How to Avoid Hiring Toxic Employees

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Well, hello, hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. As always, super pumped, super, super pumped to be in your ears. And today we're going to talk about something that is really, really, really pivotal. And it is how to avoid hiring toxic employees. Right? How to that. And the reason why this is so important is listen, right now I'm in the middle of the visibility formula workshop and we're showing people how to build this big brand so you can attract clients, you can attract team members and all of those things. But when you come to the back end of running your business, your team is liquid gold. They're the ones who run the ship. They're the ones who help you deliver a high quality service or product. They're the ones who create the time freedom for you and all of that. And so everything we can do to figure out team is something worth doing right? So this is going to be really important. So what do I do to avoid hiring toxic employees? And you know, really I want to start off with this whole concept of, you know, hiring is hard, it's too difficult. You know, the people are difficult. If only I could get the right people. And the truth of the matter is, figuring out the people thing in your business would be probably the hardest work that you'll ever do. But it will also be the most rewarding work you'll do. It is what will give you the Freedom. It is what will give you the ability to bring all sorts of expertise and connections and experiences into your business to create something you could have never created by yourself. But will there be challenges with it? Yes. And so I would say to you, one of the best things you can do is embrace the challenge of it all, realize that it's not going to be easy and be okay with it. Not being easy. Like, fighting the fact that it is challenging is what makes it the most challenging.

Right.

