Managing the Brilliant Jerk Without Letting Them Wreck Your Business

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We've all at least seen that one person that does an incredible amount of work, And the cost to get that work done is so ridiculously high. It's expensive. It's very—

Emotionally expensive.

Yeah. So yes, it is. To me, it is that person that everyone in the office avoids for the most part. Now, granted, usually I have found, as we like to coin this, the brilliant jerk.

Yes.

Is often a charismatic person that people like. Oh, hey, I'll listen to them talk. But No one wants to work with them.

Oh gosh, no.

How the hell do you deal with that? That is what we're going to talk about this week. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the Business Fix.

There's one way to not deal with it. It's called don't hire them in the first place. But you know, we make mistakes.

What the fuck to say? And the problem is too, as managers, sometimes you walk into that situation.

You do. And you're like, I have a rock.

I've got a high performer. Oh, yes.

Yeah. A high performer.

Right.

Depends on how they say it.

Right, right. It's like I would think it like I'm trying to think of even a good analogy, but I don't know if there is one. It's like eating something that's like, ah, it's a milkshake for someone that's lactose intolerant.

That's it. It's a donut for someone who has celiac.

Yeah, right. This tastes amazing.

You're gonna pay for it later.

For 100%. 100%. Like, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna have this wonderful, wonderful experience followed by the most horrific experience of you and the person in the the stall next to you's life.

Buckle up, great time.

You, you may need to buckle down for those. Yes, you're like, yeah, yeah, no, I, I think to me this is— and to me what sucks about this is so often as the business leader of any sort, you feel like this is the hostage situation.

Oh, it is.

Um, yeah, I mean, do you fire them? Well, do we lose— we're going to lose business if we fire them, or we're going to lose whatever if we fire them.

And yeah, Well, and it's the hostage situation for you as the business owner or CEO, but it is absolutely a hostage situation for the team members that have to deal with them.

And that's what sucks.

It's a dual hostage.

It's a dual hostage situation.

And I don't think we talk enough about how that team gets impacted. I think, like, we talk about our Instagram, that's where half of our likes come from is when we talk about these types of situations.

Oh, like when we've mentioned the brilliant jerk, those Instagram posts go bananas and people are like, I know this person. Yes, yes. I mean, so far we haven't seen anyone tag anyone else yet. Thank God. If you're gonna— we'd love for you to tag someone in our posts. Yes. Um, maybe not calling them out on that.

No, but you could tag your owner, like your business owner, if you're an employee. Maybe they'll look. We're happy to talk to them about it.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe you want to do that anonymously.

Yeah, or not. Be brave.

So when we do— like, we were like— one of our most downloaded episodes, we were talking about culture killers and And we also look at the coach correct and cut. The hardest termination of all is the person that's killing it. They're just absolutely killing it. And by killing it, I mean both the KPIs and your team, because they're killing both of them. One of them you want dead. The other one, you kind of want them. And once again, we've all met them. It's the salesperson that triples the quota but makes your executive assistant cry. Uh-huh. It's the developer who writes amazing code but won't document anything. Um, I've, I've worked with that IT guy before who's like, oh no, it's fine. Um, it, to me, it, it's just so difficult, and I see it so many times with it. Like, the, the conflict with it is, is visionaries love results.

Yeah.

Um, as an operations guy, I hate friction. Um, I want to make sure it's as easy as possible to get there. To me, the high perform— the high performer who's toxic, they are not actually a high performer. Um, they give you some numbers, but The cultural tax, the operational debt, everything like that, the other ways that they just crush you make it so it's not the equation you think it is. We've talked about psychological safety. We do. It's a subject that, once again, we feel strongly about. People need this.

They do.

How does the toxic high performer tell the rest of the team your core values are shitty wall art?

No! Such a nice question.

It's just meh.

Yeah. So brilliant jerks almost always create confusion for leaders.

Yes.

Yeah, because they make money, they solve problems, they produce results. Yes. So a leader really, I mean, we start rationalizing, you know, I know that Bob made you cry, but you know, I mean, he's just intense. So you just, that's just their personality. These are things that I may have said. These are also things that I've heard people say, I mean, we need them right now. I realize that Beth has pretty much said she's only going to show up if it's really important and nothing is really important, but she does 3 things that are really important to the business. So, you know, we need them right now. I can't let them go. They may be giving me the middle finger, but I just, I can't.

Right? When you say that, all I can think of is Stanley going to Michael Scott, "Did I stutter?" Yes.

