Characteristics of Employees That Will Disrupt Your Business
Watch out for the poor team players. One of many characteristics of employees that are disruptive.
Have you had poor team players as your employees? Pretty disruptive, aren’t they? Effective teamwork is essential for business success, especially in small businesses.
So what are the traits of these bad apples, so you can avoid them before hiring them?
Consider these 8 characteristics of employees we have identified for our clients to address in their hiring process and some ideas how to test these traits:
Poor listening skills
Listening to the absolute base for most skills you are looking for. If you listen poorly, learning will take a big hit. If you don’t listen well, you won’t understand the perspectives of all team members. To spot poor listeners tell a short story at the beginning of an interview and then ask a subtle question around the story that requires a recall. Not an absolute test. But a good one.
Create a lack of trust
Your team must have faith in team member statements and the importance they put on trust. Are they honest? This one is tougher to find in a short interview. Do your research on the potential hire and pick an obscure point from their background to see if they enhanced the facts by some probing in the interview.
Don’t share information
Openly sharing data, facts, and other types of information are essential to a well-functioning team. Doing it without requesting is also important. To test this trait, make up a simple scenario around the need to share and ask the candidate what they would do in this instance. Don’t make the sharing requirement obvious.
Easily disagree and continue to argue
It is certainly ok for people to disagree and even argue some. But then the argument must stop and learn how to reconcile the conflict. A VERY difficult one to assess in an interview. I might be able to get references to comment on this one. If they comment neutral or negative, be leery!
Do not apply to learn often
A poor team player often is that way because of poor learning from past experiences. This one is a good trait to examine in an interview by asking candidates to give a couple of examples of their day to day learning from experience. How they answer will also complement your evaluation of their honesty and trust,
Avoid risk-taking and change
Here you want to evaluate the potential employee’s propensity for risk-taking and change. The one adverse to change and risk-taking tend NOT to fit in with “A” teams well. To evaluate, have them discuss change and risk-taking in very open-ended questioning. They are not, most likely, able to guess what the correct answers will be.
Don’t like to ask for help
Create an environment where it is OK to ask for help. Encourage it.
Me or I versus we
Listen carefully to all interviews for use of me or I. Too much use of these words should set a flag in your mind for egocentric.
Have you found additional ways to identify the bad characteristics of employees during the hiring process?
