Rotten Apples

3rd July 2014

Meeting with one of my more established customers earlier this week, it came home to me yet again how important it is to deal with the “rotten apple” in your team.

In this example the person concerned was very good at disguising his disruptive influence. In fact so much so, that the business owner actually thought that it was another member of staff who was causing the problems. These sort of people are always making snide remarks behind people’s backs, they criticise their bosses (but only very subtly), and they manipulate their colleagues into saying things about each other, resulting in a generally unhappy and discontented office environment.

Fortunately in this case, this individual was pulled up for not following procedures, and believing he was better than that, he decided to leave the company, telling everyone that he was going to a fair superior business where he would be paid a lot more. His parting shot to the business owner was “You do know that nobody is very happy in this business, and that you are not a good boss, don’t you!” Naturally enough my client was quite upset by this, but subsequently he now realises that this was all a front.

The result of this self proclaimed star leaving, is that everyone is now far happier, systems are being adhered to, productivity levels have increased, and the atmosphere in the office is completely different now. It is now quite clear what a negative effect the “rotten apple” was having, and evident how important it is to weed them out of your business as soon as possible.

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