Disruptive employee or potential game changer ?

There might be someone in your team that is taking up more of your headspace than others are at the moment. It could even be someone you could call ‘Disruptive. If its not you, it might be someone else calling them that.

I think ‘Disruptive’ is a very lazy word in leadership. It gets used a lot and defined rarely in any meaningful detail. To me, it sounds like a convenient diagnosis, and I’m starting to wonder if its more of an admission of ‘I don’t know what to do with this person so I’m filing them in the difficult’ folder.

This has been me (and many others I know I might add) for most of my life. The best person to describe this is my Mum – ‘Matthew, you’ve always been a bit if a sh#t stirrer, haven’t you ?’ (the only person who still calls me Matthew by the way)

Think about that person you were thinking about earlier…..

Did they stop meetings running late, or stop meetings that were feeling running pointless ?
Did they ignore the process, or point out the process hadn’t worked in two years and nobody had noticed ?
Did they make a colleague feel unsafe or was it just YOU they made feel uncomfortable ?

The last question is the one that really matters because some people earn the title ‘Disruptive’ in fair way and others less so.

The fair title is when there is damage caused by bad behaviour observed ‘by all’ around them and needs dealing with fast – no question. But, that same title gets used for the one who ask the question nobody else wanted to ask or felt brave enough to ask, and that is 100% a different thing.

Before you decide what to do about them, take a second look at them. Do not excuse any bad behaviour, because you shouldn’t, but try to find out which kind of person you’ve got. Were they telling you something you needed to hear, but didn’t want to hear ?

When you called them disruptive, were you describing what they did, or how it made you (just you by the way) feel ?