So you've said those 3 things, but honestly, I mean, a lot of that comes from what we talked about when we talked about the nice leader trap. Yes. That podcast. So if you haven't listened to that, maybe listen to that because keeping the brilliant jerk is often not about kindness. It's really about avoidance. And as a leader, we're trying to avoid conflict. We are absolutely avoiding disruption. Most are avoid— like fear of losing revenue is real. And so, you know, leaders are gonna avoid that. We don't wanna deal with losing revenue or the uncomfortable reality that business became too dependent on one person. That brilliant jerk is responsible for 30% of your business. Oh, we can't lose them, they're too important. Are they?

And, and to me, a quick answer to that is, is like, they're not. Because what happens if they get hit by a bus? Yeah, I mean, you may even be hoping for that.

I'm sure that there are some people that are secretly praying for their brilliant jerk to get hit by a bus. I don't want to know about it.

Right, as, as HR representative, no, no. How, like, so how are you looking at this?

Yeah, so there are three Rs to dealing with a brilliant jerk. Results, respect, and replication. So results, yes, that person may produce at a high level, but leaders make that huge mistake when they define performance only by numbers, right? Results matter, but how the results happen matters too. So if someone is producing through fear, chaos, or intimidation, the organization is going to pay for those results somewhere else. We talked about it in the competition episode around like, oh, well, this person produces mass results. Well, how are they doing that? Is that because they're hoarding all of the leads? Is that because they've got one key relationship? Like, let's talk about that. So results, that's the first R. Second R is respect, right? So this is where culture damage starts because the team is watching. And when leaders excuse toxic behavior because someone performs, what the employees hear is values are optional if you're valuable enough, right?

Wow. Yeah. And that's a tough one because really to me, if optional or if values are optionalable, Optional if you are valuable enough. They're going to test that.

They are.

What's valuable enough mean? Yes.

And that's the favoritism trap, right? So then the rules quietly become one standard for the producer and another standard for everyone else. That's that rules for me, but not for thee. Right. And once that happens, leaders use that. They lose moral authority. Yeah. Yeah. And I have seen leaders spend months coaching everyone around the brilliant jerk instead of coaching the actual brilliant jerk. Oh, you know what? This is, this is how Jim does things. We're just going to do things the way that Jim needs to have them done because they're important. I mean, I've been the person doing that coaching. I've done it wrong. Learn from me. So please, please. And that's how, I mean, that's when you know fear's entered leadership is when you are coaching around that person.

Yep.

You've lost respect. Okay. Yeah. And then the third is replication. And this is the scaling question that really nobody asks enough. And it's, can this person's success replicate through the organization? Ooh.

Yeah.

Yeah. Are they a brilliant jerk that has repeatable skills that can be trained to other people, or are they just an anomaly? All right. So is this person— can it be replicated or does it only work because, one, they're controlling the information? Yep. I've got all the leads or I've got one source. Number two is they hoard relationships. I mean, that's— I've seen it. I've seen it too. Or three, they create dependency. Yep. So everybody intentionally— everybody has to come to me because not only am I the brilliant jerk, I'm also the hero of everything. Yep. And then the last one is, do they intimidate the room? Yep. And I think that out of all of those, that is probably the most damaging is when your brilliant jerk intimidates everyone else around them. Because if success can't be replicated, it's not scalable. And if it isn't scalable, it isn't sustainable.

No, no, it's not.

Oh, so I mean, a brilliant jerk may produce a ton of revenue, but they usually destroy the repeatability of any other revenue that can be replicated.

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And when you say repeatability, you mean someone else's ability to do the same thing, correct?

Correct.

Yeah, that's what I thought. The collapse of trust, I mean, that happens when you've got a high-performing culture killer. Yeah. What happens when they're allowed to stay? You're just like, "Hey, just hang out, just stay quiet." And how does that, like, there's typically, the problem is there's a gap between the brilliant jerk and then there's the rest of the people. But in the rest of the people, you still have your average and you still have above-average people. So how does it impact those above-average people? That still are making great output for you.

Yeah. So let's talk about results. So high performers are gonna stop trying as hard when they're dealing with a brilliant jerk.

Yep.

And it's not because they stop caring, it's because they've stopped believing that leadership is going to protect the standard.

Right.

So they're moving. And then in respect, you've got that emotional contract that you've broken. And this is where psychological safety, it gets misunderstood because people think that psychological safety is about keeping everyone comfortable. It's not. It's not about keeping everyone comfortable. It's not about avoiding accountability or protecting feelings. It's about protecting fairness.

