Megan Hyatt Miller: It began with a change in leadership, something that happens all the time in business. Tyler, the new director, was personable, highly experienced, and had a deep background in the industry. He seemed like the perfect fit. Of course there were changes. A new leader always brings a fresh perspective. There were process improvements, new goals, tighter financial controls, even a few personnel moves.

It was a little hard on morale, but Tyler was confident things were moving in the right direction. There were changes in the marketplace too. Competition was increasing. Because of the recession, the flood of eager new customers had become a trickle of prospects. Staff members struggled to maintain existing accounts. Meanwhile, upper management pressed for results. Revenue plateaued. Expectations skyrocketed.

Michael Hyatt: As the stress mounted, Tyler’s tone became less cheerful and more demanding. He spent hours in the office with the door closed, especially on the day of executive staff meetings. His standard reply to staff questions: “Let me get back to you,” though he seldom did. Then came the rumors. “I heard they’re laying off more people.” “I heard they’re shutting us down.” “I heard Tyler gets a bonus every time he reduces head count.” Before long, Tyler became the enemy. In the break room, team members talked about how aloof he was and how little he cared about their jobs.

Megan: Two employees, David and Emily, finally asked for a meeting with the senior director, but that led nowhere. She told them to take up their concerns with Tyler. They felt betrayed. David asked, “Can you guarantee us that nobody will lose their job next year?” She smiled and fed them the company line: “Things are looking up. Just hang tight a little longer.” Three weeks later, Emily announced that she’d found a new job. Tyler congratulated her warmly, and on the last day he gave her a card and offered a handshake. She smiled nervously and cleared out her desk.

Michael: The next day, Emily started her new job in a parallel position at a competing firm literally across the parking lot. Tyler called David into his office that afternoon. “I’d like you to handle Emily’s client list,” he said.  A blank stare. “I thought you knew,” David said. “Emily’s clients all went with her. That’s why they created her position.” Tyler’s heart sank. “That’s over 20 percent of our revenue,” he said. “I guess there will be some layoffs after all.”

Megan: Though some details have been changed, this story is true. Part of it may sound familiar, because every workplace seems to have its share of drama. It shows the tremendous damage that gossip, rumors, and interpersonal conflicts can do to a business.

Michael: Left unchecked, office drama can sour even the strongest culture. If you can identify with that, here’s the good news: today, we’ll show you how to dial down the drama and create a high-trust, high-energy culture where your team can thrive.

Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael:  And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work, succeed at life, and lead with confidence. In this episode, we’ll show you how to boost productivity by heading off the drama in your company before it starts.

Megan: Leaders build momentum, but nothing kills it faster than office gossip and departmental wrangling. Here at Michael Hyatt & Company we bring decades of experience to handling corporate politics. We’ll show you four solid strategies for dialing down the theatrics so you don’t waste energy on needless conflict. When we’re done, you’ll have a clear strategy for creating a high-trust team that will hum along without a hint of drama.

Michael: Before we dive into today’s topic, let me recommend that you subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already. You can do that so easily by going to iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you’ll never miss an episode. You’ll also be sure to get occasional bonus episodes that aren’t released through our other channels. If you need help, just go to leadto.win/subscribe. Thanks.

Okay, let’s start with a story, because I have an epic, Olympic-size…

Megan: Great. Can’t wait.

Michael: I had an assistant… This was like two decades ago. She came in as a temp, and I was really impressed with her work. I had a temp because I had a vacancy for this position. I was involved in the search and the interviews and all that, but I thought, “Wow! This gal is working out so great.” I’ll call her Angela. Not her real name, but I’ll call her Angela. Then I started getting all this drama, like she would hurt herself and be out for days. One time she was out for a week.

Megan: Hurt herself how? Like, on the job or on weekends?

Michael: Well, like she slipped on the ice at home or…I don’t know…pulled a muscle running. I mean, it was all kinds of different stuff. I don’t even remember the details right now, but I always remember that when she came back it was a little suspicious. Added to that, she always had this drama she would share with her coworkers. It wasn’t evident at the beginning, but it really became evident over time. She was like the epicenter of this story, this movie, where she was the star, and it created all this drama.

