How to Help Disruptive Managers Succeed Beyond the Performance Improvement Plan

Disruptive managers can significantly impact workplace dynamics, creating tension, reducing productivity, and contributing to high turnover rates. Common issues include poor communication skills, resistance to feedback, emotional disturbances, bullying, conflict, and difficulty collaborating with team members.

For example, imagine a manager who consistently raises their voice during meetings, disregards team input, and reacts defensively to feedback. Such behavior can quicly create a toxic work environment where employees feel undervalued and anxious, reducing overall morale.

While Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) are often employed to address these challenges, they typically focus on measurable performance metrics without addressing the root behavioral issues that drive disruption. This is why I’ve outlined actionable strategies to help disruptive managers succeed beyond a PIP, leading to meaningful improvement in their behavior and overall team morale.

Identifying Disruptive Behaviors in the Workplace

Recognizing disruptive behaviors is the first step towards creating a more harmonious work environment. These behaviors can manifest in various forms and can often disrupt team cohesion. Not recognizing and addressing these behaviors is like allowing cancer to spread without treatment. A manager may avoid accountability by frequently blaming others for mistakes, or may regularly engage in passive-aggressive communication, leaving employees confused and unmotivated. When such patterns go unchecked, it sends a message to employees that disrespectful behavior is tolerated, eroding trust in leadership.

“When toxic patterns go unchecked, it sends a message to employees that disrespectful behavior is tolerated, eroding trust in leadership.”

Recognizing the Root Causes of Disruptive Behavior

Understanding the underlying causes of disruptive behavior is essential for effective management. People generally don’t want to behave badly; they are usually struggling in some way and lack the emotional and behavioral skillset to manage what’s bothering them. For instance, a manager dealing with high stress outside of work might unintentionally bring frustration into team meetings, leading to frequent outbursts.

Recognizing these signs early on allows HR to provide support that addresses underlying causes, rather than just symptoms.

Common Sources of Disruptive Management Styles

Common causes may include stress, burnout, lack of emotional and behavioral intelligence, brain deficits or personal challenges, sometimes with origins in the past. A manager who grew up in a highly critical environment might unconsciously replicate this by micromanaging their team and focusing on negative feedback, with the intention of optimization, but ultimately leads to stifling team culture.

External pressures and personal struggles can exacerbate poor workplace conduct, making it crucial to delve into these areas without delay.

Disruptive behavior can be a clear indication that some deeper issue is occurring with the individual; it’s often an outcry for help.

All behavior (disruptive and otherwise) is traceable to the brain so if the brain can develop bad behaviors, it can just as easily replace them with good ones. neurological functioning. The good news is the brain is plastic, changeable, rewireable, retrainable, treatable.

Identifying Behavioral Triggers in Disruptive Behavior

Coaching can be instrumental in identifying specific triggers that lead to problematic behavior. One example is a manager discovering through coaching that they feel especially stressed before quarterly reviews, leading them to react harshly to colleagues in the days leading up to these meetings.

Managers can work with coaches to uncover the situations, people or interactions that typically lead to negative responses, facilitating a better understanding of the underlying causes and self-management strategies for emotions and behaviors.

Just as repeating a disruptive behavior repeatedly becomes habitual, so can altering how we manage our emotions and the resulting behavior from those emotions. The goal is to replace disruptive behavior habits with productive ones over time through repetition. A coach can help individuals identify patterns, provide strategies to preemptively address their responses and build healthier, productive habits, like taking deep breaths before meetings, practicing positive visualization, or setting boundaries with their team when feeling overwhelmed.

The Role of Self-Awareness and Accountability

Building awareness of oneself and the consequences of one’s actions is foundational for meaningful change. For example, if a manager realizes that they become defensive whenever a particular team member raises concerns, they can work with a coach to explore the reasons behind this response. Perhaps they feel threatened by perceived criticism or fear appearing incompetent. Encouraging managers to reflect on their actions and their impact on their team members fosters accountability and seeds a willingness to make change. 

Understanding the Limitations of the Performance Improvement Plan & Why They Often Fall Short

While Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) aim to improve performance, they often fall short when it comes to addressing underlying, behavioral roots of disruptive issues.

Without addressing these root causes, improvements may be short-lived. Asking a manager to improve their behavior is a tough ask if they can’t identify the root causes of the behavior, don’t have the skills necessary to manage the behavior, or have the knowledge of how to build create healthier thoughts and emotions which underlie the behavior.

The Financial and Cultural Costs of Ignoring Root Issues

“Nearly seven out of 10 U.S. workers say they’d quit their job over a bad manager, according to LinkedIn’s latest workforce survey.”

Ignoring disruptive behavior can lead to high turnover costs, extensive recruitment efforts, and diminished team morale. The negative impact on workplace culture can create a ripple effect, affecting overall organizational performance. A high-performing employee may decide to leave rather than continue working under a disruptive manager, leading to replacement costs and potential project delays. Meanwhile, employees who stay may feel disheartened, affecting productivity and the company culture.

