Episode 82: Working with Toxic Employees with Dr. Mitch Kusy

What You’ll Learn

• The financial impact of toxic employees and why you shouldn’t ignore them
• Strategies for dealing with toxic employees to improve your organization and increase creativity

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About Mitch Kusy

Dr. Mitchell Kusy, a 2005 Fulbright Scholar in Organization Development, is a full professor in the Graduate School of Leadership & Change at Antioch University. A registered organization development consultant, Mitch has consulted with hundreds of organizations nationally and internationally; he has been a keynote speaker around the globe.

Mitch has helped create organizational communities of respectful engagement, facilitated large-scale systems to successful change, and engaged teams through assessment and team-designed actions—all with a focus on improving organizational culture and long-term return on investment. He previously headed organization development for HealthPartners and the leadership development area for American Express Financial Advisors. Before his leadership in national and international organizations, Mitch was a full professor at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, where he co-designed the doctoral program in organization development. Previous to Why I Don’t Work Here Anymore, Mitch co-authored five business books. In 1998, he received the Minnesota Organization Development Practitioner of the Year Award. He resides in Minneapolis, MN and Palm Springs, CA and may be contacted at mitchellkusy@gmail.com.

Resources

• Mitch Kusy’s Website (email Mitch for a free copy of the Kusy Toxic Cost Worksheet)
• Mitch’s new book: Why I don’t Work Here Anymore: A Leader’s Guide to Offset the Financial and Emotional Costs of Toxic Employees
• Book: Toxic Workplace!: Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power by Mitch Kusy and Elizabeth Holloway

Weekly Challenge

Apply one of the strategies that Mitch outlined in the podcast episode! He offered these three strategies specifically:

1. Conduct the Cost-Benefit Analysis of the situation – Is this going to backfire? Has feedback failed previously? What is my intention giving feedback?
2. Look at your own performance management system – Are the values spelled out?
3. If you decide to give feedback, look at the nuances in how you can approach it as described by Mitch.

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free transcript or read it below. Enjoy!

Transcript for Episode #082: Working with Toxic Employees with Dr. Mitch Kusy

Amy Climer: Welcome to The Deliberate Creative Podcast Episode 82. Today’s episode is about what to do about toxic employees. I have invited Dr. Mitch Kusy on the show to talk about this. This is his area of expertise and he is going to share some recent research that he has done around toxic employees. Toxic employees are, unfortunately, rather pervasive and most of us have had an experience with a coworker or a boss or a direct report who, in some ways, has been toxic to us or to the organization. Mitch is going to share some research that he has done around that topic.

I know Mitch because he was my dissertation chair at Antioch University when I was a PhD student there. Some people have these kinds of horror stories around working with their chair or completing their dissertation and I am happy to say I had a great experience working with Mitch. He is known at Antioch amongst students for replying quickly to share feedback. For instance, I would email him a 100-page draft of my dissertation and he would have it back to me within a few hours with detailed edits and input and feedback on what I needed to work on or change and it was incredible. Mitch is someone who gets things done.

Today, he is going to talk about some interesting research he did with his collaborator, Dr. Elizabeth Holloway, who is also a professor at Antioch. Their research was on toxic personalities and they wrote a book together called Toxic Workplace. But today, he is primarily focusing on the strategies for dealing with the toxic employees, which is the subject of his latest book called Why I Don’t Work Here Anymore: A Leader’s Guide to Offset the Financial and Emotional Costs of Toxic Employees. As you will find out in listening to Mitch, there is a huge financial cost if you ignore the toxic person and let them do their thing. It is actually quite incredible.

In the conversation, Mitch mentions a few research studies and other resources. You can find all the links in the shownotes at www.climerconsulting.com/082 because this is Episode 82. Head on over to the shownotes if you want to get a link to Mitch’s website and the other resources that he mentions. Here is Mitch.

Mitch, thank you for being on The Deliberate Creative podcast. Welcome to the show!

Mitch Kusy: Thanks, Amy. I am really excited about this today.

