Many times, owing to a poor level of self-awareness, you don’t think you can be the clog in the proverbial wheel of your team’s high performance. It takes an honest assessment to reveal that the challenge your team faces is the person in the mirror. It is sometimes described as unconscious incompetence – a situation where you not only don’t know the right thing to do but you you’re also unaware that you don’t know that you are falling short in the first place. You need to first identify the counter-productive actions before you figure out a way to correct them.

It can be very difficult to diagnose when you are the boss or in top management, except there is an effective corporate governance structure – there will be fewer voices to give you the appropriate feedback. Some of these toxic traits come under the guise of office politics but a more cursory examination shows that such behaviour can undermine the overarching goals of an organization. Someone once said that, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” – so good intentions are never enough, such desires must be executed in a manner that increases the fortunes of all the stakeholders.

Leaders must look out for this behaviours on their team.