Finally, I caught her in a lie, where she had lied to me about why she was out (I won’t go into the details of that because it might reveal it, just in case she’s listening or somebody who was aware of the situation is listening), so I had to fire her, and it was really tough. Of course, that was its own drama, because now, from her perspective, I was throwing her out on the street. She was a single mom, all this stuff. But I had given her warning after warning, and it was consuming so much of my time and attention. It was all this sideways energy going to manage this drama that was totally unproductive. Do you have any stories like that or do you have any theories as to why this kind of drama occurs?

Megan: I can’t think of a story right off the top of my head, but I’ll tell you what. I think there are just some people who are prone to drama. You often don’t see them coming, but after you’ve had a few encounters like that you learn how to sniff it out.

Michael: It’s kind of like the story is not the story. It looks like it’s, at times, an excuse or it’s legitimate. Maybe they have a legitimate complaint, and they’re kind of complaining about that legitimate thing to their coworkers, but it gets everybody worked up into a stew, and it’s just not healthy. Maybe where we should start is by defining drama. Do you want to give a shot at that?

Megan: Yeah. To my mind, drama is anything that creates sideways energy. By that I mean you’re distracted from the main thing. You’re kind of taken “off the line,” and you’re over here off to the side, dealing with something that’s not the main point of what you do. That could look like rumors and gossip. It could look like office politics. It could look like interpersonal conflicts (those are always a blast to mediate), departmental feuds. I mean, the list really does go on.

Michael: Yeah, I’ve had my experience with departmental feuds. Particularly in large organizations, my experience is that’s pretty common. One of the things to consider is…Why does this thrive? As I was thinking about this, preparing for today’s episode, I thought of two reasons. First of all, just human weakness. Some people have a fear-based or a scarcity-based mindset, so they’re kind of always on the defensive.

Megan: I’ve seen this many times.

Michael: I know. Me too. Some people have an unhealthy need for significance, like I was talking about Angela. This is just the way they’ve learned… It’s probably not conscious, but it’s a way they’ve learned to get significance and put themselves at the center of the movie of their life.

Megan: I want to talk for a second about that fear-based or scarcity thing, because I think that can underlie so much drama. Oftentimes it’s caused because people have had negative experiences in the past, whether personally or professionally, where they felt edged out or they didn’t feel like they got what was due to them or they worked hard for something and it was given to somebody else.

Whatever their history is, they just feel like there’s not enough to go around and unless they’re angling for themselves all the time they’re going to get left out in the cold, because nobody else is going to look out for them and everybody is against them. It really comes from a belief system that is so insidious. If you notice that, you’ll start to pick it up in conversations you have with people, where there’s this kind of underlying current of “People are against me, and given the chance, they’re going to try to screw me.”

Michael: “So I have to look out for myself. That’s why I’m advocating and creating this drama.” I had another story like that that happened. There were two people who were vying for the same position. One of them was a female, and one of them was a male. This just happened to be a case… I think, if you look at my record, I’ve been a huge advocate for women in the marketplace. First of all, let’s start with the fact that I have five daughters, so I’m predisposed to that.

Megan: We’ve kind of run your life.

Michael: Yeah. Out of five executive vice presidents I had reporting to me at Thomas Nelson, three of them were female. Anyway, I don’t think gender is a bias in how I do it, but in this particular case, the male was more qualified. The woman, of course, saw this as just one more blow originating from a gender bias on my part. The funny thing about it was, unbeknownst to her, her dad called me. He was very respectful, but he kind of gave me a hard time. This all took up time.

Megan: That doesn’t really help her case either.

Michael: It didn’t really help her case either, and of course, she found out and she was furious. All that created all this drama in the marketplace that didn’t have to be there.

Megan: So true.

Michael: One other thing in terms of human weakness, something we can’t fail to mention is many people, probably us from time to time, if we’re honest, enjoy a little bit of gossip or conflict, because it’s entertaining. That’s a lot of what drives the news cycle, all of these salacious details about politics and all that. It’s entertaining. Then I think there are others who are just cynical. Again, very related to the point you made about scarcity. They’re cynical because of what has happened to them, and they’re just going to oppose nearly everything. These are the people who always look at the glass half empty.

