How a Few Bad Apples Ruin Everything

What harm can a handful of nasty or incompetent employees do? A lot more than you may think.
y R0ERT 8UTT0N
Superstars get a lot of attention from bosses. But bad apples deserve even more.
A growing body of research suggests that having just a few nasty, lazy or incompetent characters around can ruin the performance of a team
or an entire organizationno matter how stellar the other employees.
Bad apples distract and drag down everyone, and their destructive behaviors, such as anger, laziness and incompetence, are remarkably
contagious. Leaders who let a few bad apples in the doorperhaps in exchange for political favorsor look the other way when employees
are rude or incompetent are setting the stage for even their most skilled people to fail.
t's crucial for leaders to screen out bad apples before they're hiredand if they do slip through the cracks, bosses must make every effort to
reform or (if necessary) oust them.
Spreading the Vibes
t's easy to understand why bosses would rather focus on attracting and developing superstars. A mountain of research shows that stars and
geniuses can deliver astounding results. And, obviously, it's more fun and inspiring to focus on top-performing, energetic employees.
Serge Bloch
But studies of everything from romantic relationships to workplace encounters show that negative interactions can pack a much bigger wallop
than positive ones. The reason is simple: "Bad is stronger than good," as psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues put it. The
negative thoughts, feelings and performance they trigger in others are far larger and longer lasting than the positive responses generated by
more constructive colleagues.
Consider research on bad apples and team effectiveness by Will Felps, Terence R. Mitchell and Eliza Byington. They examined the impact of
team members who were deadbeats ("withholders of effort"), downers (who "express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity and irritation") and jerks
(who violate "interpersonal norms of respect"). An experiment by Mr. Felps found that having just one slacker or jerk in a group can bring
down performance by 30% to 40%.
How can organizations squash those negative influences? The easiest way, obviously, is to avoid hiring bad apples in the first placeand
that means taking a different approach to assessing candidates for jobs.
The usual means of screening are often weak when it comes to determining if a job candidate is a bad apple. Candidates may have gone to
the best schools or may come across as charming and brilliant in interviewsthus disguising their laziness, incompetence or nastiness.
That's why one of the best ways to screen employees is to see how they actually do the job under realistic conditions. Akshay Kothari and
Ankit Gupta favor that approach. When they're hiring new people for their Palo Alto, Calif., company, Pulse, which makes a news-reading
app for mobile devices, they consider evaluations from peers and superiors and do multiple rounds of interviews. But they say the most
effective thing is to bring candidates in for a day or two and give them a short job to accomplish. (The candidates are paid for their time.)
Not only do they learn a lot about the candidates' technical skills, Messrs. Kothari and Gupta say, but they also learn about their personality.
How do they deal with setbacks? Do they know when to ask for help and to give others help? s the candidate the kind of person they want to
work with? The partners say there have been several candidates who looked great on paper and came highly recommended but weren't
offered jobsbecause technical and interpersonal weaknesses surfaced during the selection process.
!ay Nice or Ese
Beyond smarter screening, it's important to develop a culture that doesn't tolerate jerks. The best organizations make explicit their
intolerance for bad apples; they spell out which behaviors are unacceptable in the workplace and act decisively to prevent and halt them.

Consider Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial-services firm that has won praise as a great place to work. The company is serious about
creating a culture where disrespect and selfishness are unacceptable. They call this the "no jerk rule" (though they use a more colorful word
than "jerk").
The company starts sending the message during the hiring process, says CEO Paul Purcell. "During the interview, look them in the eye and
tell them, 'f discover that you are a jerk, am going to fire you,' " he says. "Most candidates aren't fazed by this, but every now and then,
one turns pale, and we never see them againthey find some reason to back out of the search."
When the company makes a hiring error and brings aboard an employee who persistently demeans colleagues or puts personal needs
ahead of others, Baird acts quickly to deal with or expel the bad apple.
Mr. Purcell's crusty approach won't work in every company culture. For an idea of how to handle the task with a more subtle hand, look at
renowned chef Alice Waters, who has headed the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., for 40 years now.
Biographer Thomas McNamee describes how Ms. Waters's love of people and food has spread to those around her. Along the way, though,
many bad apples have been shown the doorbut Ms. Waters doesn't hold it open. The process usually starts when one of her colleagues
conveys the message that Ms. Waters isn't "entirely pleased." f the hints don't work, then that colleagueor someone else close to Ms.
Watersdoes the firing.
A spokesman for Chez Panisse says Ms. Waters does personally fire employees on occasion and "she manages to have that person feel as
though they are making the decision to leave and it is better for themselves to move on and explore new opportunities." He also notes that a
large percentage of employees have been with the restaurant for decades.
eeping Them Cose
There are times, of course, when an organization can'tor won'tremove a destructive personality. Maybe the person is a star as well as a
bad apple, for instance, or is otherwise crucial to the operation. n such cases, leaders might try to use coaching, warnings and incentives to
curb the toxic employee's behavior. Another tactic is to physically isolate the bad apple.
n one organization, there was a deeply skilled and incredibly nasty engineer whom leaders could not bring themselves to fire. So, they
rented a beautiful private office for him several blocks from the building where his colleagues worked. His co-workers were a lot happier
and so was he, since he preferred working alone.
But beware: Leaders who believe that destructive superstars are "too important" to fire often underestimate the damage they can do.
Stanford researchers Charles O'Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer report a revealing episode at a clothing retailer. The company fired a top-producing
salesman who was a bad apple. After he was gone, none of his former colleagues sold as much as he had. But the store's total sales shot up
by nearly 30%. The lesson, according to the researchers: "That one individual brought the others down, and when he was gone, they could
do their best."
Mr. Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, is the author of "Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be
the Best.and Learn from the Worst." He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

