Have you kept a disruptive team member around when you could have fired/relocated them?

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Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Sometimes when there is a trouble maker on the team, we still keep them around for reasons such as: 1. they may be a technical expert and we can't do without them. 2. they have influence or connected to someone with influence. 3. we are coaching them and hope they will change over time etc.

Have you kept such a team member on board despite the issues?

Posted: Apr 4, 2018 7:44 PM

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Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Apr 05, 2018 8:27 AM

Replying to Kiron Bondale

...

Deciding what to do in such unfortunately common cases is driven by the context including how long the team will need to tolerate the behavior, what is your best alternative, and so on.

As others have said, this is a negative risk which likely you'd keep in your Little Black Book, Sante, and the response to it might involve compartmentalizing the individual as much as possible to shield the rest of the team from their toxicity and trying to build up bench strength so that if not now, then not too long down the road you can replace them.

Kiron

Thanks for the feedback Kiron.

Posted: Apr 5, 2018 8:49 AM

Dinah Young Project Manager / Software Asset Manager| Prince William County Springfield, Va, United States

I had one member on my team who was not under me but at the same level. Therefore, I have no control over her. She has consistently refused to work as a team member. She wants to keep to herself. This would not be such a bad thing if she was actually producing something. She refuses to take ownership of anything. She says she is a developer but she refuses to follow any standards. She also refuses to estimate how long it will take her to do anything. You try to give her deadlines and she ignores them.
She causes such disruptions when she is forced to work with others, that she basically can just sit at her desk and do nothing. It actually causes a lot of motivational problems with others in the office, because they are working hard and she is not.
She has been here longer than I have. Why is she still here? Because to fire someone takes a lot of work and backing from upper management. Upper management used to protect her because she had a rough time with one of her managers in the past (10 years ago). Now, there is some level of fear because she has complained to HR that she is being treated unfairly. Additionally, it will look odd that upper management went from protecting to trying to terminate in a short period of time. They do not want it to reflect negatively on themselves.
I think the main issue is that she can not "keep up" technically with the other members of the team and so she lashes out to distract from her own lack of abilities.
You may ask if anyone has tried to mentor her. The answer would be yes. Unfortunately it is very difficult to mentor someone who extremely resistant to being mentored.
However, I do think that with the new management that has come in recently may actually address this issue in the near future.

Posted: Apr 5, 2018 9:08 AM

Najam Mumtaz Retired Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

It is not uncommon to have one or two team members with such issues. And things gets complex if they are experts in the field and replacement is not readily available. Shielding other team members from the negative influence to keep project going on is difficult but that's where project manager's soft skills are tested.

Posted: Apr 5, 2018 9:19 AM

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Have you kept a disruptive team member around when you could have fired/relocated them?

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