Let’s talk about problem employees. There are all kinds of problem employees. Some are just a bad fit for the job, and others cause ripples of disaster throughout the organization. Problem employees are responsible for everything from lack of productivity, and time wasting to embezzlement, bad headlines and legal troubles. Yikes.
You always wish you could go back in time and catch it before you hired them, or at least recognize when it was all going wrong and put a fast end to it. Stages will help you do that a bit better.
Stage Three (Needs) – In Stage Three, they are focused on their own needs, and not the needs of the company or customers. If their chief need is a job, this can actually drive them to greatness, given the right mentorship and management. Be wary of anyone who has been in Stage Three for a long time. The longer you spend in one stage, the more amplified that stage’s characteristics become. Spending too long in Stage Three turns needs into desperation and desperate people do desperate things. Espionage, embezzlement, ethics violations, harassment, and other problems stem from employees stuck in Stage Three for too long, without sufficient time in Stage Four to develop empathy.
Stage Five (Ideology) – This is the perfect stage for employees in a politically or otherwise ideologically based organization. However, for the rest of us, these employees, in extreme cases, can be a nuisance. Again, spending too much time in this stage leads to amplified effects. What was once just a set of closely held beliefs about the world and how to operate, becomes bullying in the meeting room, time wasting hallway conversations telling everyone what to do, and ineffective teams that can’t stand to be in the same room with this employee.
Stage Seven (Questioning Everything) – This is exactly where you want your most innovative teams. But this stage is counterproductive for most other policy driven areas of the company. Again, spending too long in any stage amplifies it’s characteristics. Here, spending too much time in Stage Seven turns innovation into indecision and eventually existentialism, pulling everyone down in the process. Indecision and bad moods spread like wildfire through any organization, diminishing productivity and throwing off everyone’s mojo.
So what can you do? First, don’t hire the wrong stage. Hire the right stage for the right job. But that will not prevent problems by itself, because people are evolving through the stages all the time. They might have been a happy enough Stage Six when you hired them, but they are enduring a divorce now or other major life event and have slipped into a deep Stage Seven. When life evolves your star employee into one of these stages, your best bet is to help them move to the next stage. All it takes it a few questions and a little encouragement to help them temporarily take on a different stage for the day. That will do in a pinch. But be sure to help them get unstuck from these stages with a more permanent effort using reading and homework assignments. Access to a mentor may be necessary too. Try to find a mentor who has gone through a similar situation successfully or a mentor that understands the stages and how to move through them successfully.
