Hi! I recently made a Twitter post about a**holes at work, and I thought I would expand a bit more in a blog post, so here we go!

First of all, there are factual proofs, research and articles that has been done around "why you don't want a toxic person in a team". It's not just me spouting nonsense. Let's dig into the subject a bit more.

Risk

What is in someone's head stays in their own head if they do not know how to communicate. The person ends up hoarding the information and does not know/want to talk around it. This is a risk to the company long term because you end up with one person really skilled, surrounded by others who aren't really sure what's actually behind x process or Y release, as if there was a "mist" around some subjects. This is a** one man** dependency.

Burn out

If you have ever worked with one of those specimen, you would have noticed something very quickly: they tend to love work, and they don't get tired of it!

However, people surrounding them feel the opposite. Therefore, you end up with a higher turnover surrounding that person. A few reasons:

• It gets tiring to discuss a ticket when you know the other person will not back down, will not acknowledge they might be wrong and that, for hours.
• Feeling of demotivation,
• " I haven't progressed as much as I thought in this role",
• ...

Attitude

There is a lot to say about this one, but I will keep it short. It's obvious a**holes don't have a good attitude - that's why they are what they are. A few examples of behaviours:

• Monitor and doubt others,
• Set unrealistic expectations,
• Likes to point out others 'faults in a non-constructive way,
• Reject situations where they do not feel in control,

Reputation

That one is usually forgotten in the articles I've read. If a team/department contains a schmuck, I can promise you that they have a reputation. Because, honestly, who wants to include a team who contains someone like that? I have seen situations where a department totally ignored a team, as unprofessional as it might sound.

Conclusion

In a few words, why you do not want a prick in your team:

• turnover of people goes higher,
• productivity can actually go down as people don’t feel appreciated/respected,
• if the company has not taken measures against an asshole just because he does tickets… it says a lot.

Have you ever had an a*hole in your team? **Next article, I will share a few tricks on how to deal with the situation :)!*