81–90 of 229 posts
In the last few years, the metagame strategy of work politicking has evolved to include the act of labeling things "toxic." Article like this are just ammunition in that. I get that this article is about the trade-off between productivity and a less-easily-quantifiable loss to morale. But only a sliver of the people hearing about the study from this article will be carefully applying the lessons learned in towards th…
https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d... It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation. It seems to be using a tautological definition: defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” Yes, that causes a net l…
If I try as hard as I possibly can and output 20% of an amazing individual. do I have no place in this world?
Listen, this is the basic level of human interaction. manners are oil for bodies at friction, and respect is a gateway to team participation.
If you cant see the value in that, then you are the problem. You can output a million times the output of your team, but if you dont have a team then you have nothing except yourself. and if you are the only reason for success.. why arent you Jeff Bezos?
"charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation." -- This phrase stinks of devaluation. if you have a team that you view every member of as providing nothing of quality, then again.. you are the problem. Everyone has something to provide, on many different levels.you are failing to see that, and that is your problem.
but carry on my friend. if you are as amazing as you say, then ill read about you in the news soon.
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> the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group but wait... our entire economical system is based on this.
Imagine I happen to think that social and group dynamic factors are more important than individual competence. So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these characteristics over individual ability. If my hypothesis is correct, I'm going to be able to outcompete other companies in my industry and grow, achieve success, and so on. Having a large array of amicable charismatic employees at my disposal would even help fo…
Capitalism selects for what works for certain individuals.
We don't know that the success of capitalism isn't just a pyramid scheme that has yet to destroy the biosphere. We only know that on the scale of a few lifetimes, modern capitalism has worked ok-ish for us in the first world. It's been pretty rough on the former colonies and the proxy states.
Capitalism is very new. Mercantilism is just in the rear-view mirror. Capitalism has been subsidized by the simultaneous rise of industrial technology.
There have been flourishings of sudden well-being in the past. The Romans, the Mayans, etc. They discovered new techniques of agriculture, shipping, weapons manufacture, bloomed and expanded and collapsed and died.
Capitalism has not yet matched the long-term success of the Roman republic or the subsequent empire, let alone the Egyptian and Chinese systems of successive dynasties supported by a civil service.
It's a huge mistake to assume that capitalism works better just because we've been doing ok with it for a while and because it's the system embraced by the country that won WWII by being across an ocean. That gave capitalism a big leg up but the headstart is running out.
Kleptocracy has a good chance of out-competing managed capitalism in the next fifty years by using regulatory capture.
If you want to avoid regulatory capture by deregulating, remember that an unfettered market has always degenerated into kratocracy (government by the powerful) and kratocracy tends to turn into aristocracy.
Capitalism: Doing OK for now!
https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d... It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation. It seems to be using a tautological definition: defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” Yes, that causes a net l…
I found the guy. If I try as hard as I possibly can and output 20% of an amazing individual. do I have no place in this world? Listen, this is the basic level of human interaction. manners are oil for bodies at friction, and respect is a gateway to team participation. If you cant see the value in that, then you are the problem. You can output a million times the output of your team, but if you dont have a team then y…
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"toxic worker" is a pretty textbook definition now: -horrible team player -Unfortunately hugely effective at getting results -plays for the spotlight, claims credit in the spotlight, does little work privately -if in mgmt, verbally/mentally terrorizes subordinates -etc etc It's just a truly poisonous person, who tends to be extremely performant so they can stick around in orgs , whose lack of interpersonal skills in…
Depending on circumstances this sounds like the description of someone who moves up the ladder. It seems there is a very fine line between this description of “toxic” and “achiever”.
That's why literature on toxic workplaces tends to not define toxic workers as "achievers" but as "high performers."
Frankly, that confusion is why this study exists. Orgs have to learn to figure out what who is "achieving," and who is "toxic working and getting results." It's a really common confusion point, but is only solved by education and good leadership.
Put another way, it's 10000% possibly to be a high achiever, and do none of that type of behavior.
Not my personal experience. I have seen that they are perceived as better as they have less self-doubt and sound more authoritative. But, the ones I have work with were bad.
Usually toxic workers seen as more productive and bad/inexperienced management go hand with hand.
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Isn't that the point of the study? The system is broken if individually productive but net counterproductive people are labeled "achievers" and promoted.
I guess I am looking at it from the employee perspective. If you want to advance it’s probably better to risk being called toxic instead of being a good team player who never gets anywhere.
From a mgmt perspective, assuming a good manager, it does.
If your team/org doesn't approach it that way, the solution is find a high performing team that does approach it that way, not become toxic yourself. 10/10 high performance, long term successful teams approach things this way (source: this study, and people who have experienced this approach luckily).
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But how often do people who do the work that brings in money (in this example, the people coding the project) get a fair share of that profit?
Define "fair". Surely the CEO is worth 800 times what any single coder is.
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Seems like the manager was the toxic employee here.
Certainly from my point of view, but that's the point of my comment, and the parent comment. Who gets to label the toxic people and the criteria that must be met for someone to get that label is a very important aspect that the article does not address. I'm not sure if the study its reporting on goes into that detail or not. Since they are specifically using the term 'toxic worker' and not employee, I'm left believin…
But then, maybe it's just that I'm prototypically toxic. And why I've always been happier as an independent consultant. Because I've tended to have slack to declare bullshit.
"Toxic Workers Are More Productive" Isn't this just an instance of Berkson's paradox? [0] You might keep someone around because they're nice, or because they're productive. So if they're neither nice nor productive, then they wouldn't be hired/retained. So 100% of surviving not-nice people are productive, whereas the nice people is a mix of productive and non-productive people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berks…
Also the study intentionally focuses more on the cost-benefit of retaining a specific population - productive toxic people - and doesn't care about non-productive (toxic or non-toxic) people since they don't factor into that specific C/B equation.