Are You Creating a Monster?: Letting the Jerk Overtake Your Office

Go ahead. Take credit. You might as well be Dr. Frankenstein. You’re creating a monster. Sure, I may be exaggerating, but if you’re managing a monster personality it doesn’t feel much like an exaggeration.

Below are some tried and true ways to let the monster (jerk) overtake your office:

• Run from confrontation. Just avoid the issue. It’s uncomfortable and scary. So, sweep it under the rug and hope it works itself out. You never told them to behave otherwise. Those who manage them just permitted disruptive behavior, failing to address it along the way.
• Give them power. Just promote the bully. You’ve just added fuel to the fire. Sure, they may be a top performer, but they’ve done it by running over everyone around them. But, you went ahead and promoted them. Nice work!
• Accommodate their personality. They’re disruptive and it wreaks havoc on your organization, but you’re afraid to lose them so you give them what they want, move their team around, keep certain people away from them just to keep them happy. It’s really rough if you’ve overtly asked others to accommodate their disruptive behavior. You’re feeding the monster.
• Don’t listen to anyone else. You don’t have visibility to the people around this disruptive personality. Without giving an ear to others, you’re not even hearing the feedback. So, you believe what you’re being told by the monster personality. Surprise, they’re biased.
• Set financial incentive criteria solely on performance metrics. You didn’t give them any reason to play well with others. Their compensation isn’t attached to how they work with their team. You just keep rewarding them. So, you’ve walked yourself into a corner and are now giving the most disruptive person on your team even less reason to change their behavior.

If you’ve created a monster, you’ve got a long road ahead of you to undo your work. It is a doable and difficult process. Trust me! I do it all the time with clients. It will stretch you to enter some challenging conversations and hold a difficult personality accountable to their development and behavior change. But, your organization and your team need it. It is difficult to thrive long-term when a disruptive personality is yanking your team off its rails.

See Dealing With Your Team’s Problem Child for some help.

Originally published 9/6 on Medium