Do You Have A Toxic Saboteur In Your Workplace?

There are three different types of people in an organization. They are the good people or helpful or friendly. They love to collaborate. They are the bad people, probably the wrong word, but there are the type of people that make mistakes and they tend to be unfriendly, maybe even isolated. And then there are the, what we call the ugly people. Those that are meaning to try and take you down. Sound scary? Well, this type of behavior could be a type of a saboteur. And with me again, we have Peter Nakra to discuss about it.

Thank you.

Let's start again. What do we mean by a saboteur?

Saboteur is someone who sets others up for a fall. Most often to big note themselves or to advance themselves.

Yes.

So we gave you this project, but I can do it much more better than you can.

Okay. Why is it toxic?

It's toxic because it destabilises the organisation. It destabilises the individuals that everybody needs to work with. And it brings to prominence essentially the one person who seems to become the indispensable person.

Yes, we've seen a few of those. How do we recognize that we're dealing with a saboteur?

Saboteurs are really most often very suave. They're very, very elegant in the way that they conduct their sabotage. So most often you find that it's the result when you're left feeling like, oh my gosh, what just happened?

Yes.

And okay, the first time around you might say, well, maybe that was a coincidence. So how do you define a saboteur? Someone who you can almost count on for that behavior to reoccur.

Correct. And I want to. Maybe this is the time that we just want to sort of define that a saboteur is not someone that's personally sabotaging him or herself because they fear success.

Yes.

This is about sabotaging their colleagues, organization and so forth. So coming back to it, why would person decide that they would want to sabotage their co workers organization?

So there's several ways that that can happen. I mean the most, the most.

Usual.

Thing is that people come with that predisposition because this is the way that they've learned life works best for them.

Correct.

There's also triggers that can happen for people and this is something that can be, I guess, seen within an organization where something life changing happens. They've lost a loved one or they're in financial straits or some other kind of massive stress. People react differently in different ways. When you start seeing a change of behavior after that, that can be a trigger.

Yeah. Side question. Would A saboteur or an employee who is displaying such behavior be threatened by another employee that is maybe competitive and they may feel, oh, I better react.

Yes, yes. Most people would react with stepping their game up and creating a bit more excellence about what they do. There are also people who decide that they've got a strategy and they're not.

Afraid to use it. Oh, yes, correct.

And usually there is a little bit of, okay, well, going to get you behind that.

Is that strategy often sought, like, as a plan or is it just comes.

Out, it comes back down to predisposition. So how do you handle. How do you handle adversity? How do you handle stress? How do you handle things that don't always go your way? And different people have different strategies. A strategy may be, that's it, I'm going to, yes, I'm going to improve my game. I'm going to be the top of my game. Whereas other people can say, well, I'm going to be a little bit more shady about it. This is how I'm going to go about it.

So we know that no person is born as a saboteur, but there are different levels. Can you sort of elaborate in terms of what are these sort of levels?

The levels come down to how often they can get away with it. So, I mean, we can. We're all sometimes prone to try and cut corners or to do things a little bit more easily and ride off the backs of others. But once that becomes a successful strategy and that strategy becomes larger and larger and larger, that becomes a way of handling things, and eventually that will turn out to be a saboteur personality because it just works for them.

Yeah. So I know we're sort of digging into more details, but what turns an employee then into a saboteur? Is it the workplace? Because I suppose that person could be also a saboteur at home or in a sporting event or.

So I think it's probably not global enough to think that it just happens inside of the workplace. Something that will happen, whether they're playing a sport, whether they're playing at home, whether they're dealing with their spouse, whether they're dealing with whatever. It becomes a way of handling situations that look like, feel like, smell like, whatever it is that triggers them.

Correct, correct. What are then the sort of precursors, behaviors that could, you know, start off.