Megan: They sit in meetings with their arms crossed, leaning back, kind of looking down their nose. I’ve been in those kinds of meetings, and man, nothing will sabotage what you’re trying to do like that.

Michael: Oh, it’s so contagious. It’s lethal. The second reason, though, why this kind of thing happens… Again, the first reason was just human weakness, but the second reason (and this is where we have to all look ourselves in the mirror) is leaders who fail to be proactive in addressing it. It’s so easy (I’ve done it myself a thousand times) to just let this drama go on without addressing it, because all of us hate conflict. We like to think it’ll kind of heal itself or go away on its own, but it doesn’t.

Megan: It grows in the dark. The other thing is when you have drama that is breeding behind the scenes in your workplace, what it costs you in terms of time and money can hardly be measured. It’s so distracting. It’s so consuming. It takes people’s best energy, including your own, as a leader, and puts it in something that has no return on investment, and you just can’t afford that.

Michael: I think this is absolutely true. Most leaders would say they don’t have enough resources to accomplish their mission, and when you start siphoning off those same resources in drama, it makes the task even more difficult to achieve.

Megan: All right. We’ve identified four strategies for dialing down the drama, which after all this talk of drama I’m excited to get to. What’s the first one?

Michael: The first strategy is to quash the rumors with truth. In the absence of information (I have learned this so many times) people create their own narrative, because all of us have to have a story that makes the facts matter. So it’s easy to speculate. We do it all the time. We do it particularly at the national level. We do it probably at the local level, but inside of companies we do it, and we’re thinking about management. People are going to create stories. It’s just natural.

Here’s the thing: you can play offense (and you need to), which is to release as much information as you can as early as you can. At Michael Hyatt & Company, this is why we do the weekly huddles. This is another reason, for example, we release all the financial information to all of our employees. Whether it’s good, bad, or ugly, we want them to know exactly where we are, and we want to give our narrative. So we want to release it, and we want to give our narrative.

The other thing is to play defense. This is to directly address false reports or rumors. When you hear something that’s not true, don’t hope it’s going to get better. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get amplified. It’s going to get bigger and crazier if you don’t step into the middle of it and address it. I don’t think you just start by saying, “Hey, that’s a lie.” I think you start by saying, “Look, I totally get why you would think that, and, frankly, it’s my bad for not stepping into this and giving you the behind the scenes.” What do you say all the time with Joel?

Megan: “Show your work.”

Michael: Yeah, show your work.

Megan: Joel says to me.

Michael: “It’s my bad for not showing you my work, but let me just give you the background to this and see if this makes sense to you.”

Megan: There are also two types of drama, and this is really important to think about if you’re trying to understand what’s going on in your organization. There’s real drama, which is uncertainty in your business, questions about layoffs maybe, or reorg or other rumors. Those are stories people are trying to construct to make sense of something that’s happening that’s maybe scary or unsettling. Then there’s melodrama, and this is the stuff of interpersonal conflicts, attention seeking, gossip about other people. Ugh! That’s the yucky kind of drama. You need to deal with them differently, and you need to know which one you’re dealing with before you try to address it.

Michael: Yeah, I think so. It’s worth asking that question. This happened a number of years ago, actually during the Great Recession, and it wasn’t something that happened internally in the company, but I think it illustrates the need to directly address things you hear that are false. In the midst of the recession, we decided for strategic reasons that it didn’t make sense for us to attend the largest trade show in our industry.

Megan: I remember this.

Michael: Well, here’s what we did. We did a study and asked, “Where’s our business coming from?” We found that 90 percent of the profit in the company was coming from 20 percent of our accounts, maybe even 10 percent of our accounts.

Megan: The old 80/20 rule.

