Disruptive professionals can infect your business much like arsenic affects the human body. They eat away at morale, productivity, employee retention and even your brand reputation. Symptoms start with a headache and end with multi-organ failure if not addressed.
Unfortunately, disruptive professionals are often your highest performers, like top sales people, prominent surgeons or lawyers with the best trial record. They may be well-connected, high-profile “rainmakers” contributing significantly to your bottom line, and that can lure you into accepting their behavior.
Alas, that behavior can be costly. Every employee that leaves in order to avoid the disruptor costs a business at least $10,000 to replace and train. In addition, lawsuits by former employees can cost businesses tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. The damage to your brand image if customers begin complaining publicly, you end up in the media because of a lawsuit or organizations like the Better Business Bureau begin investigating you? More than you want to think about.
If poisons are “substances that cause disturbances to organisms,” then disruptive professionals are their workplace equal. Fortunately, there is an antidote.
Executive and behavioral coaching can help disruptive professionals understand their own mindset, how they are affecting others and how to modify their behavior to get better results from interpersonal interactions. If needed, it can also direct them to help for emotional or substance abuse problems that may be influencing their behavior.
If you’re an HR manager preparing to address a disruptive employee, calling your employee assistance program (EAP) is a good place to start. They can help you create a plan, guide you through the initial steps and provide recommendations for experienced behavioral coaches in your area. High-touch EAPs can even provide the intervention for you as part of a fully coordinated effort to resolve the problem.
The EAP, in combination with a good behavioral coaching specialist, will provide an initial assessment and help you define expectations of change and a timeline for the professional. The coaching program should then span a 3-month time period, include regular sessions and have a clear conclusion. And, it will cost a fraction of what you’d end up paying if you lost even one employee or had to settle an employee grievance or lawsuit.
The result will be a high-performance professional that continues to add value to your organization without the associated costs of employee turnover, legal implications and brand reputation management. Plus, other employees working with these folks will feel supported by the organization.
When going through the coaching process, we often find that disruptive professionals don’t even realize the full impact they are having around them. They want something done their way, and although it may have a negative impact on the organization, it gets them the results they want.
When approached with examples of their behavior, a clear course of action and associated consequences, most disruptive professionals make a concerted effort to change. Behavioral coaching can be the cure that managers are looking for.
Maureen Dorgan-Clemens is vice-president of organizational consulting services at Perspectives Ltd. She has more than 24 years experience consulting with organizations around management development, team development, conflict management, performance coaching and leadership training, and EAPs. Find out more about Maureen on LinkedIn.
Recent articles: “House” Training—How To Handle a Disruptive Professional, Training Magazine
Tags: abuse, behavioral coaching, bully, disruptive professional, EAP, Employee Assistance Program, executive coaching, high-performance, lawsuit, lawyer, organizational development, sales people, Stress, surgeons, workplace
July 17th, 2009 at 7:18 am
These suggestions are exactly right. Having worked 25+ years in the EAP profession I can attest to this problem within organizations as well as the effectiveness of the use of an EAP to find the proper resource and conduct follow-up. One of the core tenants of EAP is developing a referral network. A good EAP has already done the work of researching appropriate resources in many areas of human behavior, saving an organization much time and expense.
In addition, it is best if an organization has a progressive discipline plan in place. Some individuals will “relapse” and return to differing degrees of their old behavior and they must know that bullying, etc. will not be tolerated.
Spending time up front educating all employees as to what is not acceptable and how to appropriately respond to this kind of behavior in the workplace will also help to lessen the problem.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Thanks Scott. Well put. The EAP is an extremely valuable asset in dealing with these types of employees but employers need to know that they have an EAP and all of the things it does.