Good Apples vs Bad Apples
In The Culture Code , Daniel Coyle wrote about a guy named Nick whose job was to go into different groups and sabotage their performance. To do so, Nick had to be one of three types of bad apples: 1 - The Jerk who was overly aggressive and defiant 2 - The Slacker who gave little to no effort 3 - The Downer who was depressed and saw the glass as half-empty Nick took turns playing these three roles in 40 different, 4-person teams in what was called, "The Bad Apple Experience." In almost every group, Nick's behavior reduced the quality of the team's performance (he was really good at being a bad apple). When Nick was The Downer, everybody came on to the team super energized, but when he would act quiet and tired and put his head down. Eventually, the team started to behave tired, quiet, and with low energy as well. When Nick was The Slacker, something similar happened. The group quickly picked up on his vibe and started slacking too. The interesting part of the experimen...