Amy Climer:  Awesome! Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Mitch Kusy: First of all, I am a professor in the Graduate School of Leadership and Change at Antioch University, and we have campuses all over the U.S: Keene, New Hampshire; Yellow Springs, Ohio — the main campus — Santa Barbara, L.A., and Seattle. As well, I am a corporate psychologist and I help organizations change workplace cultures.

Amy Climer:  And you have a consulting practice doing that.

Mitch Kusy: I do! I do have a very active consulting practice nationally and internationally, looking at such things as everyday stability and culture change around that, as well as, more traditional kinds of consulting, including strategic planning and organization development.

Amy Climer:  Nice. And you are launching a new book.

Mitch Kusy: I am!

Amy Climer:  What is the title of that book?

Mitch Kusy: I am very, very excited about this book. It is my sixth book out and the title of the book is Why I Don’t Work Here Anymore and the subtitle is A Leader’s Guide to Offset the Financial and Emotional Costs of Toxic Employees.

Amy Climer:  And we are going to talk about toxic employees today.

Mitch Kusy: Yes, we are. We are going to keep it positive too because we are also going to talk about the positive frame of respective engagement and everyday civility, as well.

Amy Climer:  Absolutely! Tell us first, what do you mean by toxic personality or a toxic employee? What does that mean?

Definition of A Toxic Employee [04:52]

Mitch Kusy: First of all, Amy, what is really interesting about that question is that I have found with thousands of leaders worldwide, I actually do not have to define it. They know exactly what I am talking about and I know that they know because they give great examples of a toxic person. However, as a researcher and corporate psychologist, these things need to be defined. Essentially, the way I define it is, it is an individual who demonstrates disrespectful uncivil behavior with wide-ranging effects in the organization. These effects could be an impact to our personal psyche, to team performance, as well as, and I talk about this in the book, the bottom line in an organization. Those are the primary premises of a toxic individual. The examples are bullies, narcissists, manipulators, control freaks. They are individuals who shame, humiliate, belittle and take credit for the work of others.

Amy Climer:  We have all interacted with people like that, unfortunately.

Mitch Kusy: We have. And interesting about what you just said, I found at times, just by talking about it, I unfortunately raise anxiety levels. If I could see your thought bubble, I would bet right now you have a little bit of angst thinking about a toxic individual that you have experienced. Interestingly, in the research study that my colleague in a previous book did, Elizabeth Holloway and I, we found that 94 percent of individuals in the past five years have experienced a toxic person.

Amy Climer:  I believe it. You kind of give some general examples of a toxic person: narcissist, bully, that kind of thing. Can you give some specific examples? Like what might a toxic person do in the workplace?

Examples of A Toxic Person in the Workplace [07:03]

Mitch Kusy: Let me give you an example from personal experience.

Amy Climer:  That is great.

Mitch Kusy: A toxic person that still comes in mind when I think about toxic individuals. This was an individual who was always right. This was an individual when you try to give her feedback, her next word was “but” and such things as, “But I’m the only person who has the guts to do. I’m the only person who will stand up for…,” et cetera. So much so that ultimately, this individual left the organization. But here is a classic example and people seem to identify with this. About five to eight years later, I was in an elevator and I smelled a perfume and the perfume was the perfume that this person wore and I got sick to my stomach.

Amy Climer:  Oh my gosh!

Mitch Kusy: There are these visceral responses as well, Amy.

Amy Climer:  Was that experience what drove you to do this research? Or what kind of got you into doing this research?

Mitch Kusy: That is a great question. I have to give credit to my colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Holloway. In our previous book that we wrote together, Toxic Workplace, I recall that when I was being interviewed for this professorship, she said to me during a break, during the two-day interviewing process, “Mitch, have you ever thought about doing a research study on toxic personalities?” And the reason that came up is that my specialization is culture change in organizations. And what was fascinating, my first response was the visceral one about thinking about the person that I was now sick to my stomach during an interviewing process.

Amy Climer:  Oh boy!

