Why There Is So Much Drama Among Your Employees

Drama Starts With People Issues

Personalities and relationships intertwine in every company. Replacing a person costs money and takes effort. Every owner hopes each employee will live up to expectations. Those facts make personnel changes hard.

Getting the right people in the right seats across an entire company takes time, patience, and a little grit. Owners put that work off, and the drama grows while they wait.

Three Kinds of Drama

Company structure can shape how employees feel. It helps to break drama into types, because each type hurts the team in its own way. Drama has a few flavors. These three are the most common.

The Disgruntled Employee

Disgruntled employees share their unhappiness with other employees and influence the ones with a weaker tie to the company. They lack the ability to speak openly and honestly with leadership, and they do not power through a challenge until someone corrects the situation. Or, worse, they walk through life with a negative disposition and like to gripe.

The griper does not have the confidence to bring the issue to the owner. The owner hears about it from someone else, and that blindsides the owner.

The Capable Employee Who Acts Entitled

This employee runs through the company like a bull in a china shop. You spot this person from the chaos and scorched earth that trail behind them. The challenge is that this person produces, so a change is hard to make. Who wants to lose a top performer?

History shows these people do more harm than good to the organization, and the entire team breathes a sigh of relief when they leave. I have found that when the company asks this person to leave, the employees they impeded perform better. That gain more than makes up for the lost production.

The Unprofessional Employee

This employee spreads gossip or lets personal issues hinder work relationships, and that undermines a cohesive work environment. Employees do not have to be best friends. They do have to work to make the company better and more successful. That means treating each other with respect and striving to make every co-worker as productive as possible.

The Owner Feeds the Drama

At one client, a mid-level employee was the Drama Queen. She gossiped about her coworkers and to her coworkers, made snarky comments, and belittled newer employees. She created a constant undercurrent of tension whenever she was in the office. Her coworkers avoided her until they had to talk to her, and that stifled their productivity.

The owner fed the drama without seeing it. The owner ignored the situation and gave her weak pep talks instead of taking decisive action. Owners wait for simple reasons: they are busy, they do not want to replace someone, and they expect everyone in the organization to do their jobs and get along. Drama continues when nobody holds the employee to the standard. I wrote about holding a team accountable in a separate article.

Once we started working together, the owner assessed the employee against the company's core values. The owner saw that to stay consistent and committed to the company's stated objectives, this employee had to go.

Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement scores across business units. Variance describes a pattern and does not prove cause. The pattern fits what I saw with this owner: the way a leader responds to behavior shapes the team.

An owner who steps in as referee between employees pays a price. I describe what founder burnout looks like in another article. Refereeing also pulls an owner away from delegating without losing control.

A Hire Against My Gut

At the start of my career, a company leader pressured me to hire someone I should not have hired. The person did not have the capacity to do the job. His personality did not fit the work, and he lacked the skills and experience the job required. I was young and inexperienced, and I let the pressure win. I should have taken stronger ownership of that decision and hired someone else.

The friction came from his underperformance. It damaged my relationships with other employees because I carried him longer than I should have. Looking back, I needed the right tools to show that he did not fit our company culture and did not have the capacity for the job. Those tools would have given me a clean argument to move in a different direction. That would have been a better decision for the whole team.

Cut Once and Clean

Sometimes a great team stands in place and the company still has to make cuts. In that situation, it is better to rip the band-aid off.

I have seen companies try to ease the pain with small cuts. A major data center outsourcer I worked for in the 90s took that route. A division meeting followed each round of layoffs. Leadership said the move was painful for all of us, but we were the team that would take the company into the future. A few months later, another cut came.

A couple of rounds was enough. The promises rang empty and the confidence in the strategy was gone. The best performers started looking for their own exits because they did not trust the executives, the company, or the plan.

If you face a hard people change, expect it to take time, patience, and grit. Make the change once.

How I Help a Leadership Team Find the Drama

Finding the drama kings and queens in your company takes routine, open, and honest communication. Through my EOS® practice, I teach leadership and management fundamentals. Those fundamentals open communication channels with each employee, clarify every expectation about delivering to the agreed standard and living the company's core values, and give each employee room to embrace the job and enjoy success.

Leaders who minimize this communication, or who treat every one-on-one as a performance review, miss the people issues that stare them in the face. I cover the leadership team side in holding a leadership team accountable.

Common Questions

What causes drama in the workplace?

People issues cause most of it. Disgruntled employees, capable employees who act entitled, and unprofessional employees who gossip create the friction. Drama grows when the owner waits to deal with them.

How do I stop gossip among employees?

Start with clear expectations. Employees need to know the agreed standard and the company's core values, and they need open, honest communication with leadership. Then assess the gossiper against those core values and act on what you find.

How do I deal with an employee who stirs up drama?

Take decisive action. Weak pep talks did not change the behavior of the employee in my client's company. The owner measured her against the company's core values and made the change.

How do I handle a top performer who causes drama?

Do not let production hide the damage. When a company asks this kind of person to leave, the employees they impeded perform better, and that gain more than makes up for the lost production.

How do I handle drama as a small business owner?

Watch for the reasons you wait: you are busy, you do not want to replace someone, and you expect everyone to do their jobs and get along. Open, routine communication with each employee shows you the people issues before they grow.

Talk Through the Drama in Your Company

If drama keeps coming back in your company, the team problem is the place to start. Schedule a Call and we will talk through what you see. If you feel the session was not of value, you don't pay me.