Michael: It was, but this was like 90/10. So we said, “Okay, we’re spending half a million dollars to go to this trade show, and we’re meeting with all of our customers, including the 90 percent that don’t really drive the business.” So, a very distracted environment, very expensive. So we said, “Hey, look. We could fly those 10 percent of the customers into Nashville. We could make our sales pitches, expose them to our best authors, not have the distractions of every other publisher vying for their attention, and really have them all to ourselves. We could do that for cheaper, way cheaper, like 20 percent of the cost of going to the trade show.”

Megan: Kind of a no-brainer.

Michael: A no-brainer. So we made that decision. Publishers Weekly picked up the story, and they took A plus B and came to the wrong conclusion. They said, “Thomas Nelson is in financial trouble. They’re doing this to reduce expenses,” and that was kind of the end of the story. Normally, what would happen in the old world before social media was you’d write an objection. I would write an objection as the CEO or have a complaint about it, and then they would maybe, maybe do a retraction or a clarification on page 38 of the magazine.

Megan: Buried somewhere where no one is going to see it.

Michael: But I happened to have a blog, and I had a blog, at the time, with more subscribers than Publishers Weekly, and most of them were people in the publishing industry. So I just called it out. I said, “That story is absolutely not true. I can see why…” This is kind of what I was saying before. I had some empathy.

“I can see why they came to that conclusion, but it was exactly the wrong conclusion. Here’s the story.” Then I just gave the story. I let facts speak for themselves. Well, Publishers Weekly was actually furious about it. I ended up having a talk with the CEO at Publishers Weekly at the time, whose name I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. He just said, “How dare you do that?” I said, “Well, how dare you do that? You didn’t call me and ask.”

Megan: Right. They didn’t ask for a comment.

Michael: “You didn’t ask for a comment. You didn’t ask for the story behind what happened. Welcome to the world of journalism.”

Megan: By the way, for more on this, check out our great how-to article on this very topic by Jeremy Lott. You can find that in this week’s Michael Hyatt Magazine.

Michael: Speaking of which, I wonder how many people actually know that we have this magazine.

Megan: I know.

Michael: Every week, we release an issue of our online magazine on the same theme as the podcast. It’s like the podcast is the feature article, so to speak, and then we have all of these supporting articles, and people can find those all at mh.fullfocus.co. Just click at the very top on the word magazine, and you’ll get the whole enchilada.

Megan: So, the first strategy is to quash rumors with the truth. What is the second strategy?

Michael: The second strategy is to respect the process.

Megan: You’re big on this.

Michael: I’m big on this, because this solves so many problems. I have to say I didn’t come up with this myself.

Megan: Really?

Michael: No. What are you laughing like that for?

Megan: Because it’s from the Bible.

Michael: Well, that’s what I’m trying to say. This strategy is not unique to me. It was invented about 2,000 years ago by Jesus. For those of you who are allergic to religion, just chill out for a minute. Just imagine this is wisdom literature that you can learn from even if you don’t believe in it. In Matthew 18:15-17, Jesus is very clear about dispute resolution. What he says is, “If your brother sins against you, go and reprove him in private. If he listens to you, you’ve won your brother.” The problem goes away. If he doesn’t listen to you, then bring two or three others and basically hash it out.

Megan: This is like the anti-drama recipe.

Michael: This is the anti-drama recipe. Let me just extract from that, distill from that some important principles for dialing down the drama in the twenty-first century. First of all, deal directly with the person. I don’t care if it’s a coworker, a supervisor, or somebody who’s three levels down, but deal directly with the person one-on-one. If there’s no resolution, invite a superior or somebody you report to to join you, and if there’s still no resolution, you can take the matter to HR.

Here’s how it might look. Let’s just say you’re the boss in the organization. You have a department, you have a division, or whatever. This happens all the time. One of your direct reports or somebody comes to you and says, “You know, Bob is just not doing his job. I’m really frustrated. It’s creating all this work for the rest of us, and he’s not hitting his deadlines,” whatever the complaint is. Here’s the temptation as a leader if you’re not careful: you get sucked into the drama, and you think he’s accurately representing the facts.

