HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.
Some employees don’t just cause problems—they create them on purpose. Subversive employees manipulate office politics, undermine colleagues, and make themselves look indispensable—all while frustrating the people who actually see what’s happening. So what can a leader do?
In this episode of Dear HBR:, hosts Dan McGinn and Alison Beard tackle this tricky leadership challenge with Adrian Gostick, coauthor of Leading with Gratitude. They explore how to expose subversive behavior, make a compelling case to senior leadership, and set up systems that prevent manipulation.
Here’s Adrian, explaining why expressing gratitude to a subversive colleague should be the first step to getting to the bottom of their behavior:
ADRIAN GOSTICK: There’s some reason why somebody is being subversive, and the best thing for any leader to do is to start with positivity, start with the carrot versus the stick. Now, I’m not saying you won’t get to the stick, but you always try to understand where somebody is coming from, why they may be acting the way they are, and you begin by valuing who they are, and you begin by identifying the good things they’re doing versus just beating them up for the things that may be wrong.
ALISON BEARD: That can be really hard though once an employee is making things difficult for you day after day after day. How do you begin to address those problems even if you’re coming at it with an attitude of positivity?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: It sounds like you have had some experience there, Alison, I can feel. It’s true. There are difficult employees, and then there are toxic employees. The difficult we all have, and they can still make our lives miserable, and we have to find ways as leaders to work with them. Whereas those toxic employees, those are the ones where yeah, we do have to take a firmer, more disciplined approach in our leadership styles.
ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I manage an IT system administrator and help desk employee who creates problems, then resolves them to make himself look to senior executives. For example, he’ll set up a laptop for a new VP of sales but somehow misconfigure the VPN. Then when the VP calls about it, he’ll act like it’s a big issue, and show that he’s working day and night to fix it, so the VP thinks he’s so dedicated and supportive. He’ll email at night and give out his personal mobile number instead of the general help desk number. Meanwhile, when he thinks an employee is insignificant, the case will sit for weeks before he helps them. He’s one of only two system administrators, and once a case is assigned that person owns it until it’s resolved. When I do spot reviews of cases and catch him doing this, I’ve warned him that he shouldn’t be having problems after standard set-ups, but he just moves on and creates different kinds of fires. I’m unable to get rid of him, he has too many backers in management. He’s been with the company for more than ten years and has systemically cultivated their support by doing these kinds of things. What can I do?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: When I was listening to this, I had flashbacks because I had this employee. I had a guy, I’ll call him Sam, who Chester, my coauthor and I, we had hired years ago when we were working together in a corporate environment. And the problem was like this, clients loved him, the senior leaders loved him, and his teammates thought he was the worst human being who ever lived. And he would be on the road a lot, and when he came in, he would actually just make rounds from each of the executive offices, pretty much spend the whole day out schmoozing with the executives, his teammates couldn’t get anything out of him, we couldn’t get anything out of him. When we complained to our boss, the CEO about him, he’d say work around him, he’s a great guy, clients love him. Just could not get him, we couldn’t help our senior leaders understand that this guy was really a challenge. And the team didn’t like him.
ALISON BEARD: So, what did you do?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Thankfully on this one, he ended up shooting himself in the foot, and finally ended up showing his colors. But that doesn’t always happen. And there’s a very good chance if this guy here has been doing this for ten years, this system administrator, he’s not going to get caught, he’s just going to keep doing this. And so, when you have this happen you’ve got to start working the senior leadership yourself, you’ve got to be a little political yourself, and a lot of leaders hate doing that.
DAN MCGINN: I thought this was a fascinating letter and a fascinating problem. I’m naïve, I didn’t think that people would do this kind of thing. We’ve been doing the show for a couple of years now and I don’t think I’ve used the word diabolical. It’s evil, but it’s really cleverly evil. It reminded me of that cartoon that was on when I was a kid, there was that theme song, here I come to save the day. He creates a problem, and then he sort of swoops in, and sweats, and works hard, and solves it. I can see how annoying this would be to be his boss, but as a game goes, man, he’s found a way to score the system.
