A Winning Culture

Ever notice how the warmer your team culture is, the more difficult it becomes to confront or even identify a problematic teammate?

So what do you do?

Thankfully, I’ve encountered this exact kind of character before. I didn’t have any proof that he was untrustworthy, but something felt off.

And so I took action.

I snuck a five-dollar bill into his work bag to test him. Sure enough, one month later, it was gone. When I mentioned it to him in the cafeteria that I had lost five dollars, I was careful to keep my head down as if to appear more concerned with the food on my tray than the “trivial” matter of recovering the lost bill. He denied seeing it of course, and it took just about everything in me to avoid looking up at his face. I knew that the hidden cameras I’d installed would pick up his reactions to my inquiry and that I could study the tapes later, up close, in my secret viewing chamber located in a nearby storage facility.

That evening, free from the distraction of clothing, I watched the tapes again and again, marveling at the sociopathic finesse with which my "teammate" was able to mask his guilt. I flipped the monitor to a different set of cameras and spent another few hours watching him work at his desk.

The next day, I put in my two weeks notice. We all must learn to work effectively with different types of people, but you have to draw the line somewhere.