My father-in-law gave me some of the best management advice I’ve ever received, and it came during a casual over Sunday dinner. I was venting about a particularly difficult team member when he stopped me mid-sentence and said, “Joe, if you’re talking about the same employee at dinner four times, they need to go.”
At first, I thought it was too simple. But the more I’ve managed teams over the past two decades, the more I’ve realized he was absolutely right.
The Real Cost of Problem Employees
We talk a lot about the financial impact of bad hires - recruitment costs, training expenses, lost productivity. But there’s something more insidious that happens when you have a truly disruptive team member: they start consuming mental bandwidth that extends far beyond work hours.
When an employee is creating enough friction that you’re discussing them repeatedly at home, it means they’ve crossed a threshold. They’re not just affecting their own work or even their immediate team anymore. They’re affecting your ability to be for your family, your sleep, your overall well-being.
I’ve seen this pattern play out countless times. The employee who constantly pushes boundaries. The one who creates drama in every meeting. The person who technically does their job but leaves a trail of frustrated colleagues in their wake. You find yourself strategizing about how to handle them during your commute, explaining the situation to your spouse over dinner, losing sleep thinking morning.
Why We Wait Too Long
The dinner table test works because it forces you to confront something most managers avoid: the true scope of impact a problem employee has on the organization. We get caught up in documentation, performance improvement plans, and hoping things will change. Meanwhile, the dysfunction spreads.
I remember one situation early in my career where I spent months trying to coach someone who was technically competent but toxic to team morale. Every week brought a new incident - undermining colleagues in meetings, creating unnecessary conflict, making everyone else’s job harder. I kept thinking