Cancer Kills a Team

I was listening to one of my favorite radio programs the other morning and I heard an interview with Stephen Covey. Although I think Mr. Covey is tough to listen to, his material is inspired and applicable. He is a powerful influence in the personal development industry.

Covey was talking about the "Five C's" that can destroy a company (from his book, The 8th Habit.) As he rattled them off I was focused on each point, drawn to what he was saying from tough personal experience of managing a team of sales professionals for over a decade.

With each point he described, a picture of a former team member flashed across my memory, their "death" replayed and my remorse rekindled. This took place in about 3 minutes. What a waste. What a waste of excellent sales people and what a waste of my time and energy. The battle against cancer of the body and cancer of a team sucks the energy from everyone - the victim and those trying to save the victim.

Here is what Dr. Covey was talking about - The Five Cancerous Behaviors:

Criticizing
Complaining
Comparing
Competing
Contending

Each of the five deadly behaviors capable of metastasizing and destroying an entire individual. Combine them, and a person can be a walking destructive force, tearing down an entire organization faster that a brush fire.

I love what Covey says about these behaviors... "People who don't have their own deep internal act together seek their security from forces outside themselves." If I may carry this to a conclusion, this leads insecure people to gossip about other people and events that don't concern them, that are usually negative, so they feel better about their own lame lives.

(Key to note, people find themselves where they are as a result of the choices that they have made over and over again. They are "lame" because they have chosen to make lame decisions. Thus criticizing others, complaining about others, comparing themselves to others, competing with others and finally contending with others makes them feel good about themselves.)

Unfortunately, most people don't want to do the "heavy lifting" that comes with real personal development. Growth comes from focusing on yourself, not other people, and their are no shortcuts.

Covey also says that "These five emotional cancers literally metastasize their cancerous cells into relationships, and sometimes through an entire culture. Then you've got an organization that's so polarized, so divided, that it's almost impossible to consistently deliver high quality to customers. I might add that it is almost impossible to do ANYTHING when this disease is ravashing your organization. So what do you do?

Kill it. Kill it fast.

As soon as you can diagnose the difference between one of your people "having a bad day" and one of them being ravaged by "behavioral cancer" you must attack. Be direct, tell them you've seens their behaviors before and that there is no place for them in your organization. Finally, if you cannot help the person make change, you must make the change and let them go.

Better to have them go then have your entire company become infected...

TK