Prepare Your Leadership: What Makes A Toxic Employee?

Hello, Cadre crew. Happy Monday. Last Monday of March, kind of getting towards springtime. Now officially springtime. Last week was the start of that. As you can see in the title, today, we'll be talking about toxic employees. So it's outlined by technical brief from Hogan assessments and how they can kind of define and categorize toxic employees. So give it a couple seconds here. Wait for some folks to join. Jules, welcome. Happy Monday. Been having a good start to your week. Halfway. About halfway through the day.

Foreign things of three. You know, it hits a lot of the buckets of positive psychology. The first list of three is what are three things that you're feeling right now? Could be emotions, could be a mood, an attitude, could be a sensation. What are three things that you're feeling right now? Just kind of let. You let yourself ground yourself right now in this moment. What are three things that you're feeling right now? And then turning from that, what are three intentions that you have for the rest of your day?

You could be reflecting on how you're feeling and maybe how you want to use those emotions productively, or maybe how you want to reframe those emotions. Maybe you just want to check something off your to do list. What are three intentions that you have for the rest of your day? And then what are three? Last one is what are three things you are grateful for? And this kind of gets at some research by Seligman back in the 90s where he talked about whether turning from a pessimistic outlook to an optimistic outlook.

What are. The way we can do this is by writing down our gratitude daily. So right now, what are just three things you're grateful for? Could be from this morning, could be going into this week, could be from the week. What are three things you're grateful for, Jules? Happy, relaxed, and refreshed. Great. Sounds like you might have had a good weekend and a good start to your week. So kind of we can revisit that. Hello. Speak, Wonder. Welcome. You just joined us in time to get into some of the research that I'll be bringing about toxic employees in the workplace.

So this is from Hogan assessments and their research. They're a pretty big player in the personality leadership development assessments, and they define toxic behaviors as aggression, manipulation, impulsivity, kind of violating norms in general. And these can. They say these can stem from misalignment with core competencies that we need for the workplace. So some major findings they had was that in general made these toxic employees. A lot of it came from being lesser, having less of these competencies so having like poor self management, maybe a lack of listening to others, maybe a lack of leveraging people skills, so not really cooperating with others, getting along with others.

A lot of those came from, you know, these being less in these competencies. Like aggressive communication was low self management, low listening to others and low leveraging people skills, maybe manipulative behavior. They were as low in influencing others and low in driving results. However, the unusual finding they had was kind of a popular term. Now narcissistic behavior was actually having too much. So while all the other competencies was being low in in these skills. Narcissistic behaviors came from often having, displaying too much confidence, you know, project poise and self insurance when completing tasks.

So a lot of these toxic traits came from a lack of a competency. So it's areas where you can build in, in, you know, listening to others, caring about others, you know, accountability. Well, narcissistic behavior was the only one that showed up having too much of a competency. So what are some practical takeaways? While looking at their personality inventory, they found that the protective personality traits that help prevent these toxic behaviors. So the main traits are adjustment, which is emotional stability, prudence, which is being careful.

And then interpersonal sensitivity, which is being considerate of others. And now what is the three that are high risks of showing toxic employees? It's excitable, which means moody and easily upset, skeptical. So this is always being suspicious of everyone, especially under stress. You're going to kind of think are they up to something mischievous. So risk taking, pushing boundaries and then bold. So being overly confident. So the main skills to take away that you can work on to avoid being, you know, that employee, that toxic employee in the workplace or maybe that just that toxic person in your environment is self management.

So regulating emotions, regulating yourself, you know, and then caring about people. This is a lot about sensitivity towards attitudes, feelings and circumstances of others. And then the last one is integrity, which is. Hold up, let me grab the exact definition. Is honestly in accordance with moral and ethical principles. So it's self management. This is all about just controlling emotions and moods and not letting that overwhelm you. Caring about people, being considerate. And then integrity is about being honest.

So I just found that interesting for you to learn about today. Go back to what we started with the three things of three. Jules is hoping to check off multiple work tests. That's great. New beginnings, shafts of sunlight and then belly laughter. That sounds great. That sounds a lot, a lot of smiles coming from Speak Wonder and I love it. So I hope you have a great rest of your Monday. Remember, take a time to reset right now, refresh. And as you go on to the second half of your day, Becky's also, I think, life crisis.

Parents are ill, going through a divorce. Find out if they're going through a life crisis. Yes, that's good. That's a lot. It's deep, but wow. Hope you have a great rest of your Monday and I'll catch you next week. Bye.