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They bad-mouth you to work colleagues behind your back; they angrily demand the impossible from everyone but themselves; they make unwanted comments about your attire.
At some point in our careers, most of us have come across someone known as a "toxic worker," a colleague or boss whose abrasive style or devious actions can make the workday utterly miserable. Such people hurt morale, stoke conflict in the office, and harm a company's reputation.
But toxic workers aren't just annoying or unpleasant to be around; they cost firms significantly more money than most of them even realize. According to a new Harvard Business School (HBS) paper, toxic workers are so damaging to the bottom line that avoiding them or rooting them out delivers twice the value to a company that hiring a superstar performer does.
While a top 1 percent worker might return $5,303 in cost savings to a company through increased output, avoiding a toxic hire will net an estimated $12,489, the study said. That figure does not include savings from sidestepping litigation, regulatory penalties, or decreased productivity as a result of low morale.
On the other hand, toxic co-workers are useful as foils come bonus time: "Hey, at least I'm not as bad as that guy..."
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:37PM
That's nice sounding but not true.
Sociopaths are capable of knowing that they're sociopaths. They're even capable of caring about it. The thing you'll see about business sociopaths is that they'll often think their worst acts were totally justified. "I couldn't let someone else screw me over first" or "I earned my place so [low grade embezzlement] isn't a big deal." Going "Oh no what if it's me" isn't some special protection.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:53PM
Going "Oh no what if it's me" isn't some special protection.
If you can't do that part, you will never find yourself detecting your own rationalizations.
So the "What if its me?" part is critically essential.
If you can't think back over your career and find any situations you could have handled better, then you are doing it wrong.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 03 2015, @08:32PM
I don't disagree that it's a necessary step, but sociopaths are perfectly capable of introspection. The big thing they lack is empathy. "What's it like to be the other guy/girl? Oh god that's horrible!" is a thought process that's foreign to them.