I like how before you started the psychological safety part, you heard there was this deep breath, like, yeah, I gotta talk about this again.

We are going to repeat this a million times until people really understand what it is.

Yeah.

So psychological safety is about protecting fairness. And so when the team sees one person allowed to violate values repeatedly, they are stopping feeling psychologically safe because the environment has now become unpredictable. 100%. It is. So, I mean, we talk about, you know, we've got rockstar traps that we can be in. There is also a quiet superstar problem. All right.

So, yeah, we haven't addressed this.

We have not. We have not.

This is a new term. I'm excited for this.

This is the people that are most impacted by the brilliant jerk are usually not the loudest people. They are your quiet superstars, right? They're the reliable people that show up consistently, do the work. They're the collaborative people that work together and solve problems. And they're also usually the emotionally mature because they haven't blown up your brilliant jerk in the middle of a meeting. They're not there.

They haven't just lit 'em up.

They haven't. They're not there to create drama. So what they're doing is they are quietly disengaging, and then leaders are absolutely shocked when that person resigns. I cannot believe that Alice isn't with us anymore. And it's like, well, George made her miserable.

Right.

He continued to tell her that she wasn't capable, wouldn't share resources when she had a question, and when she was trying to solve client issues, everything was her fault. Right. Of course Alice is going to leave. You're like, well, now she works for our competition and she's happy and like half of our customers are starting to walk away because she's out of her non-compete. And it's like, yeah, because you did that. You empowered George to be an absolute jerk in this situation and your star performer who was really quiet and you didn't realize how consistent they were walked out the door. So if you do not have respect, you're going to have a quiet superstar problem.

Yep.

And that last one is replication. And this is where the organization starts adapting around the dysfunction and I cannot I cannot tell you, Josh, how many times I have done this wrong. I really— People are like, "You sound like you do everything." No, I do not. This is one where I've gotten stuck because it's like, I will just shape the path around this person. Don't do it because what happens is the organization starts adapting around the dysfunction. So people will avoid conflict, they stop speaking up, and they're working around the jerk instead of the system, working through the system. We're not doing it.

And it makes sense because once again, you've got this, You started to form it towards this malleable, malleable person.

Yes.

The jerk that is going to change the rules to whatever they want and whatever is convenient for them. Yes. And so now you've got this moving goalpost and you can't replicate that. Yeah.

And you've created shadow workflows and cultural fragmentation. And the cost of a brilliant jerk is usually paid by the healthiest people in the company.

Ouch.

Again, those quiet superstars.

Yeah.

There's a reason why there's all these Instagram posts about people like losing their willingness or want to work in an organization because someone just keeps getting credit for something that they're not doing well. When you're watching everyone, when you're watching someone break all of the rules, why does it— why is it so important that I follow them?

Yeah, no, I get that. On the flip side of that, speaking of rule breaking. Yeah. From an HR, like, risk standpoint, I feel like you need to manage the correct phase of this. And when I say correct, like, I mean, by correcting someone in terms of getting them back in. Someone that thinks they're above the law, what's the right way to correct that? I'm assuming handcuffs are not involved.

No, they're not involved. And this can be one where regulating your emotions is really important as a leader because I think that brilliant jerks are really good at pushing emotional buttons.

They're often charismatic.

They are. And they are going to— and And yeah, charismatic, have an ego, like, what are you gonna do? You gonna fire me? It's like, actually, yeah, I am. So you have to stop leading emotionally and you have to lead structurally. So this is really where structure is really helpful because brilliant jerks are really good at creating emotional leverage, right? Because they imply, you need me. You have to have me. The company is going to struggle or go out of business without me. I promise you it won't. Nope. So, and nobody else can do it. No one can do this job but me. So they do those three things and then leaders believe them. And then you get into this nice leader trap that we've talked about in the past too, where leaders sugarcoat, they delay, and they downplay because they're terrified of hearing someone say, "Well, fine, I'll just quit. You're going to coach me on this? Fine, I'll just quit." Let them. You let them. All right?

When you said, "What are you going to do, fire me?" All I could think of was Val Kilmer in, what is it, Tombstone or whatever?

"I'm your Huckleberry." I mean, I get that sometimes that fear is real around people. And I think that, Chrissy, you're just dismissing me. Like, I have legitimate fear around this person leaving my business. Okay, let's acknowledge that. Yeah, that fear is real. But if your culture can be held hostage by one employee, you don't have a talent problem, you have a systems problem. And you're gonna talk about it in operations. But let's talk about results, respect, And replication one more time. All right. As we go through the HR, HR phases. Yes.

