Toxic A-Players: What to Do with Brilliant Jerks

We all have good days. We all have bad days. It’s part of the human condition.

Maybe we did­n’t get enough sleep, are wor­ried or have pres­sures – and some­times, we’re a bit of a jerk and not at our best deal­ing with oth­er people.

There are times when peo­ple have called me a jerk — and I def­i­nite­ly earned it.

And then there are ter­mi­nal cas­es who are con­stant­ly frus­trat­ing to be around — who don’t play well with oth­ers, upset their team mem­bers, and don’t align with the core val­ues of an organization.

These are the bril­liant jerks who get great results in their role but are tox­ic because they don’t fit the cul­ture, cause a lot of fric­tion around and vio­late key core val­ues. In Your Oxy­gen Mask First, I call them Tox­ic A‑Players.

Turn­ing a Blind Eye has Costs

Lead­ers tend to turn a bit of a blind eye toward their behav­ior. They fear that if they let Tox­ic A‑Players go, they’ll lose rev­enue and impor­tant cus­tomers, or have major lead­er­ship gaps in the orga­ni­za­tion that could cause more work for them­selves. But if peo­ple who work with them are frus­trat­ed and poten­tial­ly leave because of this jerk, you’ll pay any­way – one way or anoth­er – and wish you’d dealt with them sooner.

I worked with a com­pa­ny in the US who hired a CFO whose behav­iour broke down the health and har­mo­ny of a tight exec­u­tive team in just 42 days. When I saw him in action at the quar­ter­ly meet­ing, it was obvi­ous he had to go immediately.

One con­ser­v­a­tive client hired a new sales rep over the phone (pre-Zoom days) who told insane­ly inap­pro­pri­ate lock­er room jokes, in mixed com­pa­ny — and didn’t rec­og­nize it was unac­cept­able in a pro­fes­sion­al setting.

Anoth­er client with a fleet of trucks had a mas­sive issue with one of their best dri­vers because his aggres­sive dri­ving brought com­plaints and erod­ed their well-respect­ed brand.

These peo­ple may not be bad human beings, but when their behav­iour is a mis­match for your cul­ture, they are a liability.

Don’t Ignore Tox­ic A‑Players!

While deal­ing with Tox­ic As isn’t easy, you have to do something.

Your cul­ture doesn’t live in words on a wall. It lives in your hir­ing and pro­mo­tion deci­sions. When you pro­mote bril­liant jerks, you say your core val­ues don’t mean any­thing and it’s OK to be a jerk if you’re high­ly productive.

Doing noth­ing endors­es their behav­iour, under­mines your cul­ture, how you val­ue oth­er peo­ple, and your cred­i­bil­i­ty as a leader. You have to:

• Take action. The cost to the team is sim­ply too high to allow the sit­u­a­tion to fes­ter just because you’re scared of los­ing the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of a bril­liant jerk. That’s a fear of scarci­ty and unfound­ed. Your team will thank you for reliev­ing the stress and frus­tra­tion in the environment.
• Tell the truth. Good lead­ers give jerks a fair chance. They pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to become aware of, under­stand, and cor­rect the prob­lems and to align with the team. It could be that no-one has done that before and they deserve a chance to improve.
  • Con­duct an in-depth 360 includ­ing inter­views with oth­ers to gath­er details.
  • Give tough feed­back Work with HR to make sure your feed­back is crys­tal clear – that if the behav­iour doesn’t change, they will no longer have a job.
• Cre­ate a per­for­mance improve­ment action plan, with clear writ­ten goals and a time­line, of how they’re going to improve. This may include coach­ing, train­ing or a per­son­al growth program.

Give them a chance to con­tin­ue to earn their role in the com­pa­ny, by a cer­tain date. If they need to move on to a com­pa­ny that suits them bet­ter, be respect­ful and treat them fairly.

• Con­duct exit inter­views if they leave, with peo­ple they work with and, pos­si­bly, clients.
• Lis­ten and learn. Be open to your team’s feed­back, espe­cial­ly if they ask why this wasn’t dealt with soon­er. In addi­tion, main­tain a respect­ful cul­ture by not let­ting peo­ple cel­e­brate the exit too much. Talk about how to pre­vent or min­i­mize this from hap­pen­ing again.

More about how to con­sis­tent­ly hire peo­ple who are pro­duc­tive and live your val­ues in upcom­ing blogs and podcasts.

The Chal­lenge

• Who might be a Tox­ic A (bril­liant jerk) in your orga­ni­za­tion who needs some form of action?
• How can you make sure that per­son has a clear mes­sage about what they need to do? What they need to do to be pro­duc­tive AND a great fit with your culture?

Want to hear more? Lis­ten to Episode 99 of The Growth Whisperers.