You know, a lot of times, and this is something to look at from an internal perspective. A lot of times these strategies are modeled. So we don't, as you say, we're not all born. We're not born saboteurs. So somewhere along the lines this must have been introduced as a concept. And then people start modelling off that shakily or in a minor fashion. Right at first. And then gets back to how often do they get away with it? Then it comes rather than an exception, it becomes the pattern.

Yeah, I suppose the question then also is someone who's maybe slightly disengaged to someone who's highly disengaged or disgruntled, you know, someone who's disgruntled has more propensity to commit some form of sabotage and.

That gets back to the trigger. So the stress points I was mentioning before is that one of those stress points can be a disgruntledness. Didn't get the promotion or didn't get the pay rise or just because I mean there's so many different triggers. There can be internal, personal triggers. There can be external triggers. Like, I mean if we're looking at a sabotage on a corporate level, there could be financial.

Correct.

And then there could also be like, you know what, I'm leaving this company, I'm going to do the. Or this organization, I'm going to make sure they remember.

So let's talk about from an impact. Obviously there's three different levels of impact. One is, well, there's probably more than that, but there's the individual. So what's the impact to the individual then? There is the impact to his or her team.

Yes.

And then to the organization.

So going to the individual, this is not a satisfactory, this is not a. There's an immediate satisfaction but there is not a long term satisfaction out of this strategy.

That's true.

Which is why the game escalates because it becomes like, well, that wasn't satisfying enough. I need to expand my game. I need to expand my game. At one point in time that's going to come to an end. There's only so much lifespan you've got in that before it actually causes them great grief. So that's on an individual level. On a colleague level, the people that are experiencing that kind of sabotage become disenfranchised themselves. They may start doing their own form because they're being modelled to. They might start doing their own form of sabotage. So you get this replication through the organization, they might just decide to leave, they've had enough. And on a corporate level it becomes very. Look, outcomes are important. On a corporate level the outcomes are only as good as your team. And if your team is working with half a hand tied behind their back, you're Going to get that result.

Correct. What are different levels of sabotage? Because we know there's the corporate sabotage. I mean, you've also got the individual sabotage, but also there is the IT sabotage, which is using technology to cause mayhem.

Yep.

How do you see it?

And this is obviously not the whole spectrum, but the first one that can spring to mind is because I can.

Yes.

The next one is because I'm getting some sort of a benefit out of that. The benefit can also be because I can. Aren't I great? There could be financial benefit out of it, or there could be somebody turning around and saying, hey, this is going to be the benefit to you from an external point of view. You must go do this now.

Yeah. And look, you mentioned a really interesting point, and a lot of people don't understand this. It's about what drives us from a human emotion. We're driven by two forces. One is pain and pleasure. So even though they do something that is perceived as bad, they are getting something out of it. So it's really important for people to.

Realize that it is.

All right, so another question that I have is, I suppose, the difficulty for management and executive to identify a person that's going through that sort of situation, why is it so difficult?

Management is most often focused on the external outcomes. So what are our corporate numbers? What are our corporate KPIs? How are we penetrating the market if we're in a commercial environment, how are we delivering the services that we're supposed to be delivering? So the focus is more external than internal. And a lot of times as management, the tendency is to say, okay, well, I'm going to assume we've got a fully functioning ship, everybody's happy, Everybody's. What do they call it? One big happy family. And look, and it is nice to sit in that perception because then you can promote yourself out there much more effectively. But that tends to incubate stuff inside that you don't want to see.

Definitely. Definitely. So let's wrap it up. So what is the key message here or the key takeaway from this discussion?

It's probably more statistical that people will tend to sabotage to get there, to advance themselves. It does need to be looked at, it does need to be identified. And obviously, you know, there are people to reach out to to help with that.

Correct.

But it's something that. It's kind of like having the brakes on while you're pushing the accelerator on the vehicle or that you're trying to propel forward.

Sounds like another civitage, doesn't it? With that, Peter, thank you very much.

Welcome.

The next video we're going to be talking is about the harassment in the workplace.

Yes.

That's toxic video number two. Thank you.

Thank you.