This post is excerpted from my Amazon #1 Best Seller for Nonprofit Fundraising, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them.
Mistake #17: Allowing Toxic Staff to Remain in Place
I worked in a nonprofit back nearly a decade ago. One of the key
reasons I left the organization was because the Vice President of
our organization allowed a horribly toxic employee to remain
in place. She was a technical specialist at the organization and
everyone knew it would be difficult and expensive to replace
her. But her attitude was toxic to the organization.
This person was manipulative, conniving, argumentative, and
only looked out for herself. She would routinely misrepresent
the true nature of a situation to make herself look better, would
blatantly disregard direction that I and several other managers
and directors gave her, and would lie about it when confronted
by our Vice President.
But the worst thing about this employee was her temper.
Without warning, she’d fly off the handle and scream at
people. One evening she and I were working late, and we had
a disagreement about strategy. She stood at the door to my
cubicle for what seemed like 20 minutes (I’m sure it was less
than 90 seconds, but it felt like an eternity!) and screamed. I
mean screamed. To the point that she was shaking, her face was
bright red, and if there was anyone else in the entire building
they could have heard her. All because I held a point of view
on donor segmentation that she didn’t share. It was impossible
to confront her about this kind of behavior because that only
made it worse.
When I brought this up to our Vice President the following
day, he dismissed it out of hand. His perspective was that she was
an important part of the team, and that addressing her behavior
might cause her to quit or not to work as hard as she was.
But her toxicity started to permeate the department. People
took note of the fact that she behaved poorly and nothing
was done about it. They started to question the organization’s
leadership. And what this meant for me personally was that I
made a decision. The day that my VP brushed the issue under
the rug instead of supporting me and helping me deal with the
situation, I decided it was time to leave.
More recently, I consulted with another nonprofit organization
that, on the surface, appeared to be healthy and well aligned.
However, they had a Director of Development who
was incredibly toxic. During executive meetings she’d nod in
agreement with everything the President said, expressing publicly
her alignment with the stated direction of the organization.
But after key meetings she’d convene her own private follow-
up meeting, where she’d lead complaint sessions about the
President and the direction he was taking the organization. It
was her way of exerting her own power and keeping the President
from accomplishing his agenda for the future of their
organization.
As a result, there was a large amount of confusion throughout
the ranks of the organization—with some staff members
supporting the organization’s formal agenda and goals, and
others maintaining an underlying concern and disregard. Ultimately,
the only way to resolve this problem was for the President
to terminate this Director of Development and remove
several other people who had aligned with her. This cost the
organization significantly in lost talent, disconnected donor
relationships, and in dollars spent on recruiting, hiring, and
training replacement staff.
When you don’t deal with toxic employees in your
organization, it sends the wrong message to the rest of your
staff. It communicates that you tolerate bad behavior, and that
you don’t care about how this negative behavior impacts the
rest of your people or the organization. You might think that
keeping that one toxic employee is important, but in reality you
are likely driving away your best people by not dealing with the
problems they create.
Here are the four biggest pitfalls of not dealing with toxic
employees:
1. If an employee is behaving inappropriately and you
do nothing about it, you’re reinforcing that inappropriate
behavior—you’re normalizing it.
2. Not dealing with toxic employees tells your best
people that you are a meek leader, and your best
people will walk because of this.
3. It creates confusion at all levels about what behaviors
are ok and not ok, and this will cause friction across
your staff.
4. Toxic behaviors and attitudes spread like a virus. If
you allow one person in the organization to behave
inappropriately, soon you’ll see that their behavior
has spread to more and more of your employees.
If you have a toxic employee, you need to take action before
your whole staff—and your organization—suffers. Clearly
communicate how the employee’s performance deviates from
your expectations, work with them to change their behavior
and if they can’t or won’t change given sufficient opportunity
to do so, remove them from the organization. Difficult as it
may be, your non-toxic employees’ well-being (and retention!) depends on you.