Do you hear from everybody only words of praise for how good you are? It certainly must feel nice. On the other hand, you should also be alarmed. Try to look around and think if you are not surrounded by people who have no opinion of their own and who agree with you on everything. This can be very dangerous not only for you personally but also for the task you are trying to achieve with your team. If you want to find out how to discover yes-people start with a simple test. Express publically some absurd opinion or set a meaningless objective and look who will actually protest.
More practical tips how to recognise yes-sayers and how to face them were published by the server openforum.com:
They do only what you tell them to
Yes-people lack the ability of strategic thinking. If you have an employee who does not do anything else than what you tell him try to find new ways to assign him with more responsibility for independent work.
They pretend to be listening
Yes-sayers do not understand broader consequences. Try therefore another test. Send them to two conferences from your professional field – a good one and a bad one. You will see the feedback they will give you. At the same time, you can ask them to work out an analysis of your present competition and outline recommendations for adjustment of you current strategy.
They are not team players
In fact, the yes-people care only about themselves and about how to please their superiors. It is therefore important not to bias towards anybody only because he or she behaves nicely. Reward and promote your employees according to measurable results and according to their willingness to give their work some extra effort.
-kk-