Drillers need to be removed through proper management: Paul Fayad

Q. How far do interpersonal relationships impact productivity?  

Productivity is entirely contingent on interpersonal relationships. Research and employee surveys over the past thirty years strongly support the importance of interpersonal relationships between managers and their staff and staff-to-staff relationships. Productivity and creativity excel in organisations where managers show gratitude, practice praise, instill meaning, and allow the staff to contribute ideas to strengthen the organisation. Results include increased productivity, lower turnover, higher job satisfaction, higher profits, and happier customers.  

Q. Rowers, Sitters, Drillers – you draw an interesting analogy to differentiate between employee mindsets. What are their individual traits? 

The framework of Rower, Sitter, Drillersm allows managers to clearly see their staff, and armed with this information, they can focus on the individuals who will help the organisation excel while recognising those who are focused on creating chaos. 

‘Rowers’ are those who work proactively to ‘row the boat’ forward, bring positive energy and high emotional intelligence, and have positive attitudes and strong relationship-building skills. ‘Sitters’ are individuals who are satisfied with just getting the work done—they are willing just to watch rowers row. Sitters can be influenced by rowing or drilling, depending on the manager's focus and the number of rowers or drillers within the team. ‘Drillers’ are, unfortunately, people with inherently harmful personalities—they complain, manipulate, and use backchannelling, gossiping, and undermining tactics to ‘drill’ a hole in your ‘boat’. They create chaos and then offer to solve the chaos. 

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Q. What drives driller behaviour? Is it wholly an expression of the personality type or triggered by the context? 

Individuals who we would classify as true drillers have generally egotistical, selfish, and even narcissistic behaviours. These are personality disorders that, through years of research, have determined that these individuals exhibit behaviours that are self-centred and not conducive to establishing cooperative work environments. They utilise relationships as a means to exploit their agendas and will create chaos to destroy team dynamics. 

We have also witnessed that sitters can take on driller traits. When there are drillers within an organisation and managers focus their attention on them, we see through social learning that the sitters will take on driller actions, thus creating the appearance of many drillers. The difference is that sitters can stop drilling with the correct management style, whereas drillers never stop drilling.  

How can you tell the difference? True drillers will never apologise, show remorse, or acknowledge that they are drilling.  

Q. How best can a leader minimise dissonance, especially while working with remote teams? 

Recognition that there is dissonance is the first step. It is hard for some leaders to accept that their teams are struggling and that they may not be producing expected outcomes based on disharmony within the team. This is especially true with remote teams due to the lack of communication.  

In working with many organisations worldwide, I would list poor management skills as the main issue with disharmony within the workplace. Research points out that poor management or leadership is always the number one reason individuals leave organisations. Other reasons, such as lack of support, recognition, and flexibility, can be attributed to a lack of communication between the manager and team members. Inadequate organisational communication with the team members, especially remote teams, lead to frustration and feelings of isolation.  

Overcoming these issues is not impossible. By instituting proven processes, organisations can turn dissonance around—leadership and management training, which is vital, especially with the advent of remote work; effective communication, including timely one-on-one reviews and informal check-ins; utilising technology to connect and communicate with the team from their direct manager and the corporation; using apps such as Slack and Telegram that provide direct and team messages without email. Corporate communication and meetings can occur over Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other online utilities. Celebrations of anniversaries and birthdays can be set up quarterly.  

Gratitude, praise, and the instilling of meaning cannot be foregone due to distance and remote work. It takes extra effort with remote teams, but it can be accomplished.    

Q. What leadership attributes shape successful organisations? 

There is a false belief that, to lead organisations effectively, leaders must be authoritarian, demanding, and without feelings. This is not true. Research, history, and my personal experience of running organisations over the past 40 years indicate there are particular leader attributes that create successful organisations—high amounts of emotional intelligence, empathy, conscientiousness, and proactiveness; openness in the form of perspective-taking; high communication skills such as conflict management and candidness; and a deep intrinsic desire to learn, coupled with a growth mindset.  

Leaders who inspire and create opportunities for others to shine within organisations develop solid and creative teams that are loyal and productive. 

Q. How best can leaders deal with drillers and the negativity they spread?  

Focusing on the rowers is important in disarming the drillers. Through social learning, the sitters will concentrate on the attention the rowers are getting and will also row. Drillers will not change, so focusing attention on them creates lower productivity. Drillers need to be removed from the organisation through proper management. It will take time to change the makeup of your team, but consistent management removes drillers from organisations. 

Q. What if the high performer in a team is a driller too?  

High-performing individuals who are drillers do not help organisations achieve high production or successful outcomes in the long run. Allowing them to stay due to their output eventually leads to rowers leaving.  

Q. How challenging is it to drive organisational change, considering that individual transformation is more of a conscious effort from within? 

It is challenging to accomplish organisational change. You have to have the right leaders who are committed to the change and can inspire the teams to see the value of the change. Change champions are leaders who understand the change process since they seek knowledge and growth. First, build a team of leaders with these attributes and then allow them to lead the change. It is essential to understand that the vision must be clear, and each individual must identify with the desired change. This creates the individual transformation that drives change. 

Q. Three hiring tips… 

All good decisions are based on using as many tools as possible to arrive at a conclusion. I would recommend the following process. Explain all the requirements and, if possible, the salary and benefits within the job posting. Before interviewing candidates, an assessment such as the Positive Assessment Tool (PATsm) we have created is sent to determine the candidates’ personalities, mindsets, learning styles, communication skills, and resulting behaviours. 

Interviews should be conducted by an experienced HR manager with open-ended questions. The more they talk, the more you will see their true personalities. Interviews should last over one hour, and each candidate should receive the same questions. Background checks and references are also necessary. 

Assessments such as the PATsm  are used by the majority of Fortune 1000 companies. They provide an unbiased evaluation of individuals and are essential, accurate tools in the hiring process. Using science in the hiring process results in higher success rates in determining the correct fit of candidates within organisations.