So you pull out your big bad hammer and go after Bob. You say, “Bob, what are you doing?” and Bob says, “Well, that’s not the way it happened at all.” Then he gives his side of the story, and you’re going like, “Well, that rascal,” whoever it was who came and told you. “They didn’t give me all of the facts.” So you’re going back and forth, trying to negotiate this drama, where the best thing you could say as a leader is (let’s just say this person’s name was Sue), “Sue, have you talked to Bob yet?”

“Well, no, I haven’t.”

“Tell you what. You take this up with Bob, you two try to work it out, and if you can’t, both of you together come back to me.”

Now, if the person says to you, “Well, no, I think you need to hear this,” I would say, “Well, before we go on, Sue, let me get Bob in the room.” I’m going to tell you what. That takes the air out of drama so fast, and it solves so many problems, and they rarely escalate beyond that.

Megan: It’s a great strategy.

Michael: That’s a great strategy. The main thing you have to do is never, ever, ever allow triangulation. You’re asking a third person to resolve it for you, and that’s not going to happen until you’ve tried to resolve it yourself.

Megan: The other thing to remember is that you want to deal with these issues in as close of proximity as possible. Meaning, when in doubt, get together in person and encourage people to get together in person. It’s very hard to resolve disputes or to eliminate drama if you’re going back and forth in writing, text messaging, Slack messages, emails, whatever. That is going to drag it out and amp the drama every single time.

It’s kind of like when you think about social media posting and how people are inclined to be so much more aggressive and just non-generous in their nature of communication. When you get in front of someone and have to say it to their face, there’s a natural accountability with that that is very healthy.

Michael: It’s so true. I want to say one last thing. Could I quote another Bible verse?

Megan: You’re on a roll.

Michael: Okay. Here’s another Bible verse that I think balances this out, and I’m going to make the point after I quote it. This is also from Jesus in Matthew 5:23-24. This is the Sermon on the Mount. This is one of his most important teachings. He says, “If you’re at the altar,” so you’re involved in worship, “and there remember your brother has something against you, leave the altar and go get reconciled to your brother.”

Here’s the principle (and for those of you who are Christians, this is really important): reconciliation or relationship with others takes priority over worship. Stop the worship and go get reconciled. Here’s the thing that’s interesting about this. The first passage I quoted in Matthew 18 says that if somebody offends you it’s your responsibility to go address it. This one says if the shoe is on the other foot and you suddenly remember that somebody has been offended by what you say, it’s your move. The point is it’s always your move. You can’t just sit on your butt and wait for the other person to come and initiate the reconciliation.

Megan: You’re always 100 percent responsible.

Michael: Totally.

Megan: Dad, I have two surveys I want to share with you. First, this is from Forbes. People said in the survey that the number-one source of workplace conflict is “other people.”

Michael: Okay, I have a question. Do we have to have a survey to know this? Where else would the conflict be?

Megan: Also what are you going to do about that? You’d better think of some strategies, right? That’s why we’re talking about it today. Secondly, another study showed that employees spend 2.8 hours per week, a day per month, dealing with conflict. That’s 385 million workdays per year in the US.

Michael: Wow.

Megan: Talk about sideways energy and no ROI. Hello.

Michael: No kidding. Well, that’s why we’re addressing this. It’s so important.

Megan: So, the first strategy was to quash rumors with the truth. The second strategy is to respect the process. What is the third strategy?

Michael: The third strategy is to allow pushback. You have to be open to the possibility that you might be part of the problem.

Megan: Absolutely. In fact, in my experience, you usually are. Not you, just so you know, but you the leader.

Michael: It’s true, because it ultimately comes back to our leadership. That’s why we think that question is so important: “What is it about my leadership that created this?” Maybe it was the first thing. I failed to quash the rumor. I didn’t give our narrative of the story, so I kind of created an environment where this can happen. I think you have to be open to feedback, open to the fact that you may be part of the problem.

Here’s what that looks like. It looks like not reacting to a person who makes an accusation. I have had to learn this, and I feel like I’ve been a slow learner, with you girls, my daughters, because I’ve had to learn to hold the space when you guys have come after me because I’ve confronted you on something and you’ve said, “Well, Dad, you kind of had a part in this.” It would be really easy for me to kind of amp up the emotion, to react, and then it just goes nowhere. Then we’re just chasing our tails. It just escalates into something that’s unsolvable.

