Episode 151: How to Manage Toxic Teams

Episode 151: How to Manage Toxic Teams

Brandon Schoen:
Today's episode, we're going to just dive into a quick question, guys, and we're going to talk about toxic teams. And what do you do with toxic teams? Toxic employees, toxic attitudes, people gossiping, people complaining. Oh, my gosh. How are we going to do this? And how do you deal with toxicity on your teams? Ultimately, we're going to relate this back to core values and give you guys just a couple of fun ideas on how to deal with this, because inevitably it's going to come up. You're going to have issues, you're going to have toxicity in your team. So let's get into that.

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business. Make more money, have more time. This is the profit Cleaners podcast with your hosts, Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Profit Cleaners Podcast, the only place where you can learn from the top 1% of cleaning business owners from around the world to take it to the next level and win.

I'm your host, Brandon Shane, and I'm joined by my co host, the amazing, the fabulous Brandon Condre in the house. What's going on, man? Just feeling real fabulous over here and with my allergies. You're feeling fabulous. I get my. Got my radio voice on here. Yeah, Brandon's got allergies and he just came out of the ER twice in the same week. So appendicitis. You guys are in your 40s.

There you go. Don't get appendicitis in your 40s when you're running a cleaning business. It'll. It'll jack you up. But anyways, I've been surprised you've actually, Brandon's still been. He's a champ. He's been showing up to the meetings and been here the whole time. So. But it is a good reminder that anything can happen in your business, guys. So this is why you want to set up systems and set up structure in your business.

So if something happens, you got to take a break the business. When Brandon was out for that time, even if it was just a few days, the business went on without him. So that's the important thing. That's the reason we talk about all these systems and building out the business the way we do it. So anyways, today's episode, let's maybe tell a quick story of we've had lots of toxic teams, but we could tell a couple stories of how we've handled it and.

Right. So this is a problem for any company that has employees. So don't feel bad. Like, if this is going on in Your company. It's going to go on in every company. I wish people would just come to work and act like adults, but for some reason, they don't. That's the short end of the answer there. So, I mean, we had our very first team. One of the team members on there was just.

I don't know, she was just stirring up drama for the sake of doing it, not following the policies. She played favorites out of one of the other three, and we had to get the other team member to send us a video of them not following the policies. And we fired her really early on. And, you know, the one that she got along well with was really upset. She almost quit when we fired her.

And she was asking if she should look for another job. And like, no, I mean, we want you to stay, but we need someone who's going to follow the policies, and she wasn't doing it in a bunch of different ways. And so that was a devastating termination to make because we were brand new and we just had three employees, and there was the only three employees we had.

And we just fired 33% of the workforce. Luckily, we were able to replace that person pretty quickly. It's just, you know, like, it's a hard pill to swallow, especially when finding good people is really hard. But the question you have to ask yourself is, if they are gossiping and arguing behind the scenes, are they really the good employee that you want? I would say that the answer is no.

You do want them to behave. And just because they're a good cleaner, if they're out there poking people with sticks in between cleanings and making everybody mad, then their cleaning is not worth it if they're bringing down everything else. So the idea is, I don't think you're going to avoid it. It's going to happen in every company. The question is, how do you deal with it when it comes up?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point. It's going to happen. It's inevitable. Even if you're doing your interviewing and you're getting to know people, people can lie, people can put on an act, and you don't always know who they really are. And so sometimes that comes out later. And so hopefully you're already hiring with the idea of core values in mind. You're already talking about, here's what we're all about in our business.

We honor and have these standards, and this is what we're all about. So hopefully that right away will scare them away if they're not aligned with those core values. That's the idea is they're gonna be like, oh, my gosh, this isn't like, my. This isn't gonna be a good fit for me. And they're gonna leave right away. However, if they do come on and this starts to happen, I think the best way to start approaching that would be maybe not publicly, because you want to praise publicly, recognize publicly, but in private, pull on the side, say, hey, this is a violation of the core value.

What core value do you think you just violated by not showing up to work on time or by stealing from a customer, which would probably just be getting them fired. But anything outside of those things, that's a violation of those core values. Point it back to, hey, this isn't personal between you and I. This is a violation of our company's standards of our core values. And, you know, we kind of have a policy for that, right, Brandon?

We have a couple warnings and things we do, but hopefully, like, that's the starting point of addressing it and communicating that to them, right? Yeah. So, I mean, if you take the example of, like, the gossipy stuff, you can point out to them that, I mean, the core values that we have that would apply to it are like, a fun and caring place to work. Like, it's not fun if people are talking about the way you look behind the scenes or something along those lines.

