After reading the following quote, I thought about the culture of fear in so many mid-sized startup companies:
“The underrehearsed ensemble has neither cohesion nor conviction, exhibiting mismatched styles from affectless through overwrought, and a suggestion of mutual mistrust that I suspect you might find in a prison theater company.”

While the New York Times’ Theatre Columnist David Rooney was referring to the emsemble who recently performed Tenessee Williams’ “Small Craft Warnings”, I couldn’t help but shake the image of a prison theater company in relation to one of my past jobs. Imagine being in an open floor plan full of paranoid and unhappy people who are willing to throw others under the bus in order to survive. It’s miserable. But I’ve got a theory that if you remove all the “Yes Men” from the equation, you’re more likely to have a productive team.

Although it’s tempting to hire a manager who dotes on your every word, consider the following:

1. Are You Assigning Tasks or Goals?: You can’t seriously believe you’re right all the time. The most intelligent managers use their expertise to formulate tactics that are in many cases contrary to your directives, but complimentary to the goals of the company. The point of hiring a manager is to delegate goals and not individual tasks. Good managers will figure out how to get to those goals on their own.

2. Is “Yes” a Smoke Screen?: There’s no reason anyone should fear losing their job for challenging you - unless of course, they can’t deliver you results. Sometimes “yes” is a way to shirk blame with the easy explanation that upon failure, the manager in question was “just following orders”.

3. Do You Have an Epidemic on Your Hands?: Ever heard of the broken window theory? Don’t let one paranoid and lacklustre person alienate you from the rest of your team. You built the company from the ground up and likely staffed the first 5 with go-getters. Consider how one bad apple affects the bunch. If the “Yes Man” is simply towing the party line with few contributions there will come a point where your brightest team members will feel unappreciated.There’s also a chance that your “Yes Man”, in their default mode of feeling threatened by great contributors, will devise a survival tactic that may negatively affect your company. Says Y-Combinator’s Jessica Livingston, “Above all else, never hire a B player - B players hire C players and then you find yourself with a mediocre team. My best advice is to always hire someone more competent than yourself.”