Mitch Kusy: Secondly, I thought, “You know what, this must have legs to it.” Subsequently, we embarked on a study of 400 leaders about their experiences in working with toxic people.

Amy Climer:  Probably, when she asked that in the break in the interview you might have thought, “Oh, I might have this job.”

Mitch Kusy: Yes, absolutely. I did get the job and I have been here for almost 15 years.

Amy Climer:  Yeah. Can you talk just briefly about that research that you did with Dr. Elizabeth Holloway?

Mitch Kusy: Yes. It was a mixed method study, which simply means we did some interviewing of individuals who said they experienced toxic individuals. And the most interesting part was we did an online survey and there were a total of 400 respondents in our survey and we had about a 39-percent response rate, which is very high. Essentially, it was 82 items on the survey and the survey began with this; have you ever experienced a toxic individual, and if you have, please answer all 82 items based upon this one individual. That was basically the study.

What was fascinating to us is that there were qualitative comments as well in the survey and we had 42 pages of single-spaced text from these 400 leaders, which is really astounding for an online survey.

Amy Climer:  Yeah. And even the fact that they sat down and completed 82 items.

Mitch Kusy: Eighty two items, absolutely! Isn’t that amazing?

Amy Climer:  That is amazing. You did this study. Found people were quite willing to talk about it. What were some of the results?

Mitch Kusy: Some of the results were; one was that 92 percent rated this toxic individual that they were reporting on on a severity scale, if you will, 92 percent, 7 to 10, on a ten-point scale. Another interesting statistic is that 51 percent of the targets of the incivility said they would likely quit the organization. What is even more fascinating is if you look at the research of other individuals such as Pearson and Porath, they found that 12 percent actually did quit. If you look at the research in the health care field of Alan Rosenstein, he found that 30.7 percent of nurses reported that they would likely quit. Subsequently, there is a lot of substance here that something financially is going on in the organization, as well as, to individuals and teams.

Impacts of Toxic Employees and Why You Should Not Ignore Them [12:11]

Amy Climer: If you have a great employee who is unhappy because of this other person and they quit, that is a huge loss.

Mitch Kusy: It is. It is an absolute huge loss. Interestingly, some statistics have found that if you look at three levels in the organization, entry level, mid level and high level or highly specialized, entry level, the cost of replacing this individual is about 30 percent of their salary; mid level, about 150 percent; and high level, anywhere from 300 percent to 400 percent. There are some economic costs here.

Amy Climer:  Wow! If say a higher level is making $200,000 a year then the cost to replace them could be $0.5 million.

Mitch Kusy: It could be half a million when you think of recruiting cost, opportunity cost when the individual is no longer productive, the amount of time it takes to interview this individual and the ramp up cost once he or she is brought onboard, including training them, it is incredible. And these are based on human resource metrics that are in the literature.

Amy Climer:  Interesting. We are talking about some of the financial costs that toxic people can have in an organization. There is certainly that emotional cost. Are there other impacts that toxic people have that you would touch upon?

Mitch Kusy: One is the team costs, and some of the team costs are individuals do not want to work with them. What happens in organizations many times, and I think back to my growing up in the 50s in what goes on in a classroom and let’s just pretend that Mitch is the trouble maker. And Mitch is at the back of the room. And what the teacher does then, because Mitch is a trouble maker, the teacher moves Mitch to the front of the room so he or she could keep an eye on Mitch. Mitch’s behavior is good when the teacher is watching, but not so good when the teacher leaves the room. This is the exact same thing that happens in organizations called Organization Charts and Organization Structure.

What sometimes happens in organizations is that for the toxic individual, responsibilities may be removed from him or her or they may be placed as an individual contributor, but their salary still stays the same, even though they are no longer managing five to eight individuals. People get ticked off, but the biggest deficit is it does not work. Removing responsibilities, placing them in other areas is a camouflage.

Amy Climer:  I guess what is interesting to me is that it is such a pervasive issue and kind of what you said at the very beginning like you do not even have to define toxic personalities. Everybody knows exactly what that means. What are your thoughts on like why is it such an issue and why are these people not being dealt with quicker and sooner?