Like, once you come to terms, okay, this is going to be hard work, but it's going to be great work. It's going to have a great roi. Then you can lean into it, right? Because, you know, it is what it is. Okay? So I want us to have that as an overarching thing. It's just. It has a really, really, really high reward and this work to pull it off. Okay. All right, so let's talk about this toxic employee thing. This. The starting point is this, right? The starting point of hiring well, is. Is really looking inwards. It's not looking outwards. So we're going to talk about the person, but we're going to start with you. And so the first thing is, is you being a great leader. Like, how do I find great people? How do I not employ people who are toxic or poor performers or whatever? The starting point is great. Growing in your capacity as a leader, Right? So what is your capacity? What do you need to learn? Are you good at hiring? Are you good at firing? Are you good at building culture? Are you good at casting vision? Are you good at holding people accountable? Are you good at those stuff? Like, if you're not. And when I say NASA, like, oh, I suck. I'm not good at it. Like, if you see that there's so much room for improvement, then realize that every one of these things I listed is a skill, and you can learn the skill. I remember when it. In my practice, my practice was like, you know, like it had a revolving door. People would come in, they leave so quickly. Our turnover was high and all of those things. And in the beginning, I was like, all these people and. And things like this. And later on I was like, you know what? The reason why this is happening is because you're not really good at hiring. And I remember going to get a book on hiring and firing. It was written by Brian Tracy, little booklet. And I read it, and he talked about having multiple interviews. He talked about, you know, when you do bring them on board, start them heavy, don't give them a day that doesn't look like what a real day working with you would be like, because you're onboarding them, give them something as close to reality as possible. He talks about, you know, holding people accountable, all those kinds of things. And once I learned those skills, then my ability to attract and keep and lead the right people went through the roof. Right? So the starting point of getting better employees is becoming a better leader. Right? And so, so that's the very first thing. And again, when you notice a trend in your team, it's very easy to say, oh, everybody sucks and all that. But you also want to look inwards because you hired them, you hired the people, you kept them, you trained them. I mean, you know what I mean? And so it's not a blame game, it's just taking radical ownership. And so you look and you're like, okay, what could I have done differently? What, what is this a symptom of? What is this showing me about an area that maybe is deficient, that I can go learn? I can uplevel, right? Not that it's bad, but I could uplevel, I can make it better. Right? And that's a really responsible way to look at things. And you can change it. Think about, you know, like, you know, high caliber teams like NBA team or football team, if all the players suck, the person, the first person who's going to get fired is the coach, not the players. Right? Okay. And does that mean everything's your fault? No, this is about taking radical ownership. Okay? So that's the first thing. The second thing is you want to become very clear on what it is you want the person to do. So for your employee, like, what is this specific role? And I've talked about this a number of times and I continue to talk about it because this is one of the things that I find is most challenging for a lot of entrepreneurs. They want to hire a role. And when I, when I tell them, when I work with my clients, I'm like, okay, let's go clarify this. Like, what exactly do you want this person to be responsible for? What are their key result areas? Their KRAs are their KPIs. You know, what would doing a good job look like? What kind of skills would they need to pull off the job? Then two weeks later I'm like, where's your ad? Oh, I haven't gotten to it yet. Four weeks later, where's your ad? Well, I haven't gotten to it yet. You know why? Because it's work to unscrabble all that information and say this is exactly what I want. But this is the thing. If you don't show somebody where the goal post is, they cannot score, right? And so it being led without clarity is painful because nobody knows what you really want them to do. Nobody knows when they're doing a good job. Nobody knows when they're doing a poor job. Nobody knows. You know, how they can exceed your expectation because they don't even know what your expectation is. And then there are times you're frustrated, and they see you're frustrated, but they don't know how to fix it because they what you want. And so taking the time to get crystal clear this. These are the outcomes I want this role to create. These are the key results of this, of this, of this role. These are the skills they need to have. And all of that, like, it will take a minute, and it will take discipline for you to sit down and, you know, like, create that. But once you do, everything becomes easier. It becomes easier for you to identify the person who's a player or not, because you're clear on what you want when it comes to asking interview questions. You're not asking some generic questions you pulled off the Internet or from a Facebook group because you know what you want. You're asking questions to see, is this person the person for the job? Right? The onboarding becomes easy because you just need to train them on the things they need to do so they can get the result you want them to do. To get. When it's time to have evaluation meetings, it's easy because the benchmarks are clear, the objectives are clear to you, to the person, to everybody. Everything becomes better when you describe in great clarity what you want the person to do. Okay, so that's number two. Number three, when it comes to hiring, one of the things that, you know, sometimes people are like, yeah, it doesn't really matter. And all those things is. Is references, right? And a lot of times people, I mean, like, you. You have to screen the references, right? Like, you look through the references. They're all their colleagues and stuff doesn't really matter. Or they've had these recent jobs and not just the one before, because they may not want to tell you about the one right before because maybe they don't want them to know they're le, but they have all these gaps where they don't want you to talk to anybody from a number of jobs they've had. Those are red flags, right? But when you have references and you're like, okay, these are real references. These are people who are their Supervisors who work directly with them, when you talk to them, a lot of times they're like, yeah, they were okay, you know, and all the same. Or they were great and stuff like that. I listen for two things when I talk to references, and I always talk to references. I have my team talk to references. And one thing is I listen to. To what they're not what they're saying, but the tone with which they're saying. The enthusiasm, right? This is if it's a supervisor, right? Like somebody who can. Who can be objective or give me the real scoop and, you know, like, are they. Oh, my goodness, it was a pleasure to work with all those things. I had somebody. She worked with me in my. In my practice. As she moved. She moved to a different state. She moved to Florida. And someone reached out and said, oh, you know, she listed you as a reference. And she told me she listed you as a reference. Friends who wanted to find out about her. I was like, what? I got on the phone with them. I said, if I would hire her right back, like this second, if I could. She went to Florida. We still miss her. She's amazing. She has a great work ethic. And I went on and on and on and on. But the speed with which I answered, the enthusiasm, all of those things, it was because I really enjoyed working with her, and she was such a delight. So I listened for that, right? Because sometimes people want to be politically correct, and they will not tell you things that they did not like about the person they worked with. Now, the second thing is I always ask them this question, and I don't know, like, for most people, it. It throws them off a little. Maybe they. They don't get asked it a lot. I don't know. But I'm like, if you have the opportunity to rehire this person, would you. And sometimes there's a pause, and then they'll say yes. And I don't know that that's not really a yes or it's not an enthusiastic yes. So there's some stories here that, you know, you're not telling me, but I hear you. Sometimes they're like, oh, my goodness, like 1,000%. Then that tells me, okay, this person, you know, like, they're a good employee type of thing. So those are two things I do. I listen to the tone. I listen to the energy, the enthusiasm behind what they're telling me. And I always ask, like, if you had the opportunity, will you rehire? And many have been on the standard said, you know, like, I really won't. You know, some of them are like completely neutral, but when they're really enthusiastic about that, that I take that. Okay, so that's number three is interview their, their references. Don't be afraid to do it. And of course, if you're leading a team, you don't have to do this directly yourself, but you just want to make sure that it's done. The fourth thing is, and this is really important and you know, for me, I'm, I'm peace loving person, I'm phlegmatic at my core. I would do a lot, my natural bent is to do a lot to avoid conflict. But you want to build an, a culture of accountability. You want to build a culture of accountability. And the reason, there's so many reasons for this, right? But one of the reasons is every, every adult. I learned this from one of my attendees. Her name is Dr. Anyoku. She's phenomenal. Phenomenal. It's like every adult is like a two year old. They'll take as much room as you'll give them. And so if people come into your organization and you don't have a culture of accountability, they'll keep testing the boundaries and they'll keep taking all the liberties they can take.