Don't Dismiss Office PoliticsTeach t
An inability to play the game is too often seen as a badge of honor. t shouldn't be.
y JEFFREY PFEFFER
Many promising executives derail sometime during their careers, often because they weren't very good at office politics.
Not playing the political game is often seen as a good thing, even a badge of honor. Some managers see it as proof of their integrity. They
are going to succeed because of job performance alone.
They couldn't be more wrong. Research finds that a person's political skills are key to building a successful careerfor the good of both
themselves and their company. When talented executives combine a knowledge of what their company needs with an ability to get things
done, everyone benefits. Conversely, when a promising career falters because of poor political skills, companies have to spend time and
money finding a replacement, and performance suffers in the meantime.
Being politically savvy is not about pushing others down or being untruthful to advance your own cause. nstead, it means building
networksrelationshipswith people inside and outside your company who can provide useful information and assistance. t means not
picking fights over issues that aren't critical. t means informing others in the company about your contributions and accomplishments, and
asking for advice and help, particularly from those senior to you. Self-serving? Sure. But there's nothing wrong with that. f you are going to
make a difference, you need to have power.
Here's how companies can quickly recognize who among their otherwise-talented executives needs help at playing office politicsand how
to give them the skills they need to be successful.
ash !oints
There are generally two times in every rising executive's career that bring the biggest tests of their ability to manage organizational politics.
The first comes after about five to seven years, when the person begins to take on roles that depend less on their individual performance and
more on what they can accomplish through the people around them. The second is usually after 15 to 20 years, or when the person steps
into a senior role with even more visibility, according to Bonnie Wentworth, an executive coach in the San Francisco Bay area. At this point,
Ms. Wentworth says, there is much less room for mistakes, and technical skills are largely irrelevant for career success.
Watch the behavior of people who are at these points in their careers. Are they showing or generating lots of (unproductive) conflict, stress
and tension? Do they insist on getting their way all the time, or are they sensitive to smoothing the feathers of important others?
!ick Your Battes
Some brilliant people don't realize there are trade-offs that must be made to work successfully with others in an organization. One now-
derailed executive remembers being asked by his boss, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?" Savvy people live to fight
another day by avoiding situations where they and their ideas are going to go down in flames.

To best evaluate a person at one of these key junctures, pay attention to whether they inspire support and confidence through how they talk
and act. Leaders hold on to their positions by maintaining support from their employees, customers and, most important, their bosses. When
that support is gone, so are they. nspiring confidence and garnering support comes mostly from being forceful, rather than remorseful.
When people appear to be struggling in their roles, there are several ways the company can help save its investment in their careers.
Executive coaching is a growing and often helpful process. A good executive coach can get people to understand and stop their own self-
defeating behaviors.
Coaches also can help people re-examine their values, and perhaps figure out whether they would rather be able to say, " told you so," or
acquire influence by being useful to those in power.
Power skills, like all skills, can be taught. Courses in how to understand and navigate networks of people in organizations have been shown
to help win promotions. Even smart people can have all sorts of wrong ideas about interpersonal behavior. Sometimes executives need to
learn some basic social psychology to set them straight.
Status Signas
For instance, people who appear forceful rather than sad or uncertain typically get more status. Something as simple as interrupting can
signal and create powerpeople with power interrupt, those without get interrupted. Adopting a powerful, expansive body pose actually
changes people's blood chemistry, reducing cortisol, a stress hormone, and increasing testosterone; the reverse happens if people adopt a
hunched, restrictive, low-power posture.
Once people learn about the social psychology of power, they can use these principles to become more effective in their interpersonal
interactions.
Good leaders master organizational dynamics, and help those who work for them do the same. When Zia Yusuf, now president and chief
executive of San Francisco-based Streetline nc., was an executive vice president at SAP AG, he went out of his way to advise people who
worked for him how to interact with the 50 top people in the company. He told them whom they should have coffee with, who wanted to
interact only over important matters and, most important, what each executive's key performance indicators and critical objectives were.
Few executives receive or provide this sort of help. f more did, perhaps fewer promising careers would come off the rails.
Mr. Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and author of
"Power: Why Some People Have tand Others Don't." He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.