Rooting Out Negative Influencers Within Your Organization by Richard A. Berkowitz, JD, CPA
One of the most vexing problems encountered by growing companies is the identification and management of “underminers” who lurk silently in the shadows, sowing discontent and dissatisfaction that creates a negative drag on the business culture. Sometimes referred to as “bad apples” or “negative nellies,” these individuals engender pessimism, anxiety and insecurity among teammates in a post-COVID environment where business leaders are struggling to boost organizational culture across various hybrid and remote work schedules.
Studies have shown that negative interactions and criticisms have a much more significant impact on us than positive experiences and praise. Hence the saying, “It takes 1,000 ‘attaboys’ to counteract or wipe out one ‘aw crap.’” In the workplace, negativity bias acts like cancer to the culture of an organization, eating away at the morale of top performers and destabilizing once productive teams. So, how does an organization identify these negative influencers and reduce the impact of their actions?
Wave the Flag
The weakening of business culture brought about by negative influencers creates a tableau for underminers. Today’s workplace with remote and hybrid workers dispersed across the globe has limited many of the in-person meetings and impromptu interactions between colleagues and management that once served as an organization’s cultural glue. Increased reliance on electronic communications, such as email, Slack and Microsoft Teams, has given underminers a platform for spreading their negative influences and increasing their prominence outside the purview of management.
It is imperative you recognize the power wielded by underminers and teach your team leaders to identify and reject their behavior. Train teams to focus on solutions using constructive, positive feedback rather than highlighting problems. This approach focuses the team on working together to resolve an issue rather than allowing negativity to dominate the discussion, destabilize the team and distract them from their shared goal.
Teach Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is about self-awareness and the ability to understand and empathize with the feelings, reactions and sentiments of the people around you. In the workplace, it has become a critical leadership skill that is equally important to one’s professional success as their technical abilities, especially in the areas of communication, relationship building, teamwork and conflict management. Those with high EQ recognize when they or others let their feelings control their action and take steps to think objectively and move forward toward a resolution in a positive manner.
By teaching emotional intelligence to your leadership team, you help them recognize negative behavior and empower them to work individually with underminers to refocus their attention on positive solutions, thereby mitigating the impact of their complaints and condemnations throughout your organization.
Relationship management is about building trust in the organization, teaching people how to acknowledge others’ feelings and emotions, and giving leaders the power to provide effective, constructive feedback that aligns with the organization’s goals and intentions. It requires tough conversations, when necessary, but the overall directive is to help team members identify underminers and mitigate the impact of those negative behaviors.
Avoid Hiring Underminers in the First Place
Effective screening of prospective employees is the best way to avoid hiring an underminer. While this may be easier said than done, there are some strategies you can employ in your hiring practices to help improve the chances that a prospective candidate is the kind of person you want on your team. For example, you may host multiple rounds of interviews for job candidates with different executives in your company, hire individuals on short-term, trial bases, and utilize personality and EQ assessment tests designed to understand a person’s preferences, motivations, emotional responses and style of interacting with other people and situations.
We Don’t Tolerate Jerks
Some of the best organizations are not shy about communicating their intolerance for negative influencers. Companies serious about supporting a culture of respectfulness and selflessness make it clear in their mission statement and hiring practices. While these efforts may not necessarily deter a candidate from accepting a position, they may provide the company with a foundation for resolving a hiring error early and allowing for an earlier expulsion of the underminer. Destructive people are not always poor performers. Therefore, it takes executives’ decisive discipline to fire a superstar who is intentionally or unintentionally undermining your culture. Removing the negative influence reaffirms the organization’s positive culture and helps motivate the remaining team members to improve their individual performance for the greater good of the business’s needs and goals.
It is impossible to measure the cultural impact of team members who undermine an organization’s culture. While it is difficult to identify those individuals who are responsible for destabilizing the culture, it is the responsibility of good leaders to focus on ways to identify those individuals in pursuing a positive culture that enhances the performance of the organization.
About the Author: Richard A. Berkowitz, JD, CPA, is founding and executive chairman of Berkowitz Pollack Brant Advisors + CPAs and Provenance Wealth Advisors, where he provides business consulting, growth strategies and succession-planning consulting to entrepreneurs and companies. He can be reached at the firm’s Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., office at (954) 712-7000 or via email at info@bpbcpa.com.
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