Mitch Kusy: There are a number of answers to that question. First of all, many of these individuals are high producers. Not all of them, but enough where one does not want to rock the boat. However, what is fascinating to me is if you look at what happened in the 70s and 80s with the whole movement where no sexual harassment is allowed and some organizations did not start making changes until it was the law and some organizations did not start making changes until not only the law, but it hit their pocket books. First of all, in the United States we do not have laws against disrespect.

Secondly, many leaders are not aware of what this costs. What I have developed based upon research out there is what is called the Kusy Toxic Cost Worksheet. In my book, I provide an example of this where all a leader needs to do, or an individual in an organization, is plug in two statistics: one statistic is the number of employees in the organization, the second is the average compensation in the organization, and this worksheet will calculate the actual financial cost of toxic individuals. And if anybody wants to get a copy of this worksheet or a live one, all they need to do is go to my website www.mitchellkusy.com and I will send them a free worksheet.

Amy Climer:  Awesome!

Mitch Kusy: The second answer then to your question is people are not aware that it costs money. Awareness, often — even in psychotherapy — is the first step to action and helping people become aware that it not only affects our personal psyches, which everybody knows, but everyone does not know it affects the organizational pocket book.

Amy Climer:  Not everyone knows that connection between the personal psyche and the organization bottom line.

Mitch Kusy: Right. In fact, this worksheet demonstrates, in general, it is about three to four percent of your payroll costs that toxic people cost an organization. That is a lot of money.

Amy Climer:  Yeah, it is. Interesting! Let’s kind of keep going in this direction and talk about what are some strategies in dealing with people with toxic personalities, either in getting rid of them or correcting their behavior. What are some strategies?

Strategies for Dealing with Toxic Employees

Integrating Values into the Performance Management Process [18:28]

 

Mitch Kusy: One strategy is to make sure your values are integrated into the performance management process. Let me tell you a little exercise that I do when I am consulting with clients or doing a keynote address. I ask these three questions. The first question is how many of you have a performance management or a performance appraisal system? Raise your hand. In general, about 95 percent of people raise their hand. The second question is; of the 90 percent here, how many of you have your values spelled out, identified on the performance management process? It goes down to 20 percent. The third question; of this 20 percent, how many of you rate performance based upon values achievement? It goes down to five percent.

As an organizational psychologist, this does not make sense to me. Organizations spend mega money on values development but they do not hold people accountable to this. What does this mean about the toxic individual? Many of these toxic individuals are very smart and very clever. And if you say I am going to assess your performance because you are not achieving this value or I am going to fire you because of disrespect, appropriately so, they may say, “Why are you not holding everybody else accountable to these values?”

The first strategy is to make sure everyone is held accountable to the values, the second piece is that they are assessed on the values, and the most important piece beyond any form, is make sure these values are integrated into your team discussions. Take fives at a team meeting and say this person here in our team demonstrated a superb value and let’s talk about it or a person experienced an obstacle in demonstrating the value, let’s talk about it. That is a first strategy, the performance management piece.

Amy Climer:  One of my clients that I worked with is Toppers Pizza and they do this really well. At the beginning of every meeting, whether it is the executive team meeting or the entire organization, whatever, they have a handful of values and they just say, “Hey, who wants to share a moment this last week where they saw the values in action?”

Mitch Kusy: Beautiful!

Amy Climer:  It is great and it is so fun to listen to.

Mitch Kusy: And it is cheap. It is free!

Amy Climer:  Right, five minutes.

Mitch Kusy: Leaders get it when I say how much did you spend the past year on consultants developing values? And then how realized are they beyond being on a conference room wall, which to me are useless? They need to be integrated in the fabric of what people do every day.

Amy Climer:  Yeah. And everyone in the organization should be able to list them because they are seeing them and they are kind of really embodied.