So you can point back to that. We also have a core value about open and honest communication. And it's not honest when you're saying something nice to someone's face, but behind the scenes, you're talking trash. And so you can point that back to it. But ultimately, the way that we deal with this is that you have to find a good personality fit amongst your team. They all have to get along.

I'm not saying they have to be best friends and all hang out together after work and outside of work. I just need you guys to come to work, do your job. Honestly, I'd be fine if everyone came to work and just put their head down and didn't speak at all to each other and just went with it. But I do want it to be a fun place to work.

So ideally, they're all jamming at the same music in the car between jobs. Maybe they have some shared interests, you know, some common ground that they can talk about, which would be great. But ultimately, from a business owner standpoint, you have to make sure that everyone's getting along to the point where they can function and do their job. As you know, we don't love adding new services to our business.

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BreezyBlue that's profitcleaners.com Breezyblue so what we usually do is if there's this huge personality conflict, we just rotate teams and this is a benefit of being large. We have 14 teams with three people and a number of full time floaters that bounce between teams when people call out sick. And so we have a lot of moving pieces. These are a lot of chess pieces on the board that we can put where we need them to sort of get the best out of them.

And that takes some time. So like we have a, you know, we have like an employee success manager that's in the company and her whole job is just to make sure that the employees are succeeding. And so she knows those people really well and she's able to make the team assignments such that we think everyone here will get along. But when some gossipy junk comes up, you have to take that seriously.

If you ignore it, that's just like a festering wound. Like it's never going to go away. So you can't just brush it under the rug. So and so said this cool. Bring everybody in. We're all going to sit down. Like you're going to the principal's office. If you're going to act like kids, we're going to treat you like kids. So sit down. Tell me what happened. Why did you do that?

Is that an appropriate thing to say to your coworker who is a full fledged adult just like you are, like, there's no reason to be talking about any of this stuff at work. And ultimately this ends up with people losing jobs. So we're going to give you a verbal warning, a written warning, and then we're going to terminate you. And we're doing that because I'm trying to save the mental health of the company as a whole.

I don't care that it's a he said, she said argument here. I care what everyone else is telling me and they're telling me that you are the problem. So that's part of the issue. Yeah, I love that. And it's like what you said Raina is kind of doing internally, and this is going to get a lot easier as you have more teams to work with, but it's just changing that dynamic.

Right. So maybe one person doesn't get along with someone on the team, fine. Change the dynamics. Switch them to a different team. Maybe they're going to work out better over there. But ultimately, what you also said, Brandon, there was huge, which is. It's like a festering wound. It's like a cancer. It literally is like a toxic cancer. When somebody is with a negative mindset on the team, they can bring your entire company down.

So you have to treat it like that and get it out. Like, if there's a cancer in your body, you got to get it out. If there's a cancer in your business, you have to make that decision, obviously. But if you can give a verbal warning and just kind of reset everything, get them back on the right track, great. But if it's past that, if they're not, you know, willing to, you know, rise to that occasion, you just got to let them go.

And you can't feel bad about that because ultimately, you have a business to run, and one person could literally take out your whole team, your entire business. They could go do a lot of bad things. And so you have to cut out the cancer sooner than later. Fire fast and higher. Higher slow. Right. Fire fast, hire slow. So same thing with people in your business. If there's a cancer, there's toxic attitudes in your business.

Get rid of it. This is also why having your culture established and I think, like what Brandon said, having them on teams, talking throughout the day, working together through challenges, you're building culture. You're building those core values, and they're living those core values together, which ultimately is that system of weeding out those people for you. Because if your teams are aligned with that culture and those standards, they're going to be like, hey, so and so, just joined the team.

They're super negative. They're complaining about how many houses we got to do. They're just going to can them for you. They're going to be like, she's not working out. He's not working out. We got to use someone different that can actually pick up the pace and has a better attitude. Your teams are going to carry that culture forward for you and ultimately do some of the job you're maybe doing in the beginning of establishing that culture and that standard, but that's why it's really important to do that.

And, yeah, I don't know if you had Anything to add to that, Brandon? But that's the basics of it. There's no, there's no hard and fast rule on how to deal with it. Like, I think you need to approach it from a neutral ground. When you're dealing with this gossip stuff, you can't just come in and assume that so and so is telling the truth. You have to deal with it with kid gloves.