“It turns out bad bosses don’t only cost their employers talent, but also money. Toxic leadership led to more than $223 billion in turnover costs from 2014 to 2019. And it can even discourage young people from becoming managers themselves. Only one-third of employees surveyed said they are looking to make the jump up into people management, according to LinkedIn.” (Forbes.com)

Why Coaching is the Best Alternative to the PIP for Disruptive Managers

Neuroscience coaching offers a more effective, personalized approach to fostering lasting change in disruptive managers. An effective neuroscience coach understands how emotions, thoughts and behaviors are formed in the brain and is equipped with the knowledge and strategies to help the client change how they form and manage them in the future.

For example, a neuroscience-based coach might help a manager understand that their tendency to interrupt others in meetings is rooted in fear of losing control. Through targeted techniques, the manager can learn to manage this impulse, gaining skills to stay calm and listen actively, ultimately creating a more respective and psychologically safe environment.

Behavioral change is more nuanced and sensitive than more objective goals like improving a business metric. Managers are not usually trained in emotional and behavioral intelligence, so it requires a professional with the requisite training and experience working with the manager to guide them through the process. 

Personalized and Sustainable Change Through Neuroscience Coaching

Neuroscience coaching provides customized strategies tailored to each manager’s personality, strengths, and growth areas. Everyone is different, so the strategies must be customized but still rooted in neuroscience.

Unlike standardized business goals in a PIP, coaching sessions focus on long-term solutions for creating positive behavioral patterns that resonate with the individual’s core values. These personalized approaches help build resilience and improve behavior over the long term, leading to a more stable team dynamic.

Accountability and Support for Lasting Transformation

Regular one-on-one coaching sessions with an external coach (as opposed to an internal coach that works directly for the company) provides a safe, trusted environment for managers to openly discuss their challenges without fear of retribution. External coaches create a necessary environment of safety, trust and absent of bias so that the manager can be unencumbered and transparent.

Coaches offer ongoing encouragement, helping managers overcome obstacles, and navigate setbacks. This collaborative approach underscores a focus on improvement rather than punishment, fostering receptiveness to change.

Behavioral Insights Beyond Performance Metrics

Coaches dig deep into behavioral causes, focusing on emotional triggers and stress-related responses. Developing compassion and empathy towards others is an important emphasis in behavioral coaching.

For example, a manager might discover that their hostility toward a particular team member is based on assumptions rather than facts. By learning to replace these thoughts with objective observations, they become better at managing interactions, ultimately benefiting the whole team.

By enhancing self-awareness, managers learn to recognize how their actions affect team morale and productivity, ultimately improving their interpersonal skills. Learning to view their coworkers as allies instead of threats is an important learning outcome as it produces better results for everyone.

The Added Value of Neuroscience-Based Coaching

Addressing Behavioral Patterns at the Brain Level

Neuroscience-based coaching helps disruptive managers understand how their brain processes stress and emotion. For instance, a manager may learn that their response to stressful situations activities their “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn” response. A neuroscience-based coach can identify the neurological patterns driving disruptive behavior. They employ neuroscience-informed techniques, helping managers understand their automatic responses to stress and emotion, encouraging more mindful choices.

Leveraging Neuroplasticity for Lasting Change

Neuroscience-based coaching takes advantage of neuroplasticity - the brain’s ability to form new pathways. This enables managers to form new, healthier behaviors. For example, a manager can practice reframing negative thoughts by focusing on their successes instead of failures, creating a mental habit that gradually replaces self-criticism with self-compassion. This can result in more positive interactions with their team, as they are less likely to lash out from a place of insecurity.

By practicing new responses, managers can rewire their brains, which reduces the likelihood of reverting to old patterns. (Ask me how I know!)

Techniques grounded in neuroscience, such as mindfulness and cognitive restructuring, effectively manage stress and emotional responses. These methods promote resilience and emotional regulation, empowering managers to handle conflicts with a solution-oriented mindset.

Your Disruptive Managers Need Compassion - Not a PIP

Helping behaviorally challenged managers succeed requires more than a Performance Improvement Plan—it necessitates a multifaceted, holistic approach that includes neuroscience-based coaching to develop self-awareness, emotional intelligence, behavioral skills and new habit formation.

This is a very personal process for the individual, and they need qualified support to work through it. By creating a culture where the company supports the growth and development of its management, even when behaviors are disruptive, organizations can demonstrate compassion, and facilitate lasting change that benefits the manager, their colleagues and the company. 

Human Resource leaders should consider utilizing external neuroscience-based coaching resources that support personal growth and development. Fostering a positive management culture not only enhances team morale but also drives overall organizational success. It’s the right thing to do, and the right message to send to your organization.

I am here to help your managers unlock their full potential. Schedule a free call with me today.