Confronting the Toxic Officer

Course Summary:

The vast majority of citizen complaints and internal acts of employee misconduct encountered by government agencies are generated by a small number of problem individuals. It is crucial, therefore, that government agencies can successfully discipline these few “bad apples”.

In other cases, disciplinary action is necessary to hold essentially good employees accountable for misconduct that threatens agency operations. In these cases, making discipline stick is actually in the interest of the employee, as it can serve as a much needed “wake up call” to an employee before performance issues become so serious that termination is required or public safety is threatened.

Unfortunately, research has revealed that when disciplinary actions are reviewed by an outside source (i.e., grievance arbitrator or civil service board), the employer’s discipline is overturned or reduced about half of the time.

This is not a traditional leadership course.  This course will introduce public safety leaders to strategies for confronting this small but extremely damaging presence in the workforce in a way that both protects the integrity of the organization and is legally defensible. Ensuring that these management techniques are legally defensible is particularly important in light of the fact that so many toxic employees demonstrate an obvious willingness to challenge agency efforts to hold them accountable.

• What are the common character traits?


• The unleadable, the unfixable, the un-motivatable


• The impact of the toxic few on the agency

• Background investigations—back to basics


• Utilizing the FTO process as a crucial part of the hiring process

• Recognizing the legal avenues that toxic individuals abuse


• Performance evaluation systems that reflect the realities in the field


• Progressive discipline—demonstrating a good faith effort to make all officers successful


• Separation agreements and toxic officers