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One person's bad attitude spreads through a team like a virus, cutting cooperation by about 30% and ramping up conflict. An experiment proved it. Hiring the brilliant jerk costs more than you think because they drag down everyone around them.
One person's bad attitude spreads through a team like a virus, cutting cooperation by about 30% and ramping up conflict. An experiment proved it. Hiring the brilliant jerk costs more than you think because they drag down everyone around them.
One person's bad attitude can infect an entire team. And I don't mean that metaphorically. In one experiment, exposure to negative emotions like irritation and hostility led groups to report about 30% less cooperation and significantly more conflict. That's what's called emotional contagion. So when you're considering adding somebody to an important team, don't say, well, they're brilliant, we can tolerate the attitude. You may be calculating only what that person produces individually. You also need to calculate what happens to everybody else around them. Do people cooperate less? Does conflict go up? Do people stop sharing information? Does everybody start dreading the meeting? A talented jerk doesn't merely bring their own attitude to work. They can literally change the behavior of the whole room. And suddenly that brilliant hire gets really expensive.