The HRRRs. HRRRs.

All right. So results with the brilliant jerk. You know what? We acknowledge their value, but we never confuse value with exemption. Oh, yeah. I appreciate all of the work that you do. I really appreciate the revenue that you build. But that does not mean that you get to treat everybody else like dirt in this organization because one of our core values is teamwork.

I feel like the "never confuse value with exemption" needs to be a needlepoint, like hanging above something somewhere in an office. That's brilliant. I love that. Yeah.

So that's results. Okay. And then respect. Correction has to be direct.

Yep.

3 things. Here's the behavior, here's the impact, and here's the expectation moving forward. Yep. We're not going to be vague about it. We're not going to be emotional. We're not going to be passive-aggressive.

Oh, gosh. They just feed off of that. Yeah. Don't do that.

Just be, this is the issue that we're having, this is the impact it's having on our team, and this is what you're going to be doing moving forward. And then replication. And this is where we've talked about how documentation is kindness. This is where documentation, I know that leaders hate it because sometimes they're like, it feels corporate, I don't wanna do it. When you have a brilliant jerk, you have to have documentation, all right? Because it does 3 important things. It creates clarity, it creates consistency, and it removes any surprise that this brilliant jerk may have, "I had no idea that you were upset with me. I had no idea that I wasn't performing." Oh yes, we do. Here's your documentation.

Yeah. Here's the 10 emails and 4 whatever forms. Yes.

Yes. Here's the meetings that we've had around how you have to coach how you're talking to people. This is the conversation that we've had and that you need to share your client information with this other person so that they can help you on a project. If they're not doing the things You document them because then the employee knows what has been coached on, what has been expected in a correction, and then what's happening next. And that's not cruel, it's respectful. Because sometimes you're like, I don't want to hurt that brilliant jerk's feelings. Yes, you do. Yeah, you have to.

That's how you have to fight them. Yeah.

So you want to know the point of no return? Yes. Okay. Point of no return is not when someone makes a mistake. It is when they reject the accountability itself. Themselves. Yeah, yeah, that's it. All right, refusing ownership, dismissive of your feedback, believing that the standards don't apply to them— those three things, that is the point of no return. It is no longer a coaching issue, it is a values issue. And the moment someone believes that they are bigger than the culture, the culture starts shrinking around them.

100%. 100%. 1000%, maybe.

Yeah. So leaders may think that firing the brilliant jerk risks the business, but what actually risks the business is teaching the entire organization that values are negotiable. Because once trust collapses, performance eventually follows. And that's where your quiet superstars are leaving. Everyone's leaving. You're like, I don't understand why anybody— it's just, it's just me and Jim. Why are, why are we the only ones here?

And it's like you say, eventually there— that eventually thing is, is pretty quick.

It's pretty quick. Yeah. And you, you start to see it fairly quickly. And if you've created an environment where people can speak they will tell you about the brilliant jerk. Correct. And if you— and they really don't need to tell you, Josh. No. See it? Yes. Unless you're the brilliant jerk, in which case, this is why sometimes we work with coaches.

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I'll give you a few seconds to go to the website while we get ready to get back to the show. I mean, I think I'm average intelligence. I am a jerk. I— we're going to do an episode of The Average Jerk here coming up.

Jerk or unassuming. Like, sometimes we just don't realize when we're being a jerk, but that's— this is, this is someone who knows that they are assuming jerk.

You know what that reminds me of is, it's funny because we mentioned the Instagram stuff. When we get an Instagram post that typically reaches a certain level, I send you the GIF of Steve Martin from The Jerk of "I'm somebody now" when he gets in the phone book.

All right. So you want to talk about operations?

Yeah, I would love to.

We talk about how that fear around firing that person is real. I think it can especially be real when, you know, that person owns 40% of the sales or the entire tech stack or how we prevent a machine from collapsing. So what is the operational roadmap for that cut?

To me, the first thing, like when you're taken hostage, what do you do? You take stock of everything around you. So like, and what you're looking for is you're looking for that single point of failure. So it, like, to me, first thing that I usually see with the brilliant jerk is some of those shadow workflows. Oh yeah, they have their own how-to, so you can't fire them. And to me, the way that I start to build it is I start to operationalize that. So the, the two reasons why they do the, the shadow workflows is one is they, they can change processes for their own speed, their own good, their phone, whatever. And they don't care that them saving 15 minutes caused Nancy in accounting to lose her mind for 4 and a half hours trying to find something. Um, the other thing though is I do see it, I do see it sometimes intentionally, because what I like to call the smartest toddler, they're going to push boundaries just to see what they can get away with. How quickly can I get this done? And like, what are they, what are they like, I know I'm supposed to fill out this form, what are they willing to ignore?

