What Do You Do With a High Performing Jerk?
Some bosses are just impossible.
When I was pursuing my MBA, our professor had us engage in a philosophical debate that became quite lively. It was premised on a simple question: “What do you do with a high performing jerk?”
At first glance, you’d think the obvious answer is to get rid of them. And despite people and manager’s propensity to say they would, they often don’t follow through on what they say. Instead, they promote them.
I saw this firsthand with a coworker, John. The trainwreck was visible long before collision.
John was fantastic at his job. He was technically competent, had amazing memory, and could navigate our systems with ease. During meetings, he could answer any question you threw at him related to his responsibilities. He could also carry a huge workload.
But I knew he’d be a problematic boss. For starters, he was unreasonably demanding with his peers when collaborating. If there was so much as a minor inconsistency or error, he’d conclude the entire thing was ruined and start blaming people. He also raised his voice and lost his temper when his boss wasn’t around.
And even before he became a manager, he was already unofficially managing a woman because her official boss was too busy and needed John’s help.
It was a favor — and it didn’t go well. This woman was good at her job, maybe not as good as John, but she definitely wasn’t deserving of the heat she got.
She ended up leaving for another company and it hurt us. Shortly thereafter, John becomes a manager. Then, people are shocked when all hell breaks loose and his employees are miserable, trying to transfer to new departments, or outright leaving.
And sadly — this predicament happens often. High performers get promoted into roles they aren’t suited for. And everyone else pays the price.
It doesn’t have to be this way
During one study, led by Stanford economist, Dr. Kathryn Shaw, moving an employee from an average boss to a high quality boss increased productivity by as much as 60%. It also found that the detriment of a bad boss far outweighs the positive effects of high quality peers.
Of note, this was also a study done in a call center like environment — and won’t align perfectly with other industries. But the message is clear: bosses matter.
Another study found that good managers may not increase productivity necessarily — but they do improve employee retention by up to 60%, which is critical in industries like technology, where retaining talent is so critical.
Personally, I saw several good finance employees driven out by the same vice president at my final company. He was unreasonable, rude, and pushy. He was also misogynistic, a walking HR nightmare that the company turned a blind eye to. Why? Because he was fantastic at some aspects of his job, and notably, those that didn’t involve people. He epitomized the high performing jerk problem. And nobody above him realized the damage he caused by driving out talent.
What makes a good boss?
Per a study by professor Edward P. Lazear, great bosses tend to be good teachers. They instill competence in their subordinates that can even carry over long after they transfer to another department. They also create long-lasting motivation in employees by communicating with them and developing goals and aspirations.
You might wonder why there can’t be a lower number of high quality bosses who are tasked with leading and inspiring more workers. After all, if you’ve worked at a few corporate organizations, you’ve likely seen the excess of VPs.
The reason is — managers typically spend a good portion of their job tutoring with job-skills tasks. They are typically highly skilled and experienced at the things their employees do.
There’s another fascinating case study that shows how easily a high performer can become a bad boss.
Google ran a study of the impact of managers in 2012, after engineers pushed back on having managers at all. In their double blind study, they found that managers did result in higher performance with engineers. They also found 8 traits good managers had in common: good coach, expresses interest in employee well-being, empowers his team, is results oriented, has a clear vision for the team, has key technical skills, listens and shares information, helps with career development.
As you look at those eight skills, you can tell that many of them are quite different from what an engineer does in their day-to-day job. So the technical and high performing engineer can suddenly find himself in the position of manager, and see these skills and feel like they are suddenly tasked with being a life coach.
But the good news is, that same study found that many of these skills can be taught by aligning the incentives correctly, and prizing high quality managers.
However, not all of these skills can be taught. Managers need to be intrinsically caring to some degree, and not entirely motivated by self interest. I found this part particularly challenging as a financial analyst. While I was surrounded by competent and smart people, some of them could not have been more self-serving.
The next steps to fix things?
Per UC Berkley professor, Steven Haas, not enough has been done to measure the meaning of a good boss. One measure he aims to test is compassion — which he suspects plays a role in good bosses.
If you are a manager seeing this, take a moment to consider all that I’ve presented. Are you potentially one of these difficult managers? There’s a self-awareness gap that can haunt people and leave them wondering why they have so many problems.
And if you are considering several employees for a management position, take time to think through the personalities presented, and how they might perform. Then, ask around and do interviews with peers of these prospects. Your subordinates often present a front of friendliness that isn’t upheld with other coworkers.
When my dad was interviewing to work under the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, as his senior advisor, they asked him only a handful of questions. The final question was, “If the secretary is wrong about something, will you tell him?”
This was important — and was a sign that Gates would be a good boss. But it’s also indicative of the challenge we face in picking managers: we don’t always have full information on them. Take the time to speak with people who report to your managers. Get feedback. Empower them to be honest. They might be reticent to talk so consider doing anonymous surveys. Compare productivity and sentiment of employees before and after they started under this new manager.
Tread carefully before taking every person in your office at face value. Some managers are better at managing up than managing down.
Lastly, remember the infamous Peter Principle, that posits that in any organization where competency leads to promotion and incompetency bars it, you will inevitably have managers who have risen to their level of incompetence. It’s on you to find out who they are and what that means.
And, in the future, consider promoting the rude but incredible employee to a more technical role than to one which involves endless meetings and managing people. We need to break away from this paradigm of thinking all high performers are meant to be managers. There should be more roles and opportunities to accommodate the many skills people have.
I'm a former financial analyst turned writer out of Tampa, Florida. I write story-driven content to help us live better and maximize our potential.