ALISON BEARD: It’s interesting, Adrian, that you start with the idea of explaining to senior leadership exactly what he’s doing, that actually he’s a poor performer because he’s not doing the initial tasks well, he’s only solving problems. But how does he do that in a way that doesn’t sound like he’s winging, or unable to manage his own employee, or even jealous of him because he has these relationships with the top executives?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: And you’re exactly right, Alison. This is a really difficult one because it’s very easy to come in here and look like you’re being a little petty. This guy’s the hero, and I’m a little petty. And so, you talk about efficiency. You say, look, we’re not as efficient as we can be because of this.
You talk about the steps that you’re going to take, because I got some of my people that may be distracted, let me tell you what’s happening with Sam here, and we’re not as efficient as we can be. So, we’re going to put together a ticketing system, and we’re going to make sure people live by this because this is what’s been happening. We’ve got 10% of our workforce who are the upper echelon, who are very happy and 90% of the people who are ticked off, and we can’t run a help desk that way. So, you have to try and bring it back to the business need.
DAN MCGINN: That ticket system was an idea that I thought of as well. When you place an order at a fast-food restaurant, there’s a little clock on the screen that starts ticking, and it does that because time-to-service is really, really important in that industry. It would make sense in this context that the moment somebody puts a ticket into the help desk, a clock starts counting. So, it doesn’t matter what the rank of the person submitting the ticket is, the time should be the metric that the helper is judged on, whether it’s the VP or whether it’s the admin, start to measure the time it takes them to close tickets and incentivize them against that.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Adrian, I loved your idea about going to the senior leadership with some information on consequences. You could say, in one sense, 90% of the people rate our services very poorly because they’re not being responded to in a timely fashion. You could also say, this is the percentage of time being wasted on dealing with senior leaders’ technical issues because of this one employee. Cold hard facts do tend to work.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Yeah, there’s no doubt. You come with your case ready. Because this guy’s smart, you have to come in as if you’re an attorney arguing a case before a jury here. And you’ve got to have your data and your facts that say here’s how we can improve efficiency. And I love Dan’s idea. So few teams do this. We did some work once with the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels, they’re an elite fighter group, and they do these 200 performances a year, marvelous acrobatics in the air. And everything is verbal. I thought everything would be computerized, it’s not. And you can’t exactly go no, no, your other left. You have to be really careful when you’re up in the air. But when they come down, I love this, what they did was they removed all their insignias of rank, all their lieutenant’s bars, or their private’s bars, whatever they had, and they would all sit around in a room and debrief each other. And they could say, somebody who was sweeping the floors could tell the commander of the group, you were off on your flight line. And he would say, yeah, I was, I was 50 feet off, and I won’t let that happen again. And it’s that idea of we’re going to be very clear about what went right, and what went wrong, and there will be no elephants in the room. So, I think it’s rare when teams really do that. And I think that’s one thing that could help in this case.
DAN MCGINN: I do think that part of this problem might be hard to solve because I’ve seen this in companies. Alison, do you have a favorite IT person?
ALISON BEARD: No.
DAN MCGINN: Oh, I do.
ALISON BEARD: [LAGHTER] Who?
DAN MCGINN: I’m not going to tell. I’m not going to play favorites. But I don’t think it’s uncommon. You do develop a relationship with these people, you get the sense that some of them are more responsive than others. It’s like any other kind of service thing. This idea that everybody needs to be equal, you can’t go to your favorite person, he is sort of bucking human nature in that, don’t you think?
ALISON BEARD: Yes, but if those executives begin to learn that the only reason they need to work with him so much is because he’s creating problems with their computers, I feel like that might erode some of the trust that he’s developed. But we seem to have skipped the idea of talking to this person directly.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Absolutely not. Of course, yeah, Alison, you’re exactly right. And you know what, there’s a very good chance he won’t believe you, he won’t buy into it, he’ll want to know well, who said this, and you’ll say, I’m hearing it from a lot of people, well, I don’t believe so. So, there’s a very good chance he’s going to argue, but you still have to try. But you’re right, Alison, of course, that’s where we have to start.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I think it’s really important when he does have a direct conversation with the employee to come in very matter-of-factly with information, not make it person, make it very much about what the team’s goals are, and outline what this means for him professionally, that you will be talking to senior leaders if this doesn’t change, and that might change his status with him.
