Over the four decades of my career in IT I have had the opportunity to work for a wide array of businesses and managers. From Big Three automakers and Fortune 500 companies to numerous small and medium-sized organizations. I’ve seen great leaders who weren’t always great as well as eye-wateringly bad managers.
A lot of my own management style has come from these object lessons, much more so than all of the books on leadership on my shelves. I’m going to skip over the things we all know: arrogance, politics, nepotism. But some others might be new to you. I humbly submit a few of the things I’ve learned.
Tolerating bad employees
There are a couple quotes out there that really hit home for me.
NOTHING WILL KILL A GOOD EMPLOYEE FASTER THAN WATCHING YOU TOLERATE A BAD ONE.
THE CULTURE OF ANY TEAM IS SHAPED BY THE WORST BEHAVIOR THE LEADER IS WILLING TO TOLERATE
I started my series with this one because I’ve seen instances of it in virtually every large organization I’ve been at, and because it is so incredibly disheartening to the rest of the company.
I suspect one of the reasons why this issue is so common is because the people who have the power to fix it aren’t affected by it. They may get complaints, until people give up, but they just don’t get the damage being done to the organization.
Managing difficult employees is always unpleasant, and often there are excuses. The problem employee may be in a critical role, or at least a role that management thinks is critical, and difficult to replace. What management fails to realize is that more often than not, the rest of the team has already found ways to work around the difficult ones and interact with them as little as possible, and they’re a lot more replaceable than they realize.
Bad employees come in several flavors:
Prima Donnas
The classic prima donna of course is the highly talented individual who “earned” the right to be difficult. The irony is that often as not, they are only talented in their own mind. There is a lot of overlap between Dunning-Kruger and Prima Donnas.
One of the hallmarks of a prima donna is the insistence that everything has to be done exactly their way. They will die on every hill. No amount of proof that their way is wrong will work, and they will double down all the time.
Prima Donnas have a way of becoming gatekeepers, and bureaucracy is their bread and butter. Don’t misunderstand—organizations need gatekeepers. They need formal ways of making requests and getting approval, and the bigger the organization the more important these things are. But forms and standards are a means to an end. They exist to streamline a process by eliminating back and forth, and by having clearly defined ways of doing things and keeping management informed. Bureaucrats, however, fall in love with the process, and lose sight that it only exists to increase profit and productivity in the big picture. One of the core competencies of a person in a leadership or a gatekeeper role is understanding that.
Incompetent
Incompetence comes in two flavors: the obviously incompetent and the stealth incompetent.
The obviously incompetent are the ones who just never fully come up to speed, and constantly rely on their co-workers for help, but nobody ever comes to them for help. These are perhaps the easiest to address. You need to be prepared that they often have no idea how incompetent they really are.
The Stealth Incompetent: Masters of Avoidance
The “stealth incompetent” is particularly insidious. Unlike the overtly inept who might be quickly identified and, theoretically, managed out, the stealth incompetent has developed a sophisticated camouflage. They are not necessarily ignorant of their own limitations; in fact, they often possess a self-awareness that motivates their elaborate strategies of avoidance. They are smart enough to have mastered the subtle art of not looking incompetent.
Their professional persona is meticulously constructed: they are reliably present, often arriving punctually and meticulously logging their hours. They are masters of the appearance of productivity, always looking intensely busy, whether through staring intently at a screen, participating in back-to-back meetings, or perpetually carrying a stack of files. This constant motion creates an illusion of high-value work, even when their actual output is negligible.
The core of their technique, however, is the art of foisting. Any task that requires deep critical thinking, sustained effort, or carries a significant risk of failure is expertly and rapidly deflected. This redirection is rarely a simple, crude delegation; it is a nuanced process:
- Strategic Delegation: The difficult project is presented as a “growth opportunity” for a junior team member or is subtly implied to be a better fit for another team’s existing skill set or budget.
- Process Paralysis: They may initiate endless meetings to “scope” the difficult task, allowing the deadline to pass naturally or forcing the task to be broken down into so many pieces that the original owner is obscured.
- Information Hoarding/Flooding: They might drown the recipient in unnecessary data or, conversely, withhold a critical piece of information until the last minute, creating a situation where they can blame the receiving party for the subsequent failure.
In many cases, these are genuinely intelligent individuals who suffer from extreme professional laziness. They possess the mental capacity to learn and excel, but they find it infinitely more stimulating to exercise their intellect on the problem of avoiding work rather than the problem of doing the work. Their mental energy is spent on defense—on crafting airtight excuses, developing convoluted hand-offs, and managing perceptions—rather than on offense—on leadership, innovation, and strategic execution. The result is a toxic net-negative for the organization, as they not only fail to contribute but actively consume the productive capacity of others by forcing them to carry the weight of their neglected responsibilities.
Obnoxious
We have all encountered these individuals; people whose disruptive and distracting behavior hampers the productivity of everyone around them. A very common manifestation is a person whose speaking volume is so loud that their simple presence is a distraction to people even across the room. They seem to operate permanently at “volume 11,” often coupled with an outgoing and highly talkative nature. Addressing this issue typically requires multiple conversations, as breaking a lifelong habit is rarely a quick or simple task.
All of the above
The truly bad employees, the ones you need to quickly fix or fire, combine all of the above. I have seen more than one team lead or middle manager who thinks they are the smartest person in the room, when in fact they are way in over their heads. They make rules, often about the least important aspect of the job, but are sticklers to the point of absurdity. I once worked with a woman in a DBA role who had a 12-page form in multiple colors you had to fill out for even the most minor change. This form covered every single type of change, and was never more than 10% relevant for any given task. I saw her reject a new employee’s request over six times, for reasons that included using the wrong font. He quit after six months and took a job that paid less, specifically because of how impossible she was to work with. There were no repercussions.
The solution
Listen to your employees. It’s common for petty personality conflicts to exist. But if you regularly get complaints about the same person from different quarters, or if you get complaints about the policies created by someone, then you need to take a serious look.
When you find such a person, you have to act, and the sooner the better. Bad behavior can be turned around when it’s caught early. But if you allow it to continue, it becomes not only a habit, but the employee comes to emotionally identify with the behavior itself until ultimately the only solution is to let them go.
The standard practice is the usual. Ensure you are prepared with reliable, documented information. Hold a meeting to discuss the situation, outlining a clear improvement plan with defined goals. Maintain a consistent follow-up schedule, and take the necessary subsequent action based on progress.
My hope
My goal in writing this is that some manager out there sees in this something that they have been ignoring in their own organization. If you are like me, you can probably look back at your own career and remember times when a truly awful co-worker was finally terminated or left on their own, and the relief that followed.
A few years ago a client of mine hired an IT Director. He was smarmy, cloying, and emotional on the surface. He was manipulative and political behind your back. The one thing he wasn’t, was good at his job. When he was finally let go after about a year, the wave of sheer relief that washed over the entire IT department was incredible. Literal weeks of euphoria just for getting rid of one person.
