Most companies have challenging employees who test your patience. Some call them obnoxious, rude, and pains in the unnamed body parts. I, however, prefer the term “characters.” They may flirt with disobedience, disdain the rules, and challenge your leadership, but they often outperform many other employees. So, at some point, you will have to decide if they are worth it.
Before deciding their fate, assess your own temperament. If you are a hardcore rule follower who demands total obedience and loyalty, you might as well fire every character in your company. They will intentionally sabotage every directive and rule coming from your office and you will grow to hate each other. Even if they like you, they will still test you to the point where you will consider letting them go.
However, if you’re more focused on results than someone hurting your feelings, then the characters in your company can thrive. If you want to work together, you must set up some guardrails to keep their behavior in line. If you don’t, you will either eventually have to fire them for going over the line or you will lose some good people who will not put up with their nonsense.
Here are three employee guardrails you can establish to keep your characters thriving.
Be Nice Rail: You can’t let characters ruin the morale of your staff and force good people out the door. Stressing teamwork, respect, and just being nice must be a clear message from you and your management team. Naturally, these types of employees will dominate others and there will be resentment, but there is a fine line between resentment and resignations. If one of your characters starts causing good people to quit, then the line has been crossed. Great leaders set the tone for respect and dignity within their organization.
Don’t allow disrespect of other employees; hammer down bad behavior as it happens.
Respect the Rule Rail: No doubt your characters are going to push, stretch, and tiptoe over the lines and rules. Highly successful people will press the boundaries to achieve success, and that’s OK. An action that presses the boundaries should benefit everyone, and that is when you know your character is a real team member. But crossing lines or breaking the rules for their sole benefit or at the expense of others cannot be tolerated. Punitive measures that hit these characters in the wallet normally curtail this type of disruptive behavior.
Be Good Rail: It’s not uncommon that a high-strung, top-achieving character has the ethics and morality of a fox. Unfortunately, business history is littered with the skeletons of top performers who couldn’t behave. No matter what they say, however, they can control themselves. As a leader in your company, you can’t play it off, condone it, or look the other way when a character is morally or ethically misbehaving. Your message must be loud and unequivocal that bad behavior will not be tolerated. Just like a dangerous third rail on a subway, if this one is touched, it should mean immediate disciplinary action, up to and including termination.
As an executive, your success in managing characters depends on your own ego and your patience, as both will be tested. Characters are difficult to manage, but the upside is immense, as they want to stand out above the clones and excel at their jobs.
