Ever been in one? No, not the kind that makes the news or involves a ransom. I’m assuming most of you have managed to stay out of that kind of trouble. I’m referring to the kind of scenario where you find yourself held hostage by a problem employee.

“What??” you may be wondering. “How could a problem employee ever have that kind of control over me? After all, if I’m not happy with someone, I can just fire him or her!”

Can you really? I know technically that’s accurate, but I regularly I talk with managers who recognize they have an issue with a team member but feel like they can’t terminate that individual. And most of the time their reason centers around the belief that the problem employee can do things no one else can.

“Jane has the worst attitude I’ve ever seen, but she’s the only person in my department who can step in and handle a network crash.”

“Chris can’t get along with anyone on the team, but I’ll never find anyone who has his negotiation skills.”

“Alice is so high maintenance she drives me nuts, but no one knows our market like she does.”

You may notice the common trend: managers feel their hands are tied because an individual brings something to the job that won’t be easy to replace. That “something” may be a skill set, a body of knowledge, experience, or a particular talent. No matter what it is, the managers become convinced that they have to tolerate bad attitudes, teamwork breakdowns, attendance problems, etc. because they won’t be able to hire anyone else to do that “one thing” they need.

Why do managers get trapped in hostage situations? Three primary reasons come to mind:

#1: They don’t recruit on a ongoing basis. Managers aren’t constantly networking to identify the talented people in the market, so their pipeline of potential candidates is empty. They aren’t giving themselves any options.

#2: They aren’t cross training their people. Any time you have one and only one employee who can do something, you’re putting yourself in a tough position. Having an in-house expert on a subject is great but can become problematic if the individual starting copping a “you can’t live without me” attitude.

#3: They only measure and reward results. Too often performance reviews evaluate skills, knowledge, and outcomes but provide little feedback on attitude or interpersonal skills. There’s no motivation to work on weaknesses if people feel the only important thing is producing results.

Unfortunately, I find it can often take quite a while before most managers say, “Enough!” They get pushed to the brink before they’ll finally take action to free themselves from the hostage situation. But they could do it a lot sooner if they were consistently recruiting, cross training, and letting their people know that strength in one area of the job doesn’t buy you a free pass to misbehave in all the others.

Have you ever found yourself held hostage by an employee? If so, how did you handle the situation? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Posted in Management