But if one party… You, as a leader, have to lead first. You have to take the initiative. If one of you can allow the pushback and just say to yourself, “I’m going to hold the space. I’m not going to react. I’m going to take notes. I’m going to consider the possibility that I may be part of the problem,” well, guess what happens to the other person. They feel no need to amp up the drama. They feel no need to escalate.

They don’t marshal any more evidence, because now all of a sudden the point they wanted to make, which was maybe you’re part of the problem… Even if they think you’re 100 percent responsible and you can only claim maybe 10 or 20 percent, own 100 percent of your part. Don’t defend yourself against the 80 percent that’s just in error, but own 100 percent of the part that’s yours. Here’s what that will also do as a leader: encourage the other party to own 100 percent of theirs.

Megan: Because you’re really setting the pace here.

Michael: You’re modeling.

Megan: By the way, it’s important when you’re doing this to be mindful of your body language, your eye contact or lack thereof, your facial expressions, because you may not be disagreeing with your mouth, but your body may be disagreeing. That’s actually more powerful than what you say.

Michael: If your arms are crossed or you have a scowl on your face…

Megan: You refuse to look at them.

Michael: You refuse to look at them or you can be just visibly angry. The other thing that’s the worst thing you can possibly do is look like you’re eager to speak, like you’re really not listening to them, you’ve already formulated your arguments, and you’re about to go after them. As soon as they shut up, you’re going to demolish them. You cannot look agitated. You have to be relaxed, and you have to just take it in.

Here’s the other thing, too, as a leader: if you’re really committed to personal growth, some of what they’re saying is going to help you get to where you want to go faster, because the shortest distance between you and the destination you want is the truth, and the truth often comes from unlikely sources.

Megan: Unfortunately. Listen to this study. Over 22,000 leaders found a correlation between team members’ ability to give honest feedback to their boss and employee engagement scores.

Michael: That’s kind of not surprising, but it certainly reinforces what we’ve been saying.

Megan: It does. Also, if a leader was rated in the top 10 percent at giving honest feedback, their reports ranked their engagement in the top 23.

Michael: Wow.

Megan: That’s fascinating.

Michael: It is, and that should hearten anyone who wants to get feedback, that that’s seen as engagement. Obviously, it has to be done respectfully and all the rest, but that’s great.

Megan: The first strategy is to quash rumors with the truth, the second strategy is to respect the process, and the third strategy is to allow pushback. What is the final strategy?

Michael: Oh man. Fire the drama queens or kings. We said this earlier, but I want to say it again. Some people are just addicted to drama. It’s what defines their life. It’s what gives them significance. It’s what gives them an identity.

Megan: And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Michael: There’s nothing you can do about it. Psychologists have a name for this: need for drama, or NFD. It’s a maladaptive personality trait.

Megan: Yikes.

Michael: I don’t have any psychological background, but that’s what I’ve read. Maladaptive personality trait.

Megan: Also, I should mention that we use the “drama queen” language because it’s kind of funny to say, but very often women get a bad rap for being the source of drama.

Michael: You’re right about that.

Megan: And that’s really unfair and also totally untrue. Men and women equally contribute to this problem. Regardless of whether you have a drama queen on your hand or a drama king, that’s a real problem you need to deal with, but be careful if you’re a male leader, or a female leader for that matter… Just be careful that you don’t pigeonhole women as having a default position of creating drama, because that’s a stereotype.

Michael: This is so true. I have to say, based on my own experience (this is just one person), I’ve encountered drama far more with men than with women, but it oftentimes is a little bit more subtle and, frankly, more sinister and has more negative repercussions. So yeah, that’s a good word. Thank you for saying that. Let’s just call them drama queens with all of the disclaimers you just said. These people invent drama if there’s none. Why? Because their identity requires it. Their sense of significance requires it. All it does for you, as the leader, is cost you time and money.

