Read Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny and Ron McMillan.

“Our bodies specialize in survival, so we have a natural bias to avoid situations that might harm us,” says Joseph Grenny, the coauthor of Crucial Conversations and the co-founder of VitalSmarts, a corporate training company.

A 2017 study by corporate training company VitalSmarts found this figure isn’t too far off: High performers are responsible for 61 percent of their companies’ work. In other words, they produce three times as much value as their peers.

It only takes one or two team members to undermine results for the entire group when they mess up, research from leadership training experts Vitalsmarts shows. Overwhelmed and less-productive team members affect performance by as much as 24%.

Successful groups spoke openly about anticipated problems. They were masters of what we call crucial conversations. They effectively talked about concerns and barriers and thus created the social support needed for success.

Just one or two underperforming workers can jeopardize an entire team’s success, according to a survey by leadership training company VitalSmarts. When a worker fails to prioritize project tasks, misses deadlines and generally underperforms, teams can lose as much as 24% of their productivity, the company said.

VitalSmarts, a Provo company that specializes in leadership training, found in a recent study that even small, seemingly unimportant mistakes by just one or two members of a company can cut team performance by an average of 24%. Examples of “mistakes” include missed deadlines, failure to make critical hand offs and working on the wrong …

Some people dread asking for time off, and assume taking less time off is expected of them, according to Joseph Grenny, co-founder ofVitalSmarts and co-author of The New York Times best-seller, “Crucial Conversations.”

In a recent VitalSmarts survey of 200 managers, executives said that fewer than 18 percent of employees received clear, constructive feedback. Although the study was of all employees, many of those not receiving feedback were executives, says Justin Hale, master trainer, VitalSmarts, a leadership training company with a Fortune 500 client list.

“Before you take off, block out time on your calendar for the morning of your return,” said Justin Hale, speaker, training designer and master trainer at VitalSmarts.