Unfortunately, it's very ridiculous to have to do this, but it's just the way that it is. You know what I mean? So you have to ask questions, investigate some things, come to some conclusion, explain that this is unacceptable. Like, we've had issues with group chats being set up where people are talking trash about other people and other managers. We get screenshots sent over sometimes. None of that should be happening in a professional workplace.

And that's what we want. I do want a professional workplace here. This isn't, you know, like it's not a free for all. And I need you guys to be able to get along inside in a team, like in a customer's house. Like we just had to fire someone from our Santa Fe team yesterday because they got in an argument inside of a customer's house. And so that's totally unacceptable.

And I wish there was some better way to fix these things, but I don't know. This is just seems to be part of human behavior, which is ridiculous to me. But you know, you have to roll with it and deal with it. This is like part counselor, part therapist, part disciplinarian. But the most important thing I think is don't just let it stand. You can't just let it sit there.

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And if you want less of the gossip, less of the toxic attitudes, recognize the people that have positive attitudes, recognize the people that are going above and beyond that are actually living your core values. So everybody's praising them publicly and everyone sees that and they're like, hey, I don't want to keep getting in trouble over here. I want to actually get recognized and praised publicly. That's huge, right?

So just that right there. Also, think about you as a leader. You're the CEO of your business. How are you leading by example? Are you constantly complaining? Are you constantly bickering about things? How's your mindset? Right? Are you actually leading by example by focusing on solution instead of problems and complaining about stuff? Which brings me up to another point, which is we posted this in our group and people loved, loved the response to it.

But it's a great book that you guys should read, which is, I think it's Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People. It's a classic old school, you know, personal development book, probably 100 years old now or more. How to Win Friends and Influence People. There's a chapter in that book called Never Criticize, Condemn or Complain. And I, someone who brought this up in the Facebook group, I just said, have your team go read that chapter of that book.

Go buy them all the book anyways, because it's a great book. Everybody should read that book on your team. But have them read that chapter, Never criticize, condemn or complain. And then go give them a test on that chapter and just, you know, make that a requirement. Be like, this is our core value, guys. This is something that's important to us. And give them fun things, give them books to read, give them tests that maybe are outside of the normal.

That would just set you yourself apart. And again, if you guys are educating your people, they're going to feel like, wow, this is valuable. Like, I'm getting better. My life is getting better. You just taught me something. I want to stick around. I want to be more loyal. So if you're investing in your people as a leader, they're going to want to invest back. They're going to reciprocate that value and stick around longer and live the core values.

Right. Rise of that occasion. So, so just a couple ideas there, guys, but just reinforce and incentivize what you want to see more of in your business and cut out the cancer, cut out the toxicity before it's too late. That would be my biggest, biggest point there. So. Agreed. Anyways, yeah. So, I mean, it's going to happen. It's happened quite a lot to us, but, you know, it's just part of the business.

The more you have your core values and your standards of your culture and your business, that's going to alleviate a lot of these problems. Because ultimately, nobody wants to be a straggler, Nobody wants to be falling behind and, you know, slacking. Everyone's going to be like, hey, you're slacking over there. Pick it up. Right? And that's what your culture does. That's what, that's the point of that system, of that culture when you're not around is people are gonna, you know, call people out and say, hey, you gotta step up.

We gotta do better. So anyways, that's how I think we would handle, you know, those kind of situations. If you guys are handling toxic teams and toxic environments, you gotta handle it as fast as possible before it gets more toxic and just know that it's part of the game. So. All right, cool. Well, I think that pretty much wraps up this podcast. Hopefully you guys took some gold nuggets away from that.

It'll help you guys keep your teams going longer, stronger, having more culture, more values, ultimately trickling down to the customer experience and having a much more sustainable, more successful business. So keep the questions coming. If you guys have more questions like this, hop into our Facebook group. That's where this question came from. So we'll talk about more of those questions as they come. But pop in that group.

We're in there every day helping you guys out. As you're growing your cleaning businesses, go over to profitcleaners.com facebook or just click on it on the website. It's pretty easy to find the Facebook group there. And yeah, join in there. It's a great place to start. If you guys haven't watched the masterclass yet, go check that out too. We talk about it all the time, but that's a great, great place to jump in if you're super serious about taking your cleaning business to the next level.

Profitcleaners.com masterclass we'll show you kind of behind the scenes on our business a little bit more and how we work with people to take their businesses and maximize them to the next level. So keep it clean. Thanks for joining us today. To get more info, including show notes, updates, trainings and super cool free stuff, head over to profitcleaners.com and remember, keep it clean.