What do you think?
Rate this book
Bad Apples: How to Manage Difficult Employees, Encourage Good Ones to Stay, and Boost Productivity
Unlike other career books, this book offers managers a team-focused approach to neutralizing a not-so-pleasant—or productive—working atmosphere. Instead of isolating the one problem employee, relevant teams are considered as part of the solution. The result? Solutions stick and there's less likelihood of the bad apple ruining the bunch.Complete with situational advice and case studies taken straight from the trenches, this simple and straightforward guide teaches managers how Calm down combatantsMotivate wastersSilence gossipsDe-arm backstabbersConvince passive-aggressives to open upTeach narcissists the importance of the teamThis book helps managers decide what the right course of action is—whether it means chastising negative behavior, encouraging positive outlooks, separating certain folks, creating teams for success, giving employees warnings, and/or firing the ones who are pretty much rotten through and through. This book is essential reading for any manager looking to ensure a pleasant, productive—and fruitful—work environment.
- GenresBusinessNonfiction
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
32 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 10, 2016
Just finished reading “Bad Apples: How to Manage Difficult Employees, Encourage Good Ones to Stay, and Boost Productivity” by Terrance Sember and Brette Sember
We’ve all worked with employees who weren’t always the best and the brightest, but a bad apple is someone who is especially difficult, troublesome, or hard to work with. Before you were a manager, working with these kinds of people made your life hard, but now you have to manage, control, motivate, and guide that person for the benefit the organization —and deal with any fallout that person causes within your team. This can be challenging for even the most experienced manager, but there are definitely ways to do so without losing our sanity. A bad apple doesn’t have to mean that your team or professional future is down the drain. The objective of this book is to understand Firing is not the solution for all the bad apple behaviors, Terrance has divided book into 3 logical sections where
In first section “About Bad Apples” introduces: What are Bad apples and Good apples in context of teams. It’s surprise that most of the cases we call all the bad apples as “not a good team player”, but it’s good to differentiate what exactly they are from the list - blabber mouth, backstabber, passive-aggressive, waster, Narcissist, The liar, Lazy bones, combatants, poisoner , The buly, The slob, Thief, whiner, Incompetent etc.. There could be bad apples out of our teams who can impact us or our team as well.
In the second section “Problem Solving Techniques” author talks more about techniques to use for motivating bad apples to become good apples, traits dealing with personality conflicts, cultivating conflict resolution skills, Importance of discipline in teams and worst technique on how to handle Firing Bad apples.
Couple of such suggestions :
- Demonstrating benefits of being Good Apple: Compliments and public recognition (including things like certificates, “employee of the month,” or small prizes), Promotions, Merit raises etc
- Dealing with responses
- Effective Conversations
In recent past I’ve used the techniques mentioned in this book for couple of problems I’ve in team and seeing a positive results, though there’s more to work before I conclude as “resolved”
Last section which is short but very important too is all about “Fend off future Bad Apples” author talks on how to create an environment that not only discourages Bad apples but also encourages Good apples with a positive work environment. Few of the suggestions include suggestions related to sort of workplace as well. In the last author also suggested on points need to consider for interviews and what all needs to observe and what authority has to show in this process.
What separates good managers from bad is not how they act when things are going smoothly, but rather how they respond to difficult situations. Make a difference today!
Overall it’s a good book which will help you to Manage difficult employees.
Happy Reading!!
#TerranceSember @TerranceSember
We’ve all worked with employees who weren’t always the best and the brightest, but a bad apple is someone who is especially difficult, troublesome, or hard to work with. Before you were a manager, working with these kinds of people made your life hard, but now you have to manage, control, motivate, and guide that person for the benefit the organization —and deal with any fallout that person causes within your team. This can be challenging for even the most experienced manager, but there are definitely ways to do so without losing our sanity. A bad apple doesn’t have to mean that your team or professional future is down the drain. The objective of this book is to understand Firing is not the solution for all the bad apple behaviors, Terrance has divided book into 3 logical sections where
In first section “About Bad Apples” introduces: What are Bad apples and Good apples in context of teams. It’s surprise that most of the cases we call all the bad apples as “not a good team player”, but it’s good to differentiate what exactly they are from the list - blabber mouth, backstabber, passive-aggressive, waster, Narcissist, The liar, Lazy bones, combatants, poisoner , The buly, The slob, Thief, whiner, Incompetent etc.. There could be bad apples out of our teams who can impact us or our team as well.
In the second section “Problem Solving Techniques” author talks more about techniques to use for motivating bad apples to become good apples, traits dealing with personality conflicts, cultivating conflict resolution skills, Importance of discipline in teams and worst technique on how to handle Firing Bad apples.
Couple of such suggestions :
- Demonstrating benefits of being Good Apple: Compliments and public recognition (including things like certificates, “employee of the month,” or small prizes), Promotions, Merit raises etc
- Dealing with responses
- Effective Conversations
In recent past I’ve used the techniques mentioned in this book for couple of problems I’ve in team and seeing a positive results, though there’s more to work before I conclude as “resolved”
Last section which is short but very important too is all about “Fend off future Bad Apples” author talks on how to create an environment that not only discourages Bad apples but also encourages Good apples with a positive work environment. Few of the suggestions include suggestions related to sort of workplace as well. In the last author also suggested on points need to consider for interviews and what all needs to observe and what authority has to show in this process.
What separates good managers from bad is not how they act when things are going smoothly, but rather how they respond to difficult situations. Make a difference today!
Overall it’s a good book which will help you to Manage difficult employees.
Happy Reading!!
#TerranceSember @TerranceSember
October 23, 2011
A Great read - info on hoe best to select a course of action for someone who is negatively impacting the team; also provides insight into encouraging your best for continued productivity.
January 1, 2017
This book is rotten.
April 5, 2019
The simplest way to identify a bad employee is to determine if he negatively affects the company's bottom line.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews