Seth Godin provides an interesting perspective on toxic employees and how they manage customers:
Toxic employees are the ones that have difficulty with their co-workers, or worse, far worse, with your customers.They make two big confusions:
- They confuse "How can I help this prospect/customer?" with "How can I get rid of this person and get back to work?"
- They confuse, "How can I have a better day by treating this person with a great deal of respect?" with "Why isn't this person treating me with the respect I deserve?"
Managers can hire the non-toxic, re-assign the toxic and be really clear with themselves that they're willing to pay almost any price to keep toxic employees away from everyone else. And if toxic employees appears to be a pattern, my bet is that it's your fault, not the employees.