I would suggest you have a two-strike rule for this. Warn once, and then fire them. The faster you get to that answer… First of all, it’s good for the organization, because all of a sudden now you’ve taken somebody who’s highly contagious, who’s going to infect people if you leave them in your organization, but it also sends a message to everybody else about what you’ll tolerate. Dave Ramsey has zero tolerance for gossip. If you’re guilty of that one time, you’re out of the organization.

If you need guidance on how to have that tough conversation, and you probably do, because there are a lot of ways you can fall into the pit and screw it up… If you need guidance on that, check out episode 5 where we talk about Anatomy of a Tough Talk. That gives you, I think, a great strategy for handling difficult conversations.

Megan: It’s easy to get rid of somebody who is a drama king or drama queen who’s not a high performer. It’s sort of a no-brainer. It’s all toxic, and it’s going to be nothing but good to get rid of them. But what happens if that person is one of your highest performers?

Michael: That’s often the case, particularly when these people somehow manage to get into senior management or senior levels of leadership. I had just such a case many years ago in another company where one of my top performers, year after year after year, always had this drama surrounding him. He was so good at it he never quite left his fingerprints on it. Stuff happened, and when people would report the drama… I don’t want to go into it because it would really give it away, but when people would report the drama it was really hard, even for our HR people, to validate it. It ended up in situations where one person said this, but he said something else.

Megan: But he was always at the middle of it?

Michael: He was always at the middle of it. His explanation always sounded reasonable, so initially, we just kind of dismissed it, except that his HR file kept getting fatter and fatter and fatter. So at some point we just had to say, “Look, the juice is not worth the squeeze. This guy is performing at a high level, but the drama and, worse, the kind of culture he’s creating and the sideways energy it has created… We have to let him go.” So we did.

We actually confronted him on the behavior, which he denied, and we said, “Look, all we know is this isn’t happening with anybody else. There’s always this drama. So either you’re hiring people who are creating this drama, which is still about your leadership, or you’re creating the drama, which is what we suspect. We’re going to put you on a probationary period, and if this doesn’t go away, you’re going to go away.” Guess what. He went away.

Megan: What happened after you did that in terms of results?

Michael: Oh my gosh. First of all, huge boost in morale in the division he was leading, because people were like, “Finally! You guys see what we’ve been dealing with for years.” It made us look bad. The fact that we were tolerating that made us look weak in our leadership and completely clueless about what was going on in this division. Once we confronted it, huge sigh of relief. Guess what happened. We thought he was the driving force of that performance. He wasn’t the driving force. If anything, he was the lid on the performance. Once he went away, even without replacing him, the performance of that division went up.

Megan: That’s incredible. Today we’ve learned you can dial down the drama in any workplace using four simple strategies: quash rumors with the truth, respect the process, allow pushback, and fire drama kings and queens. As we wrap up, I just want to remind you that workplace culture is the leader’s responsibility. Be proactive in creating a low-drama environment where your team can thrive. Dad, do you have any final thoughts?

Michael: I think this is one of those things that’s kind of like a low-level headache. It’s almost like when you have a health symptom and you just keep ignoring it, and then you go in and find out you had an early warning and you could have fixed it months or years ago, but you neglected it, and now you have a full-blown crisis. This is how these drama kings and queens are. If you don’t deal with this in the workplace, it can metastasize and become something that’s almost irreversible. So deal with it now, sooner rather than later.

Megan: If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, you can get the show notes, including links to all of the resources we’ve mentioned, and a full transcript online at leadto.win.

Michael: Thanks again for joining us for Lead to Win. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen so you’ll never miss an episode or any of our bonus content. If you need help, visit leadto.win/subscribe.

Megan: This program is copyrighted by Michael Hyatt & Company. All rights reserved. Our producer is Nick Jaworski.

Michael: Our writers are Joel Miller and Lawrence Wilson.

Megan: Our recording engineer is Mike Burns, and our production assistant is Aleshia Curry.

Michael: We invite you to join us next week when we’re going to give you a personal tour inside our new office space, and we’re going to tell you the philosophy behind it: why we did what we did. Until then, lead to win.