Right?

And once you create that, you've just created a system of like, it's just lawless. It's, there's no, it's not. A great office will be like a playground with a fence, right? Which means we have flexibility, we have freedom, we have some autonomy and all of that, but we have guidelines, right? Like, so it's the playground, but there's still a fence. You know what I'm saying? And so to have no accountability is like there, there's no fence. Anything goes, anything can happen. It destroys your culture. And what it does is some people are principled and they're going to come in and they're going to do what needs to be done, but they're going to see that there's no accountability for people who are not doing anything. So what you're telling them is whether you do a good job or not, you get rewarded the same. Your high flyers will leave. Your high flyers will leave. It is so expensive to not have accountability. Okay, so that's on the side. But remember, we're talking about how to avoid the toxic, toxic employee. There's some people who are almost like chameleons in the sense that they would blend in with their environment and given no accountability, they will show up as toxic. Given accountability, they'll behave a different way. Right. And, and it's just because it's like here, this is the way things are done. So, for instance, if somebody has an issue with somebody else and you notice it and it's something that's affecting the atmosphere of your business and stuff, like, you have options. You can, you can, you can have meetings with that person, fix it, or you can let it linger. When you let things linger, they become really bad. When you sweep things under the carpet, they turn into monsters. You see what I'm saying? And so there's somebody who could have behaved in your organization even better than they did, but they didn't because there's no accountability. So they can just get away with anything. They could act any kind of way. They could talk to anybody any kind of way, and it was, okay, you want to build a culture where, like, we don't. We don't do that here, right? We don't do that here. I've always been intrigued by, you know, like, when you look at some companies that are really known for customer service, like Chick Fil A or Disney and things like that, you know, you'll be wondering, where do they find these people from? They find them where everybody else finds their people. But they're big on training, they're big on accountability. They're big on, you know, like, this is our culture and this is the way is going to be. And there are people who would have acted very differently in an organization, but in that organization, the positive peer pressure is so strong and the accountability is so strong that you can act right or you can leave. You know what I mean? And so I just want you to think about this as a different way of, you know, first of all, there's just the bemoaning like, oh, you know, employees and stuff like that. But just remember that great people everywhere. And when you want to start setting the stage to attract the great, like the A players and really avoid the D and E and F players, it starts by looking inwards, like, what is my capacity as a leader? Have I been clear on how this person can win and potentially move up the ladder and things like that? Have I built a culture of. Of accountability? Have I, Have I done that? And in the interview process, am I trying to look for signs that this person may be toxic and avoiding that? Right? And so look at it that way and just walk away with this thought that of course I can hire an A team, of course I can lead an A team. Of course we can have. I can have a dream team. Of course I can amplify what I can get done because I have the right team. I have been working closely with a group of doctors in the armtrain business school who are in what we call EBS scales. So these are doctors who have crossed the million dollar mark, are dangerously close, close to it, and are still in, you know, like, still interested in hyper growth. And one of the biggest things we focus on there is team. Because at that level, one is just too small a number. Like you cannot pull it off anymore. And to watch them build these teams, it gives me so much joy because we are now building businesses that are business assets, that they're like, the business is the product and now the business can work without us. And if we wanted to exit, we can. Like that's what we're building and watching. I'm so excited for the examples of what is possible that is coming to the physician community. And so I want to invite you to embrace this whole concept of building teams and go all in on it. And you know, maybe you're like, oh, you know, like, I really struggle to delegate. If it must be done well, I have to do it. People suck, all those things. I just want to invite you to go away from all of that and start leaning into this concept of yes. One of the hardest things I would do is building a team. But that is the thing that is gonna give me the biggest return on my investment and I'm willing to do it. I want you to start embracing that thought and start looking at your team. Get ready to uplevel them, get ready to add some great players, get ready to build some really great culture. And, and, and this is what sets the stage for you to build that business asset as well. So I'm rooting for you as always. And of course, if you need any support with doing this, you know where to find us on trendy.com forward/call. My team will be happy to let you know the different ways we can support. This is your time. This is our time as physicians. We're absolutely going to crush it. And we are the ones who are going to completely change the narrative for the physician community. So share this episode with another doctor in your world and I'll see you on the next episode of the Entre MD podcast.