Why do people act up at work?
Bad-behaving employees can affect your entire team and culture.
I’ve worked with leaders and teams in various industries and workplace environments, and I can tell you that when an employee starts acting negatively, it rarely stops on its own.
It tends to get worse, and can lead to hostility, uncooperativeness, project sabotaging and office gossip.
It may be an awkward or uncomfortable conversation, but leaders cannot ignore this team-wrecking behaviour.
Fundamental attribution error
So, what’s the story you’re telling yourself about that co-worker with the sandpaper attitude?
They might have low emotional intelligence or are selfish, deceitful or envious. We make up all kinds of accusations.
One of the reasons we get stuck here is the fundamental attribution error, which refers to attributing other people’s negative behaviours to their character or personality while attributing our own, which may also be harmful, to external factors.
So, my colleague is acting rude because she’s insecure or impulsive, but I’m acting this way because I’m under a lot of stress or my boss doesn’t support me.
Understanding this concept and recalibrating how I interpret the behaviour of myself and others have been immensely helpful for me personally and professionally.
Do you feel valued?
All humans need to feel valued. It’s not a desire, not a want of preference; it’s a need.
Most often, when I work with a team with behavioural problems, the person affecting the group is behaving negatively because they don’t feel valued.
It goes back to our Stone Age brains. If you had skills that contributed to your clan’s success, you had value and stayed safe. If not, you were alone and vulnerable. So, at a fundamental level, we want to feel valued because it’s about survival.
Acting out is an attempt to solve the problem of feeling unvalued, unseen or unheard.
The challenge is looking past the behaviour, which is the secondary problem and finding the real reason that’s making them act this way. I’m not asking managers to become armchair therapists, but if we understand the cause of the behaviour, we can help.
You can do this by starting with the three C’s: curiosity, candor, and compassion.
Curiosity
Curiosity helps us from judging prematurely. Managers need to be curious to find out what’s happening to this person to make them behave this way.
That’s step one.
Candor
Your team member may be uncomfortable owning their negative actions. However, when you have a one-on-one, be honest about the fact that you’re seeing this behaviour and that it is problematic, and there’s probably something deeper going on for them.
Compassion
Before a team member opens up, they need to be sure they can trust you and that you have their best interest in mind, not some other agenda. Show them you care. Listen and get to know them.
Teamwork
I do a lot of this kind of work with teams. As an outsider, it’s sometimes more manageable for me to peel back the onion and get people to open up to me.
Here’s what I’ve discovered: more often than not, they want to feel better, improve the workplace dynamic, and be happier and more productive.
No organization is immune from employees acting out. Unfortunately, this problem persists because we’re quick to accuse, blame, and label the other person’s behaviour instead of asking, “I wonder why they’re behaving that way.”
I know that as a leader, this is slower and scarier because you’re heading into uncharted areas that aren’t always comfortable, but if you don’t get to the root of the problem, it will not go away.