DAN MCGINN: Adrian, instead of a random ticketing system where problems go to whichever IT person is available, should our letter writer assign cases, and do so in a way that the problem person is not getting all the senior people?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Yeah, I think this is the last kind of idea here that we might have with this issue, is that the manager does need to be a little stronger. The manager can take control of certain issues. One, that the manager says, look, I’m going to be doing the assigning from now on. And also, at this point, if everything is tried, and you’ve failed, you can control other things. You can control this person’s ability to even get a raise. You can control this person’s ability to work from home. What’s the perk this person likes. At some point, you might get to that point that a manager has to exert some sort of influence to try and get the work in the performance parameters that he or she is looking for.
DAN MCGINN: Alison, what’s our advice?
ALISON BEARD: We have two suggestions. First, it’s always worthwhile to have a direct conversation with difficult employees. You come to that conversation armed with facts about his underperformance, how it’s so important for everyone to play their roles and serve the entire organization. But you can also explain the consequences, that if his behavior doesn’t change, you plan to talk to senior leadership, you might change the assignments he gets. It’s probable that because this person does seem to be rather diabolical in his playing of office politics, that our letter writer will need to start working the senior leadership herself. We think that she should talk about the consequences for the organization. Perhaps the percentage of people who are unhappy with their service, the percentage of time being spent on unnecessary fixes. And then we also would like to see her suggest solutions. Her handling reassignments in a different way, even instituting a ticketing system that takes some of the choice out of the process and debriefing to get everyone working more efficiently in solving these tech problems.
DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I lead a diverse 15-person team at an IT company. We’re all from a variety of backgrounds professionally, technically, and personally. One woman is our resident deep technical expert, but I’ve heard from her teammates that she hoards information and gets upset when she’s asked to share her knowledge. There are communication issues, and she is poor at time management. She’s always showing up late to meetings, missing them, or proposing reschedules. She often fails to follow through on action items. I don’t want to over-generalize, but she comes from India where the corporate culture is more hierarchical, so maybe the problems stem from the fact that she is a middle manager, while the majority of the team is junior to her, with only a couple of peers, and a couple one level above her. When I’ve tried to talk with her about all this, she redirects to other team issues. When I ask her how things are going in areas where I know that there are interpersonal conflicts, she tells me, great. I’ve tried different ways to give her feedback at various times, and in various areas, but she usually defends herself and rejects it. She says she’s being unfairly scapegoated. I’ve had similar conversations with others on the team, and they’re open and receptive, so I don’t think it’s my style or delivery. How do I have these conversations with her in a more effective way?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: This one is really interesting to me. I do a lot of executive coaching, and yesterday I was on the phone with a fellow who, it took us about 45 minutes, and everything was great, everything’s fine, I’m beloved of my people. And yet, there was a reason that the organization had asked me to coach him. But nothing would break through until finally, I did suggest doing a 360 with his people. And at that point, he did kind of say well, I guess one thing they might say is that I’m kind of Doctor No. I’ve been here a long time, and I know what will work, and what won’t, and I just don’t want to listen to all their ideas. I’ll tell them right away: this won’t work. All of the sudden, we started opening up, and we started finding out the way he was being perceived. And so, I think this is a little what’s happening here. This again, as we think about that idea of toxic versus difficult employees, I think this is just a difficult employee who is really overwhelmed. And I think probably would stand to benefit from maybe a little coaching, a 360 on her so that she can see how she’s being perceived by others.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I came at this letter really disliking the knowledge hoarder that’s being described, but then I looked up some research that we’ve published that is really interesting and made me empathize with people who do have a lot of knowledge in organizations. Sometimes it’s because they fear they’re going to lose a competitive advantage, but it’s often just because they are too pressed for time, and they feel that all these other people are depending on them, and always asking them for stuff. That pressure causes them to just seize up, and say: I can’t, I don’t have the time to do this. In one study, people would even pretend that they didn’t have the information. And so, I feel like if we can find a way to break through that women’s natural reaction, feeling pressured like everyone’s coming to her, and she doesn’t have the time for it, that’s what our letter writer needs to do.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s exactly right. The first place we start is that she actually might be that busy. And you’re right, the first time you might hear this, you might dislike this woman as this hoarder, and I’ve known somebody like that. But then as you think about this a little more, you might realize that she just doesn’t even have 30 seconds sometimes to explain stuff to somebody because it’s going to last five minutes, and I know it will! And so, I think there’s a few things we might be able to do as leaders to help her. One would be to backfill, cross-train somebody else in what she’s doing.