Recruit Better [21:31]

 

Mitch Kusy: Another strategy, Amy, is people need to recruit better so that you reduce the probability of bringing these individuals into your organization. Let me give you an example of a true scenario. There was a position candidate interviewing for a vice presidency. She gets off the plane and the recruiting manager could not meet her at baggage claim and subsequently, the administrative assistant left to meet this individual. The administrative assistant was asking questions and the candidate was just giving yes/no answers and did not seem very interested in the job. And appropriately so, the administrative assistant said, “Maybe this individual is nervous, it’s a big high level position.”

The administrative assistant thought this until the hiring manager showed up and all of a sudden the candidate for the vice presidency was absolutely brilliant, asking incredible questions, and the administrative assistant is scratching his head saying, “What’s going on here?” What is going on here is there is a discovery about toxic individuals. They are very capable and often knock down but kiss up. What I mean by that is, people that they perceive without power they will steamroll over, but if they perceive that someone has power, they will cozy up to that individual and that is exactly what happened.

What is the strategy? One strategy is to recruit better. And the way to do this is — and I understand that there are often these interviewing teams. That is great, but what happens when the person is in a waiting room for five minutes or walking down the hall by himself or herself? I have developed a process called the Recruiting Cue Sheet. Before the actual interview occurs, the hiring manager goes up to some individuals that may interact with this individual. It could be a maintenance person, it could be a receptionist, it could be a cafeteria person, it could be a driver. And you give this Recruiting Cue Sheet to the individual, very simple, few questions. You say, “You may or may not have an opportunity to interact with this candidate. If you do, would you answer some of these questions?”

Some of the questions would be: is this the kind of person that you think you would like to work with? Why? How engaged was this individual with you? Did he or she give you eye contact? So some of the basic kinds of questions, and after the interviewing process, collect the information from this individual and review it with the interviewing team. You may discover some things where the individual is very capable of knocking down and kissing up and that is not the kind of person you want to bring into the organization.

Amy Climer:  I love that and I love the intentional approach of reaching out to people that you might not think to reach out to to give input.

Mitch Kusy: Exactly. And I strongly suggest that it not just be verbally. That you can give it to them electronically via the computer, you can give a little handout. In my book, I have got an example of some of these templates that you can use.

Amy Climer:  That is awesome. Cool.

Mitch Kusy: Another strategy. You want another one?

Amy Climer:  Sure, keep going.

Exit Interview [25:27]

 

Mitch Kusy: I would like to give you a strategy that many people do wrong and many organizations do wrong; the exit interview. First of all, the traditional exit interview is conducted while the individual is an employee in the organization. They are about to exit. And so even the human resources person, which is the person that should be doing this, or an objective individual, not the boss of the individual, and you ask about what his or her experiences were like. Because toxic individuals are likely to engage in shaming kinds of behavior, threatening, manipulative kind of behavior, there is a high probability that even though this person is exiting the organization, they will not tell the truth. I will hear stories like they do not want to burn bridges. I am just going to give them what they want to hear and get out of here.

You still need to do an exit interview, but the strategy is this; you ask the individual would they be willing to have you call them three to six months down the road about their experiences in working with this organization, and particularly, the boss or whomever. They are more likely to say yes and more likely to tell the truth and you are more likely to get meaningful data. Because they have already established themselves in the new organization, they are not so worried that what someone says from the previous organization will harm them.

Amy Climer:  I love that. Personally, in my life, I think I have only had one exit interview.

Mitch Kusy: Really?

Amy Climer:  Yeah. I know. I am just thinking like wow, I have left many jobs, but…

Mitch Kusy: You know, Amy, really it brings back another story, not quite like the perfume story, but I left a great job because of a toxic individual.

Amy Climer:  I have too, yeah.

Mitch Kusy: My boss was conducting the exit interview and so did a human resources person and I did not tell the truth because I was threatened. Not threatened with physical harm, but I was threatened that maybe this could ruin me in my new organization. But had the organization said we are going to talk to you three to six months down the road, I might have been more apt to tell the truth.

