ALWAYS REMEMBER THE FULL PHRASE
Recently, I was speaking with a coaching client about a young woman who had recently resigned from her position to take a job somewhere else.
My client informed me that after the fact, she learned that this former teammate had been spreading negative thoughts and feelings about my client’s department within the larger organization.
My client smiled ruefully when explaining that she had no idea that this colleague was disseminating negative information about her and her team. As far as she knew, this woman was a hard-working teammate who was competent at her job and minded her own business.
After the young woman resigned, several people approached my client and asked: “Why are you upset? She was good at what she did. So what if she was one bad apple.”
My client wisely grinned and said, “Larry, they forgot the rest of that phrase.”
The full phrase is “one bad apple spoils the bunch.”
And so it is in the workplace. All it takes is one unhappy, misguided, or disgruntled employee to make things miserable for everybody else. Such behavior is even more insidious when it is done behind the scenes.
As we have said here before, we want our leaders and our colleagues to fully embrace “The Two Cs:” Character and Competence. Too frequently leaders making hiring decisions focus too heavily on competence. They are looking for new team members who can do the job well, quickly and accurately. In their rush to hire competent people, sometimes they neglect devoting sufficient research to the character element.
I have found through decades of making good and bad hiring decisions that we cannot teach character. New teammates, either have it or they do not. It is incumbent upon us to dedicate a sufficient portion of our research about job candidates to their character as demonstrated in the workplace.
We cannot work effectively with people who:
-Gossip negatively about others
-Demean colleagues
-Step over teammates to get ahead
-Are not always truthful
-Demonstrate a lack of trustworthiness
-Lack the ability or willingness to work interdependently
-Show selfishness at work
-Lack the ability to show and express gratitude
Remember: one bad apple CAN spoil the bunch.
So when you are in hiring mode, please make the time to do sufficient due diligence and concentrate on character as much if not more than competence.
You will be glad you did.
If you believe this content would resonate with a friend or colleague, please feel free to forward it along!
-Larry