Negative Personality Type: Saboteur

One of the known negative personality traits is a Saboteur and those that possess this trait can easily hinder work productivity and some can seek to inhibit group productivity while engaging in unacceptable behaviors (Richmond, McCroskey, & Powell, 2013, pg.77). A Saboteur is identified as “…someone whose lack of enthusiasm interferes with the ability of the group and its goals” (Richmond, McCroskey, & Powell, 2013, pg.77). These individuals can potentially sabotage and can disrupt the flow of work as individuals must go back and fix problems the Saboteur creates.

A saboteur can slow down the group's efforts as a whole and people must backtrack to figure out who or what is causing issues within the organization. A saboteur can often cause trouble for the organization, even if sabotage is unintentional, and steps should be taken to identify the saboteur.

A saboteur is not a good thing for the workplace and can result in more work for the individuals as they must clean up and fix the issues created by the person directly responsible for the sabotage attempts.

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For example, at Starbucks, everyone is assigned a task for closing and must complete it to ensure a successful opening such as cleaning the espresso machines. Starbucks is required to clean all their espresso machines at night because it takes an hour for an entire clean cycle to run. This ensures the openers can simply turn on the machine and calibrate the shots without worrying about cleaning the machine again. One morning, we came in to discover that the person assigned to the task of cleaning the espresso machines had neglected this responsibility completely and this set the openers behind.

This individual only had one closing task to complete that night and everyone is usually expected to do their part to make everyone’s life easier. One person neglecting their closing task then sets the openers behind as we must backtrack because of one person that did not feel like doing their part. We had to clean the machines and were set back an hour. We had to tell a customer that we did not have an espresso to make their Café mocha, which was extremely embarrassing. This happened a few times and has been traced back to one person, who is no longer allowed to perform cleaning operations for the machines.

Overall, individuals identified as having a Saboteur personality trait can slow down work progress and the flow that an organization has established. The Saboteurs create setbacks, which then causes the group to be forced to deal with these issues and spend more time fixing mistakes rather than doing their work. As seen in the previous example, the individual responsible for cleaning the machines cost us, several customers, that morning as we had to tell them that we had no espresso to make their drinks and many drove off as a result. By taking further steps, like keeping track of who is assigned what tasks and by keeping an eye on potential saboteurs this can help identify the problem before it gets out of hand. Saboteurs, if not taken care of and identified, can slow down the group’s efforts and hinder their performance.