Bad Apples: How to Manage Difficult Employees, Encourage Good Ones to Stay, and Boost Productivity by Brette McWhorter Sember

Bad Apples: How to Manage Difficult Employees, Encourage Good Ones to Stay, and Boost Productivity Reviews

• 
  Anand Kumar

  Just finished reading “Bad Apples: How to Manage Difficult Employees, Encourage Good Ones to Stay, and Boost Productivity” by Terrance Sember and Brette Sember
  
  We’ve all worked with employees who weren’t always the best and the brightest, but a bad apple is someone who is especially difficult, troublesome, or hard to work with. Before you were a manager, working with these kinds of people made your life hard, but now you have to manage, control, motivate, and guide that person for the benefit the organization —and deal with any fallout that person causes within your team. This can be challenging for even the most experienced manager, but there are definitely ways to do so without losing our sanity. A bad apple doesn’t have to mean that your team or professional future is down the drain. The objective of this book is to understand Firing is not the solution for all the bad apple behaviors, Terrance has divided book into 3 logical sections where
  
  In first section “About Bad Apples” introduces: What are Bad apples and Good apples in context of teams. It’s surprise that most of the cases we call all the bad apples as “not a good team player”, but it’s good to differentiate what exactly they are from the list - blabber mouth, backstabber, passive-aggressive, waster, Narcissist, The liar, Lazy bones, combatants, poisoner , The buly, The slob, Thief, whiner, Incompetent etc.. There could be bad apples out of our teams who can impact us or our team as well.
  
  In the second section “Problem Solving Techniques” author talks more about techniques to use for motivating bad apples to become good apples, traits dealing with personality conflicts, cultivating conflict resolution skills, Importance of discipline in teams and worst technique on how to handle Firing Bad apples.
  Couple of such suggestions :
  
  - Demonstrating benefits of being Good Apple: Compliments and public recognition (including things like certificates, “employee of the month,” or small prizes), Promotions, Merit raises etc
  - Dealing with responses
  - Effective Conversations
  
  In recent past I’ve used the techniques mentioned in this book for couple of problems I’ve in team and seeing a positive results, though there’s more to work before I conclude as “resolved”
  
  Last section which is short but very important too is all about “Fend off future Bad Apples” author talks on how to create an environment that not only discourages Bad apples but also encourages Good apples with a positive work environment. Few of the suggestions include suggestions related to sort of workplace as well. In the last author also suggested on points need to consider for interviews and what all needs to observe and what authority has to show in this process.
  
  What separates good managers from bad is not how they act when things are going smoothly, but rather how they respond to difficult situations. Make a difference today!
  
  Overall it’s a good book which will help you to Manage difficult employees.
  Happy Reading!!
  
  #TerranceSember @TerranceSember
• 
  David Ehlers

  A Great read - info on hoe best to select a course of action for someone who is negatively impacting the team; also provides insight into encouraging your best for continued productivity.
• 
  Tammy Goodwin

  This book is rotten.
• 
  Azri Asmon

  The simplest way to identify a bad employee is to determine if he negatively affects the company's bottom line.