More.

Yeah, um, I worked with someone recently like that where like they would just ignore all the processes because they knew their boss would take it and he would be like, I'll fill this in for him. Um, yeah, just completely ignored it. So to me it's identifying like the, the operationalizing that transition is the key to this. And there's 6 steps. Step 1's the logic inventory. Identify the black boxes, like the tasks that they finish that no else knows how to start. If it's someone that's in, whether it be a sales position or more of an operational, like they're doing the thing, they often try and find genuinely better, more innovative ways to do a job. But they're going to hide those little secrets for themselves. And once again, they're trying to weaponize that innovation. And this is where that collaboration versus competition episode we talked about, it's where it's tough. Because in a healthy company, Innovation comes in a new SOP that helps everyone. Yeah, for the brain jerk, that innovation is an insurance policy that they use to cover their butt. Um, you have to hunt for those hidden upgrades. What are those things that they are doing that aren't on the books? Step 2, the access inventory. Like, so if you're getting ready to chop this person, you got to look at what they have access of. And to me, this should be every single person because you do not know when someone may get a better offer and they want to leave tomorrow. Yeah. Every login, every API key, physical access point, you've got to have a way to change those master passwords during a sweaty 10-minute conversation if you have to. The administrative, quote unquote, owner trap is like— and I have seen this so many times. It was so funny when I was at the truck dealership. Um, there was one person that had access to the YouTube channel and he forgot the password.

Yep.

I'm like, what are you doing? Like, how did you— and he's like, well, I don't have that email address anymore. Oh my gosh. So yeah, there's like, have multiple. You don't— everyone doesn't need ownership access to everything. No. But 2 or 3 people should have that.

Yeah, your website, your social media. Correct.

Yeah. 2 or 3 people need to have that. Or there should be a master admin account, something like that, that happens before you start getting rid of something like this. The other thing is too, is if like with so many things going with two-factor authentication anymore, you like, you have to realize that if it goes to their personal phone, you still may be locked out. So you need to realize what's tethered to a personal device of theirs. Yes, and make sure you migrate that to a shared authentication tool. Mhm. Um, deactivating Slack, email, and physical fobs must be a synchronized operational move if you are pushing someone out the door. Um, this isn't like, ah, we fired him today, we'll take care of this tomorrow.

No, immediately. By the time they leave the parking lot, you have wiped them from your, from your corporate map.

Yes, like they're, like they, they're The car should not start and they no longer exist in your company.

You lock it down as quickly as possible.

And the reason why I say this is, this is the big thing. You should have this plan for every employee in your company. Yes. Before it gets to this point.

Yeah. This is a standard thing.

This is a standard thing. This isn't a, hey, we're getting rid of Bob next week. No, this is something that you need to have this plan. Yep. The other thing is relationship mapping. Who owns the client relationship in the client's eyes? The brand or the person?

Yeah.

If it's the person, you got a problem.

Yeah.