Amy Climer:  Absolutely. I think that is a great idea. I am thinking of my own experience as well of this one exit interview that I did have. I do not remember what I said, but I remember it was fairly generic and I could imagine, about three months later I would have been more open. And I think part of that is it is just less emotional then. You have had some time to distance yourself, to reflect on it a little bit, you probably could be more coherent about it. I think it is great.

Mitch Kusy: It is a very, very powerful strategy. And again, like the recruiting strategy, it is cheap and easy.

Amy Climer:  Yeah. Cool, all right exit interview. Are there more strategies or we stop there?

Mitch Kusy: Oh my gosh! I have got so many strategies.

Amy Climer:  Let’s hear one more.

Giving Toxic People Feedback [28:57]

 

Mitch Kusy: Let’s talk about one more. Let’s talk about feedback; giving toxic people feedback. First of all, in the research that Elizabeth Holloway and I had done, we found that most toxic individuals are clueless about the impact of their behavior on others. What this means, Amy, is that if you try to give an individual feedback without a systems approach — and part of the systems is exit interviews I talked about, part of the systems is recruiting better, part of the system is values integrated in performance management. Without a systems approach, they are likely to be highly defensive.

One of the first strategies is to make sure that you have some of these other areas in place. But even if you do not, the very first thing an individual would need to do is what I call a Cost Benefit Analysis on themselves; on whether or not it is even worth giving feedback to a toxic individual. Some of the things that an individual plays with in terms of understanding if I need to give feedback — and in my book I have a pro/con analysis, but some of the questions are these:

1. Has feedback to the toxic individual from others been largely ineffective? And there is a rating scale.
2. Has feedback from others backfired?
3. Are there serious consequences if you were to give the individual feedback that would preclude you from giving feedback?
4. How much are you trying to prove with the feedback that you are right versus change their behavior?
5. Is the feedback a retaliatory move on my part?

These are some of the questions and I have got a rating scale and then you determine whether or not it is appropriate to give feedback to the individual. The bottom line here is you want to give feedback if you believe there is even a small probability that it will make a difference and it will not harm you in the long run. That is where that cost benefit analysis comes in.

There are three different types of strategies. One is if you are giving feedback to a direct report, if you are giving feedback to a peer or if you are giving feedback to your boss.

Amy Climer:  Probably the hardest.

Mitch Kusy: Yes. And each of those, there are a lot of similarities but there are some differences there. Let me just call out some high points. In giving feedback to a direct report, what you want to do is appeal to your observations and how the behavior affects you and/or others. Again, observations, non-judgmental, and if the person argues with you, it is very appropriate to say, “You know what, these are the observations, maybe you want to check it out with others,” so that you do not get into the fight with the individual.

For the peer strategy, it is really important to recognize that this is a difficult conversation for you because you are a peer, and how the behavior has impacted you.

The boss strategy is first of all, you want to do a little bit of soft chewing — I think that is the right word — by telling your boss that you have a commitment to him or her and the organization. That it is a difficult conversation, you empathize with the boss that he or she may have a lot of issues facing them and then you report exactly what you have been experiencing and how this has impacted your performance.

The second strategy with the boss is if indeed it is a highly threatening environment for you, there is power in numbers. I strongly suggest that if other people are experiencing the same issue with the boss, that two, three, four of you provide this feedback to the boss in numbers. The boss may perceive that you are using these numbers to get at her or him, and it is very appropriate response to say, “Well, we all experience the same thing and we want you hear it from us.”

Amy Climer:  Nice. That is really helpful, Mitch. I just want to review the strategies real quick: feedback, the exit interview, doing a better job with recruitment, and integrating the values into the performance management system.

Mitch Kusy: That is it. You got it. Those are some high point strategies.

Amy Climer:  Awesome! And, of course, there is a lot more detail and depth in the book.

Mitch Kusy: A lot more detail about how to do this and many other strategies, including, in the book I have various templates that people are free to use, inventories to assess and a lot of case scenarios where I have sample conversations as to how you have this conversation with the boss, how you have a conversation when you are recruiting and avoiding such things as hypothetical questions.