DAN MCGINN: What about this business of her being hierarchical and paying too much attention to that? Is that a mindset that a manager can try to make less of an issue for a subordinate? Is there a way to sort of open her mind to people being equal regardless of who’s a manager, who’s a direct report, who’s a vice president, who’s not?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: There were a few things I noticed in that. First, off he asked, he said, well, I don’t know if this is an issue or not, but she’s from India. And well, that’s not an inclusive mindset today, so that’s probably not a good mindset for this manager to have coming in. And now, let’s say this person, this woman we’re talking about here does have an issue with the level of person, well, then it is something to talk about. And like we talked about in the last issue, this is really not something that we can have, but again, it becomes a values-based discussion. It becomes an issue of we’re going to help everybody, no matter where they are in the organization, we’re going to respect. But that has to be a value that we really believe in our team, and we live up to. It can’t just be lip service. I have to see it in you, my manager, and I expect it in my employees as well.
ALISON BEARD: I completely agree that, as we said before, a direct conversation with this employee. And as you said, Adrian, making it easier for her. So, first of all, this is something we really care about, and we’re going to incentivize you to do it. Secondly, what’s the best way for you to do it? Should we assign you a mentee who you pass everything to, and then they pass it to the rest of the organization? Dorothy Leonard who’s a former HBS professor has written a lot for us on knowledge cascades, trainings, challenge sessions, campfire meetings, just all different ways to get knowledge out of one person’s head and disperse it to the organization without taxing that one person who has all the expertise. So, I think just a brainstorming session with her might help her be less resistant to change and being confronted and criticized.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: One of the things as you sit and chat with this woman about this process, and I love Alison you’re talking about the team: We’re creating a team environment here, and how do we move forward? And she has got to be able to have the humility to say, I’m willing to change, and I need to change. And that’s okay to have the courage to then move forward and to try this, but also to have the discipline to stick with this because as a manager, hopefully, you’re going to be meeting with her at least once a month and saying, okay, how are we doing. And you’re going to set aside at least an hour for this. And you’re going to take a little time, because this is just as important as all of her other deliverables to help her grow, and develop, and become this team player that everybody needs.
ALISON BEARD: I love that idea of ongoing coaching.
DAN MCGINN: Adrian, when you hear that she’s late to meetings, failing to show up, failing to follow up on things, she sounds like she has some organization problems, and time management problems. Is that an area you would attack here?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: It’s a good question, Dan, because we are making the assumption she’s overwhelmed, she’s incredibly taxed, she’s putting out a lot of product. And one of the things that a manager has got to figure out, first off, is really: is this person producing all this output as well? One of the simple ways you can do that is Monday morning asking for a weekly check-in, saying what are you working on this week, great, okay, so these are your goals, these are your deliverables, great. Next Monday morning we’re going to meet, and if you find out those deliverables are the same pretty much week after week, then you’ve got an issue that she’s really not accomplishing all that you’re thinking is happening, and then there really is a time management thing that’s going on here, or a performance issue. But if she is crunching out a lot of stuff, then it might be also a prioritization issue. It might be the problem is she doesn’t know which issues are the most important, and this is something that a manager can really help with, helping her understand these are the top five issues that you should be working on this week.
ALISON BEARD: Let’s assume that she tries to talk to this woman, encourages her to change, but she’s still faced with this defensive posture rejecting that there’s even a problem, what’s the next step for our letter writer?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: The last step really, after you’ve tried this as a leader, is to the idea that maybe somebody on the outside can help, maybe a coach can help. And this might not be a long process, it might be three months or six months, and it doesn’t have to be tremendously expensive, but this is obviously a valued employee from what I’m hearing here. So, if this team member is that valuable to them, find them a coach who can help them, somebody from the outside. Sometimes just an outside perspective can help shake us up and help us realize that maybe we’re not being perceived in the way that we should be.
ALISON BEARD: Terrific. Dan, what are we advising our manager?