If it's a brand, you've, you've, you're, you're, you're probably okay. Are they like, do the clients only talk to this person? Yep. I've seen this in so many cases where, where they're like, the, the billing person is like, hey, I need to call them about this check. And then I'll do it. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll take care of it. I wanted to talk to them anyways. No, no, no, no, no. Let, let the billing person call them. Um, and to me, like, if I've got a— someone else is willing to call my clients for me about something and let them know something, great. Yeah, wonderful. I— as long as it's someone that I trust, awesome. Love that. The other thing is, is what internal departments are tethered to this person? Who relies on them for approvals, data, or unwritten permissions. Like baseball has all sorts of unwritten rules. What are the unwritten rules of this? Um, because the problem is, is there's, there's always that potential churn or stagnation that's going to happen the moment they're removed. Yes. So you need to take a damage assessment of what's going to happen and what you need to do to move forward. I like that. If you've got this thought of they have 40% of our clients, you have to realize what— like, it's not just, hey, we fired them, what do we do now? It's, hey, okay, their, their car may be on the entrance ramp to the freeway, but now you're calling the clients to let them know what's going on. And you have to be— you have to have that in there. Um, like I said, the shadow workflow search, that's step 4. Look for spreadsheets or personal apps not in the central SOP. We've all seen the trackers, the logs, the lists, um, the unauthorized tooling. You're looking for Zapier stuff, Trello, Slack channels that they're like, right? Um, physical notebooks, sticky notes, local Word docs that contain the nuance and logic, that if-then scenarios that may not be like in your library. The other thing that I seen is email redirection. Yes, people have like, they've got some auto-forwards from specific clients. They've got— you need to have your IT people go in and look and say, hey, are there any auto-forwardings on this? Yeah, because that once again— now here's the problem. We all talk about what happens when we get rid of the brilliant jerk. They're 40% or they're they're the guy, they're the person out in the warehouse that, that moves the most stuff. Yeah, you have to be ready to— once again, I'm gonna call this capacity triage. We talked in the last episode about stopping the bleeding. Yeah, you'd like high performance— they often do 3 things. They distribute the mastery audit findings across the team. So you're gonna look at the must-do problems, you're going to look at the can-wait problems. 20% of the work typically generates 80% of the value. Let the ego things go by the wayside. Yeah, you don't need them. You're right. Like, if— let's talk warehouse. It's someone that's super productive in the warehouse. If the warehouse doesn't get swept up for a week, okay. Yeah. Um, you, you have to realize that you are taking a large burden from someone and you're putting it on the remaining people there. There's an interim load that these people are going to have to bear. You have to be honest with them about it, and you have to be like, look, you're working harder short-term so we have a healthy environment long-term. We got rid of this giant pain in your ass. We got rid of— let's say it's a warehouse environment. This guy did said, if there's 10 people in there, this guy does 30% of the work. But he was the bully. Yeah, he's the one that would stuff people in lockers.

They're gonna happily share the workload, 100%, and they're going to thank you for it. Correct.

Usually they, they will. But you have to address that with them, and you have to say, look, I know you're going to have to work harder for this. Like, I want to find the person that's going to be the right fit for this.

And some people may say, uh, no, we're actually happy to be able to do our job. Yeah, because they weren't letting us.

Oh, I've seen that before too. The last piece of this is— I, I hate the rebound hire. Oh, do I hate the rebound hire. Um, because once again, it turns— it's, it's like, I love the, the parables between work and like dating or relationships.

Yeah, this is a really good one because there's so many of them.

Like, everyone's gonna do the rebound hire. Yeah. Um, and so that their resume looks cute, um, their resume has a nice smile, their resume held the door open for you.

You hired a marshmallow.

Yes, good job.

You hired Pollyanna, you hired a marshmallow. This person's never going to tell you if something's wrong. They may not know what they're doing, but you're like, I just need someone with a pulse.

No, you do not. No, you do not.

Let your team— sometimes it's really important to have your team help you figure out what that next hire is going to 100%, because I'm a big proponent of—

and it's interesting, like, it, it, it's a tough tightrope to walk. When you talked earlier about like you're creating SOPs around someone, yeah, it's a tough tightrope to walk to creating SOPs around someone but also making sure you've got the right people doing the right jobs. Yeah, um, because there's so many cases where I'm like, hey, you're a little bit more geared towards this and you're a little bit geared more towards that. I want to make sure you guys are geared a little bit more towards those things. There is a difference between that though and working around the brilliant jerk. Yeah, because none of the things that you should be working around should be cultural or structural. They just shouldn't.

Well, yeah, and I think it's okay to give yourself a little bit of time to stabilize and figure out what do you really need before you just go hire the next person. 100%.

Yeah, don't like— because everyone's going to hire the next person. And what do they think they're going to hire? They're going to hire the person that they just fired.

That's it. I need a brilliant non-jerk. It's like, let's take a minute. Maybe you have that person in your organization already and you don't need— you've got quiet superstars. Let's elevate them and let's hire some people at the lower level. You don't always need to hire in at the same level that you had, that you let go. No, you got to think about that. This is where you're truly strategic and you're not just, you know, No, it's not last call at the bar and you need someone.

And so many people hire like that.

They do. Almost everyone hires like that.

Yeah, no, 100%. You pulse warm. Yes. Yeah. And the other problem is too, is they hire someone that they get along with, so they essentially hire themselves, which sometimes is great and other times is not a good idea. Most of the time it's not a good idea.

I don't want to hire myself.

No, no. I— can you imagine?

No, I am difficult.

