How To Deal With Bad Eggs

Last week, we had just cleaned up the duck eggs from our front yard when one egg exploded filled the air with a stench that nearly brought me to my knees. After hosing the sidewalk down, I ran into the house to get away from this smell that was continuing to make me gag.  

Just as I enter our patio door, CeCe is in my face. “I smell it in our house. That smell is in our house!” CeCe has a super sensitive nose and I suspected this was simply an overreaction to some lingering smell from outside. However, stepping further into the house, I quickly realize that sure enough, I can smell it, too. It’s too strong to be from outside.

I follow CeCe back to our bedroom and the smell gets stronger as soon as we enter. Oh my gosh, it is worse back here. "Do you have it on you?" "No, I don’t think so." Just as I said this, Oliver (our 5-pound energetic Yorkie) came running out of the closet and there was no doubt where the source of rotten duck egg was coming from. No doubt.  

Gag time again as I grab him up, get the shampoo and head to the laundry room for a big scrub down. He obviously slipped down to those eggs while I was inside grabbing a bag to carry them to the woods. He reeked. While I finished his head-to-tail bath, CeCe sprayed the house down.  

Last week, we discussed how we can have bad eggs that we need to deal with — sooner than later. Always remember bad eggs affect everyone and can cause more bad eggs to develop. Negativity is even more contagious than positivity and unattended bad eggs lead to more work for everyone. But there are things we can do to help make sure we don’t develop as many bad eggs.    

For example, if we promote having healthy and sometimes even hard conversations, we can avoid a lot of bad eggs by making sure we are having conversations that help us be better. Too often, lack of clarity in expectations spins things sideways. Whether it is a personal or business relationship, time spent clarifying expectations is critical to not having bad eggs show up. What conversations do we need to have that we have been avoiding? 

One of the smelliest things can be false harmony which leads to lots of problems and underperformance. We create false harmony when we have conflict-avoidance and this usually results in a broken bad egg down the road. Once it breaks, you never know who will step in it. With so much changing in our business models today, it could be a great time to reset with the team to assess and address any false harmony.  

Oliver, get over here and brush your teeth, CeCe still thinks she can smell it.