DAN MCGINN: We see a couple of issues here. Clearly one of them is the way that this woman is managing her time. Maybe she needs more resources, they need more staff, maybe she needs help prioritizing, maybe she needs weekly check-ins. So, this issue of time, constantly running late, and dropping deliverables, we see that as part of the problem. The larger issue here is one of respect and values, she’s not treating her co-workers with as much respect, that she’s acting as if she’s above them. We think this is probably not a cultural issue, and we don’t think the fact that she’s a native of India is p probably not a good mindset as a manager to assume that’s the cause of this. We’d like the letter writer to have a direct conversation with her, let her know this is a problem, maybe do a 360 to show data and evidence that this is a problem, help her recognize that she needs to change. If nothing else works, consider an outside coach who can help her with both of these issues. And it might be as short as a three-month engagement in hopes of finding some results for this person.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, let’s go to the last letter. Dear HBR: I’ve been a senior manager in the home office of a membership organization for more than a decade. We have less than 50 employees, and most are women under age 40. Two people on my team come from non-traditional work environments, they sit next to one another in cubes, and have become best friends, a social powerhouse in our small office. Both are exceptionally good at their jobs. But here’s the problem, they share the same dominant personality traits, and their mood or activities tend to set the tone for their whole work area. When challenged they’re very good at seeming to be team players, but in reality, they’re cliquish, and even subtle bullies. If there were only one of them, I probably wouldn’t be writing this letter, but they gang up on everyone, including me. Due to their independent work, I don’t always know where they are or what they’re doing. Neither seems to think they need a boss, and that’s pretty clear in how they treat me. They’re not out and out rude, but I don’t feel any support. I’d like to separate them, but our office can’t accommodate that right now. I should note that they’d be surprised to hear themselves described this way. Many of us simply work around them, rather than inviting conflict. My question is, how much should I let them get away with as long as they do their work, and do it well? Co-workers at various levels tell me I should clamp down, exert my authority, and make them report what they’re doing. Leaders above me see their professional limitations and are quick to call me out on their behavior when something goes awry. But micromanaging is not my style, and since much of their unpleasant behavior is subtle, I have a hard time telling them where the line is between okay, and not okay. When I provide corrective feedback they understandably want specifics, but they’re so adept at cover-your-ass behavior that the examples I give end up looking like opinions that can be debated. I’ve involved our HR manager, and he agrees I’m in a tricky position. I’ve managed talented difficult people with success before and can tolerate it, but I’m weary of the conflict. Do you think one or both of the women have to go? Experience tells me they could be replaced, and life would go on. Or is there something else I could do to mitigate these issues? Wow, Adrian, what do you think about this one?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Now this is, now when we were thinking about is this person toxic, or are they difficult, these two are toxic, there’s no doubt. And yet, I see a couple of big issues arising first up with this. The one problem is with the manager. You’ve got two younger employees, or junior employees I should call them, who aren’t paying attention, and the manager needs to be more assertive. This is a weak manager who needs to, who’s letting two people run amuck, and that’s just not appropriate. The second big problem is with this HR guy who says, yeah, you’ve got a problem. And it’s like nobody’s helping each other here. I would say there’s a big problem as well where this manager says, look, this is not my strong suit, I don’t like to micromanage people, I expect people to be grown-ups, HR I need you to help me. And so, I think both of them working together, HR and this manager, both of them have a role in this that’s going on, whose issue is this? Now, of course, these two employees are toxic, and we need to deal with them as well, but I think that’s the first place we start is looking at the behavior of the manager, and the behavior of HR.
ALISON BEARD: And even pulling in some of those leaders that are criticizing the employees, and how the manager’s handling them, but then not offering suggestions for how to fix the situation.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Absolutely. Managing people is hard. We are all crazy in our own way, and these two are just being allowed to run amuck. And this manager has to bring them together, or probably better separately, and say, here’s what’s going to happen, this is not appropriate behavior, I can argue with you, but something has to change here. You’re not happy because I’m hearing lots of things, and I’m not happy with this behavior. And so, while there’s some limitations of space, I’m sure, you can still separate these people. You can move people around, and they can be removed from each other. And the question is, do you fire one, do you get rid of both? Well, I think first off you start seeing if you can change this behavior. The good part about this, unlike the question we had a few questions ago, they don’t have senior leadership support, they don’t have HR support. Really, the only thing that’s stopping them from improving their behavior is a manager who needs to be a little tougher here.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah, this idea that I think it would improve the situation if I moved them apart in the office so they were no longer in adjoining cubes, but I just can’t do that right now, I agree with you, we should lean a little bit harder on that, think creatively, find a space. I think location drives a lot of human interaction, and simply putting them 50 feet across the floor from each other could have a really profound change. And I think I’d urge this manager to get creative on solutions for that.