To manage. Uh, same, same. I'm just difficult. Not even to manage, just, just plain difficult. You spent a year locked in a room with me, you know this. Um, to me, so once again, once you get to that cut phase, the post-cut recovery, manage that tip. You're going to have the triage phase, empower the quiet superstars, the no-blame window. Things are going to get screwed up in that first week.

Oh gosh, yeah.

People are figuring stuff out, people are finding the shadow workflows. You have to make it so So once again, I hate to say it's a safe space. You have to make it so people can say, look, we've got a problem.

Yeah, because you may have Russian nesting dolls of crap that you got to deal with.

Correct, correct. And that's just— it's terrible. So you have to make sure that you work through that. The piece that I like is the marketing integrity through this.

Ah, yes.

To your clients, direct is kind. Blank is no longer with the company. We are taking this opportunity to restructure your account to a team-based model for better support. As long as you're doing that, great. They could have been best friends with whoever it is. And you know what? You may still lose their business. But from what I have found, the brilliant jerk companies aren't typically buying from just the person.

No.

They're buying from the company.

Yes.

You offer something that they like. As long as you address them quickly and say, hey, "Hey, we're looking forward to this new chapter," they'll typically stay on board.

I will say, too, when you are a business that does business with other business owners, they're really understanding of this issue because they're probably dealing with it or have dealt with it in the past, too.

And they're proud of you.

They are.

Some are like, "I'm so glad you did that!" "I wish I could be like you someday when I grow up!" The other thing that I want to cover real quick, too, is, when it comes time to that cut piece. Yeah. Um, we're going to go back to the creepy column execution. Um, swift and deliberate. Yes. Most brilliant jerks work on escalation. They're going to— they escalate it and they escalate it and they escalate it until you're finally like, this is not a hill I'm dying on. No. If you allow them to escalate, or if you ask— I guess I would say if you go along on that escalator ride, it's not going to end well for anyone. No, stay grounded. Just swift, fast. We've talked about how you fired people so fast they can't even get their stuff packed up.

Yeah, pretty much. I've learned, I've learned from doing it wrong how to do it really efficiently.

So like, here's my question: why do you— like, why some managers like managing the unmanageable? Like, what, what do they see? Like, what do they see in that? What— like, how do you look at that?

They're like happy hostages. It is. I mean, I— it's true.

Yeah, no, I get it.

I think that some leaders unconsciously, they attach meaning to being needed in a crisis. So, you know.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I see that.

It may be like, I can manage. It may be a brilliant jerk, but it's my brilliant jerk and I know how to manage that person.

So it's them. Yeah, it's them just being needed.

Yeah, it is. I need to feel needed. And I think that it's easy to be like, well, since I'm needed, that means I'm important. That means that I'm a good leader. No, that's not true. Healthy leadership is not managing emotional volatility. It's not protecting that person's dysfunction. And it's not constantly cleaning up after one person. That's not healthy leadership. No.

No.

No. Yeah. So I mean, healthy leadership builds a system that doesn't revolve around emotional exceptions.

No, it's funny. It's funny as you say that because I've seen it in so many cases where where leaders are like, hey, I'm a manager. I'm managing these problems. So therefore I should have a job tomorrow. Yeah. No.

If the brilliant shirt goes away, what am I going to do all day? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I mean, I don't know about you personally. I'd like less of that type of work.

I do too. I'd like to, like, let's work on client issues. Let's work on growth. Let's work on innovation and technology, not managing somebody's emotions around getting their feelings hurt. Because everybody else doesn't understand how important they are.

Right. No, they're super important, especially to them. Cost of replacement versus cost of retention. So let's do the math. Yeah. Hiring a couple of level 2 or 3 performers versus the one a level 10 jerk.

I mean, I will always take level 2 to 3 performers versus one brilliant jerk any day. And I will say, you know, once that brilliant jerk leaves, healthy people will often step up once that tension's gone.

I was just gonna say that 2 or 3 is typically able to— like, once the shade of that overhang of the brilliant jerk, those 2 to 3 performers typically blossom, and you get a couple of 5, 6s pretty quickly.

You do. And I think, you know, You know, leaders overestimate the cost of firing that jerk and they underestimate the cost of keeping them. Yeah, because the— I mean, the business usually survives the exit. The culture rarely survives the protection of the brilliant jerk. You want to kill your business culture? Yeah, keep that person employed.

Um, like, do you have a no hero policy where you're like, how do you keep from having the brilliant jerk. And I mean, when I hear the no hero policy, all I picture is Superman walking in the door and you hear the, "Da da da da," and then you pull the cape away and suddenly Superman walks out head in hand.

