How Workplace Leaders Overcome Evil with Good

Let's Define Evil From the Bible

Let's define terms. “Evil” in the Bible sounds like a church word. It’s the concept that when you have a good purpose – and something erodes – executing that purpose is called evil. 

So you have a good business plan, a good team with a good mission, clear purpose, and behaviors going on in the group that reduces the team's effectiveness to achieve its goals.

That's just the idea of evil. We often don't label things that way in today's world. 

A better way to say it is, “It may not be constructive.” 

“Overcome unconstructive things with constructive things” may be how to reword the idea of overcoming evil with good.

Constructive Group Dynamics

As a leader, do you see this in your groups? We all have bad days. We get in a meeting and talk about something and say, “That was a stupid idea.”

The body language and tone of voice conveyed more than was necessary. It insults someone else. It reduces openness. 

The question is, how do you keep this from spiraling out of control? That's what leadership is all about. 

Whether it's self-leadership or team leadership, what do you do when something like that happens? What do you do at a crossroads where it creates a reaction that degenerates into more and more trouble? 

It eventually becomes a culture if you don't manage this well as a team. Instead of just a bad day skiing with his family – if it keeps going on and people overreact to each other – pretty soon you have a culture that guarantees everything is an overreaction.

How to Create a Constructive Culture?

As a team leader, how can you create an environment where we all recognize we have bad days and the potential to say unconstructive things? How do you nip that behavior in the bud so it doesn't spiral out of control?

As you spot this, you must stop and ask the individual, “Did you really mean to say that your colleague is stupid?” Of course, the individual will say they didn't mean that.

You diffuse it. You call individuals out for saying what they said in the way they said it. You take the onus of counter-responding off the attacked individual and avoid escalating the situation. 

If you're one-on-one with the individual, you try not to react to the person, especially if you know them. 

Redirect Instead of Responding

Instead, you think about “What's my purpose here?”

1. I want to help this person.
2. I want to get to the team's goals. 

You redirect your behavior to purpose instead of directing your behavior to reacting to the people around you. 

That's why the definition of good and evil is so important:

• Actions that contribute to good purpose are constructive. 
• Actions that reduce the ability to achieve a good purpose are destructive.

This fundamental skill is one of the most challenging principles in leadership. One is to ensure you have a good purpose, and the second is to facilitate how your team interacts with each other and not destroy the purpose.