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I read a book by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) in the mid 90s called the Dilbert Principle. The last chapter was his "serious" chapter on management. One point he made that stuck strongly in my mind was to "Get rid of the a##holes" (as he put it).

I've worked in more than one organization where one staff person was able to poison any effort or project. People like that need to be removed. And when I say removed, I mean fired. I've never seen a case where their contributions outweighed their poison spreading.

Makes me think of the Gallup research on engagement. They have the bottom category called "actively disengaged," the folks least likely to be turned around.

If someone is an actively engaged star performer, it must drive them absolutely crazy if managers don't confront the actively disengaged that are dragging down morale and productivity.

I'm not sure we are always building manager's coaching/confronting capacity sufficiently, particularly early on when they move into their positions.

Yes, it's true. There's a great book, "The No A##hole Rule" by Robert Sutton that can help you figure out if you, or someone you know, is one of these people.

While I'm somewhat serious about that (above), I'll agree, I've never seen the contributions of a poisonous person outweigh the damage they did in the long run. It just plain sucks the energy and spirit out of everyone around them. And it forces other staff to create inefficient workarounds and to try to compensate for the poison - which just makes them angry and resentful.

You might know it is a real problem, like I discovered in one job, when the poisoner is gone from the office. I was always shocked at how different the energy in the room was when the bad apple was absent. People seemed happy, engaged, wanted to share ideas, energetic. It was like I had been transported to a parallel happy universe. When the bad apple was around, everyone just kept their eyes down, mouths shut and tried to get meetings over with as quickly as possible.

There is always one screw-up in the office, every office. If you get rid of your screw-up, another appears. There's always someone at the bottom of the performance ladder. The trick is to keep the bad apple from infecting the whole bunch. Organizational culture: we don't screw up. Top management: we're a high-performance organization. Operations: we put systems in place to prevent mistakes. Etc., etc. Even though it's impossible for everyone to do great work all the time, the organization itself sets the standards and that keeps the bad apples in their place--at the bottom of the barrel.