Aww. So I mean, the goal of leadership, again, it's not to create heroes. We want to create systems where success can be repeated. So yeah, you don't want a company that's fragile because if only one person knows how it works, your company is fragile. It's not going to survive.

I don't want heroes.

No.

I want everyday good stuff.

Yeah.

If you need a hero, like typically, like think of this, think of like all the Marvel movies, even though I haven't ever seen any of them, I still kind of know the premise. Something happens, we need a couple of superheroes. Yes. No, no, no. I don't want to need a couple of superheroes. I want a life that just gets as good every day.

Yeah. We like consistency. Talk about the 3 C's of leadership, clarity, consistency, and care. Let's just have those 3 things. I don't need heroes.

I like this. I like this. Um, a couple of quick takeaways: values versus results. To me, high results plus low values— get them the hell out of there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. We protect the standard, not the star. So if someone's behavior contradicts the values, the longer they stay, the weaker the culture gets.

Yep. Audit the shadow SOPs. If only one person knows how to do X, X is your number one risk.

Yeah. And document before you decide. So clear coaching and correction. Remove the emotion from that cut of that person.

Yeah. Have, have the paper. We talked a couple episodes ago about that paperwork fort. Um, have you built that yet?

Um, working on it.

Directness is the only path. If your numbers are a level 10 or your behavior's a level 2, I can't scale that.

Yeah. And I would say the last one I think is important. It's watch the room, not the result.

Oh, you can see it.

Yeah. So when the real performance metric, it is the reaction of the team when that person walks in. If that person walks into the room and all of the oxygen gets sucked out, you're like, hmm, we might have a backdraft here.

I have seen it where you have the best meetings where that person's not there and you're like, oh, huh. Yeah. Bob hasn't been here for the two meetings and these have been really productive. Bob's the common denominator.

Oh, why do we all feel sick to our stomach? Oh, Bob's coming in. This meeting.

Yeah. Can you ever coach a jerk into a team player?

You can, but only if the issue is awareness and not arrogance. Because there are some people that are just not aware, and if you bring that to their attention, they're going to change. I have seen that happen.

Yeah, yeah, I have too. Um, should you tell the rest of the team why they— why the brilliant jerk was fired? You can be like, hey, fired the jerk.

Uh, yes, but professionally. You are not going to share the private details of how things went down, you're just going to reinforce the values. You know, Bob is no longer with us because he didn't align with the culture and the values that we have in our organization. And moving forward, this is what we're going to ensure— to do to ensure that we have good culture.

Yeah, no, I— and that sounds like you've rehearsed that.

I have a lot, and I've coached other people on this is what we're gonna say. And then if they start— if they start going in a different direction, I usually put my hand— like, it's— I've never put it on their face, but like, I may Just like steady, or I'll just step in front and continue. Like, I am sometimes that rude where it's like, no, no, I'm here to protect you from a lawsuit. Don't, don't be dumb. Um, what's the one red flag during an interview for a future brilliant jerk?

Oh, to me it's like whenever someone talks about former employers like incompetent, bad, something like that, I instantly— or like they couldn't keep up.

Absolutely.

Um, that right there, they didn't see my value. When someone says that about their former employer, I'm like, oh, right, right, they didn't see your value. Yeah, the other one is sometimes you can just see like the ego walk through the door. Yeah. Um, and that, like, the ego in so many cases is the brilliant jerk.

Yeah.

Um, it just truly is.

But don't mistake that for, you know, that silent superstar. No. So like there's a very different way of saying they didn't see my value versus they didn't see my value. Like you've got to be able to to tell the difference.

One, and there, there is a— most the silent superstar that they didn't see the value, um, will typically say it wasn't a fit or it wasn't something like that. They're not going to be like, those idiots.

No, they will not. I loved what I did, I just didn't like where I did it, right? That's usually when someone says that, you go, oh, yep, okay.

Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. Um, next week Yeah, most of our podcasts right around 40, 40, 45 minutes, somewhere 30, 35 minutes. Um, we're going to talk about the sweaty 10-minute conversation.

We're going to talk for longer than 10 minutes about that, aren't we?

We are, we are. Um, I will make sure that next week the studio is nice and cool. Okay, so that way we don't walk out of here with pit stains. Um, so yeah, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna try and avoid that. Do us a favor businessfixpodcast.com. Make sure you stop by. We'd love to hear your suggestions for another episode. As always, do us a favor, take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.

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