ALISON BEARD: But I think that direct conversation that Adrian was suggesting is important first because I think that if my manager separated me from my best friend without explaining to me why I would get pretty ticked. Hopefully, Amy never does that to us, Dan. I think being very firm with them, you said, Adrian, completely agree with you on that that a direct conversation needs to happen immediately.
DAN MCGINN: I wonder if this letter writer is feeling enough urgency around the potential personal costs that she could experience here. She says leaders are quick to call me out on their behavior when something goes awry. It sounds like there’s a set of people that are getting fed up with our letter writer too, that she’s not handling this very well. I wonder if she has enough urgency not around just sort of this is a problem I need to solve, but this is a problem for her in her career.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: And I think the dialogue that you two are having is excellent because I think one of the things that as you sit down with these two independently, one at a time, you really have this discussion, and it has to be very clear that you aren’t happy, I’m not happy, we have to come to an agreement, and I’m going to give you some time, but it may take six months, we’re going to put this in place, I’m going to create some documentation, but it’s taking a lot of my time and resources to manage this, and we’ve got to figure it out. Now, if my way doesn’t work for you, that’s okay, you won’t be able to work here, but it’s okay because we’re all going to be a lot happier. And they need to know in very clear and concise terms that their jobs really are on the line with this, that this behavior cannot continue because right now she is the one being blamed for all of this.
ALISON BEARD: How can she better enlist support from HR, from the senior leaders? Adrian, do you have any ideas on that?
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Absolutely. This is one where this manager, and she’s admitted I’m not the best micromanager, she needs intervention from HR. Which means HR will be involved in these conversations because they’re going to throw up smokescreens, they’re going to say that’s not right, they don’t sound like dummies, these two, and so there’s going to be a lot of verbiage that’s thrown at this manager. This manager needs the HR guy in there with her. The second bit of intervention that she needs from HR is training, that she needs these two to be coached, or brought in, or trained, or maybe the whole team needs, and there are appropriate respectful behaviors within the workforce that have to be respected. And again, this comes back to that idea of creating some values.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I question whether the notion that you can just move one of them out is realistic. It sounds like their performance is okay, and as she says, a lot of their behavior is subtle, it just seems like it’s not apparent to me that they’ve crossed an egregious line that would warrant termination. So, I wonder if her hands are a little bit tied on that front.
ALISON BEARD: Especially because they are such good performers. She’s not just going to have to replace one solid employee if this solution is firing them, she’s going to have to replace two.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: I hear that a lot, especially government organizations, or organizations with perhaps unionized employees where a manager will tell me, I can’t just fire somebody. And so, it’s a really good point is that the first step you always take is to try and work through this. But there may be other options where you might within different parts of the organization, be able to move people transfer them out, create new opportunities that don’t involve your particular team. Sometimes a second chance can be just as good for somebody else on another team breaking these two apart.
DAN MCGINN: Alison, what’s our summary?
ALISON BEARD: So, first we want our letter writer to recognize that this is a really big problem. She has a set of toxic employees on her hands, and people are starting to blame her for letting the situation fester. We think that she needs to talk to them, probably separately, be firm, explain that their behavior is inappropriate and that it needs to improve, outline all the ways that should happen, even mention that HR and senior leaders of the organization agree that there’s a problem, and let them know that their jobs are on the line. While at the same time acknowledging their strong performance and explaining that they’re valued. We think it’s wise to enlist HR and other managers either in these direct conversations or in supporting team training about appropriate behavior, even coaching for these particular employees. There are creative solutions like splitting them up, but we think that this is a problem best tackled directly, and with a lot more backbone.
DAN MCGINN: Adrian, thanks for coming on the show.
ADRIAN GOSTICK: Dan, Alison, it was a real pleasure, and thank you so much.
HANNAH BATES: That was executive coach Adrian Gostick in conversation with Alison Beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR:. Gostick is a coauthor of the book Leading with Gratitude.
We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.
When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.
This episode was produced by Curt Nickisch and me, Hannah Bates. Curt is also our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
