Managing a Passionate Talented Employee

As a follow up to my previous article on "difficult" employees, I wanted to give a more practical update as to how to deal with an employee who is passionate, talented and perhaps a bit of a management challenge. Here are a few simple tips for managers in this situation.

1) Recognize what type of employee you have early. As many of you who commented on my earlier article commented (thank you!), there is a clear difference between the innovative, passionate disruptors and the dysfunctional ones. The single most important thing a manager can do is to correctly recognize which bucket the employee falls into. I will never forget once early in my career, my manager came and said "I know you." This meant she had recognized my passion and drive as assets and not as distractions to her.

2) If the employee complains about it, they own the solution. One trait of passionate employees is that they like to point out what they see as wrong. I found a clear correlation between intellectual gifted employees and the ability to spot flaws in people or process. This can lead to them being seen as critic of all, friend to none. Since it is impossible to solve every problem, my belief is that managers should focus their passionate employees on a limited set of problems of the employees own choosing. This has the double blessing of giving good employees a reasonable problem list to solve, and as well limiting the amount of criticism of others that occurs.

3) Have clear metrics for the problems that are owned. Owning solutions to problems requires clear, honest metrics, and will avoid the "I had a meeting and solved everything" response. Once, there was an employee who believed that a particular process was woefully inefficient. I challenged her to come up with a clear metric of what an efficient process would look like, and then go implement it. This immediately focused her on aligning everyone towards a single outcome and we could measure clearly if we had achieved the goal set. I also as an employee found it liberating because it took away the emotions of the situation and allowed all to focus on the end goal.

4) Coach empathy. The reason things are not getting done is rarely that the other folks involved are idiots. They usually have some competing priorities or goals that drive them. My brilliant manager used to always say, tell me what they are thinking (she could figure out what I was thinking). I still find that this is the most useful step in determining which teams will succeed. Those that do have folks who can tell where the pain points of others are, and can help solve or navigate around them. One time, I was in a room for 5 days negotiating and getting nowhere. A deadline was approaching. The executive in charge walked into the room and saw the person on the other side. He recognized something almost instantly. "You are not yourself." "My spouse has just left me." I had spent 5 days in a room and missed the point. Needless to say, things moved faster when we realized that we had a person in pain.

5) Force the employee to share credit liberally. This lesson is really hard as the natural human tendency is to say, "I did this." In fact, the best way to get credit is to share credit loudly and forcefully. As I go about Silicon Valley, and listen to people, the number one thing most folks talk to colleagues about is credit. It is the most valuable, least understood form of corporate currency. I had to learn that giving other credit (especially when you were a team leader) is the best reflection on leadership possible. It forces passionate employees to focus on others, and in return to be able to have others feel grateful.