them trained ASAP effectively.
- Just remove them out of the organization and go for re-hiring with higher compensations.
- Keep trying to motivate them however this could de-motivate the high performers.

This is a complex question that begs for clarification, but without that dialogue, here are a couple of thoughts.

At certain points, and at certain levels, each of the three options may be part of the answer. If the regional job market is extremely tight, I would be bringing in extra people as quickly as I could, to insure against people leaving to other opportunities - regardless of their performance level (yes, sometimes even if you are doing everything right organizationally you will lose some stars.)

The last option of trying to motivate the "disrupters" is the direction I would go in terms of these people themselves. I believe that people want to do a good job. I believe that if you have a well thought out and implemented hiring process you should have relatively few disrupters. All of this means that your belief and expectations need to be in the right place. Believe that people can succeed in your environment, believe that they want to contribute significantly, and set expectations accordingly. Might coaching be required? of course - but when that coaching comes from the perspective of the beliefs I described, compared to an attitude of "I can't believe I have to try to 'fix' this 'disrupter' what is wrong with them?" You have a much better chance of success.

In the end, not everyone will be a fit in your organization, and in those cases your second option, of severing the relationship, will sometimes be needed. My advice is not to go there too quickly, but don't wait forever either - finding that timing balance is a tightrope worth learning how to walk.

Also posted in Leadership.