Barbara Corcoran reveals the one type of person you should always fire fast to keep your company from turning toxic

Reuters

They'll zap everyone else's energy.

• Barbara Corcoran is a real-estate mogul who sold her company, The Corcoran Group, for $66 million in 2001.
• She said she never tolerated complainers in her company.
• That's because they surreptitiously drain everyone else's energy.

Barbara Corcoran calls them the "thieves in the night." And she never, ever tolerated them in her company.

Corcoran is a real-estate mogul who sold her business, The Corcoran Group, for $66 million in 2001.

On an episode of Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Corcoran told US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell that keeping out those "thieves" - i.e. complainers - was key to the success of her company.

Listen to the full episode here, or listen later with the buttons below:

"Complain in my company, I couldn't wait till Friday to get you out, OK?" she said. "So I felt like they were attacking my young."

Other people call complainers by different names, while making the same point about their toxicity in any organization.

Writing in Inc., Jayson DeMers says you should always fire the "victim":

"These people avoid accountability for their own actions, preferring to blame others for bad situations. They'll always have an excuse, and their constant complaints aren't missed by their coworkers, who can even begin to develop their own victim mentality as a result of seeing others do it."

Also in Inc., Kevin Daum recommends ousting the "Atlas":

"The weight of the world is on this person's shoulders. No one works harder or faces greater difficulty than them. Everyone knows this, because this person lets them know, constantly. They spend a great deal of time complaining about the obstacles they encounter, the incompetence of others around them, and the difficulty of their daily responsibilities."

Corcoran gave a simple rationale for getting rid of complainers. She said, "One negative person will take the energy out of 15 great people quietly. That's why I think of complainers as thieves in the night; they don't work upfront. They quietly are zapping you."