Amy Climer:  That is great. One of the things I like to do on this podcast, Mitch, is end with a weekly challenge. A challenge for listeners, something small that they can do this week to help apply some of the things that we have talked about. If you were to give folks a weekly challenge related to toxic personalities, what would you recommend they do this week?

Weekly Challenge [35:20]

Mitch Kusy: Can I give them three or just one?

Amy Climer:  Okay, three is fine.

Mitch Kusy: Because then you could pick. I think people are more successful when they only would do one, but they have a menu of options.

Amy Climer:  Okay, what is the menu?

Mitch Kusy: The first menu is to conduct a cost benefit analysis of the situation. Looking at such things as is this going to possibly backfire? Looking at such things as has feedback failed previously? What is my intention at giving feedback? The specific strategy related to any of these questions is, check it out with someone who knows you and the situation. Just do not go it alone. That is one strategy.

The second is to go look at your own performance management process and see are the values spelled out, and if they are not, how can I get them spelled out? Can I talk with someone in human resources? Even if you do not have that and you have responsibilities for doing performance management of individuals, you can integrate values into performance discussions and hold people accountable to them. Trust me, no one is going to say you cannot hold individuals on your team responsible for respect if respect is one of the values.

The third is if you decide to give feedback, look at some of the subtle nuances about giving feedback that I mentioned in terms of the individual is your direct report, peer or boss. And also with your boss, remember that there is power in numbers.

Amy Climer:  Awesome, cool. Thank you, Mitch. That is really helpful.

Mitch Kusy: Great.

Amy Climer:  This has been great. You have just provided a lot of depth and a lot of value so I really appreciate it.

Mitch Kusy: Super. You are a great interviewer, Amy. And as you can tell, I am so delighted to do this. In fact, I want to give you a little piece of information. This is the first interview that I have had related to the new book, Why I Don’t Work Here Anymore. So thank you for allowing me to talk about the book which comes out on November 5th.

Amy Climer:  Awesome! By the time this podcast goes live, the book will be out. Where can people find out more about you and the work that you do?

Mitch Kusy: They can find out more about me by going to my website www.mitchellkusy.com. They can find out more about the book by going to my website, going to Amazon.com. On my website, if people want a copy of the worksheet to determine the financial cost or I also have a complimentary five top strategies to deal with toxic people, they can get that by going to my website as well.

Amy Climer:  Awesome! Sounds like the website is a wealth of information.

Mitch Kusy: Yes, thank you.

Amy Climer:  Great. Thank you so much, Mitch, for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Mitch Kusy: This has been great. Thank you. You are a great interviewer, Amy.

Amy Climer:  Thanks, Mitch.

Mitch Kusy: Bye-bye.

Amy Climer:  Wow! Really interesting conversation with Mitch. He shared a ton of value there. I love the specifics, I love the strategies. I am wondering, in your organization, do you have a list of values and are those values tied to your performance management system? My experience is similar to Mitch’s that most often, organizations do not have that tie. And it seems like that is one of the first things you can do to help deal with toxic personalities. I highly recommend checking out Mitch’s book. It came out on November 5th. It is called Why I don’t Work Here Anymore: A Leader’s Guide to Offset the Financial and Emotional Costs of Toxic Employees. Check that out. Mitch is a great writer. His books are always an easy read, but still loaded with content and value. Check that out and you can find his website www.mitchellkusy.com. Check out Mitch, learn more from him. He has a lot to offer.

Thank you so much for listening to The Deliberate Creative podcast. If you have not yet done so, please head on over to iTunes or Google Play and share a review. I would love to get your feedback. We have many, many five star reviews on there, but it is still great to get more. If you write a review, I will probably read it on the air. I love to share those when I can. It means a lot to me. You can also share The Deliberate Creative podcast via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, all that. I post episodes on there so share those if you can, spread the love and help more and more teams be creative.

Thanks everyone. Have a wonderful creative week. Bye.

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