You have a prima donna on the team. How do you deal with it?

How do we recognize prima donnas in an organisation, how should we interact with them, how do we act around them, and how do they affect the organisational culture? These are some of the constant problems in many firms.

But what are prima donnas anyway?

Prima donnas are the talented, competent employees, the all-stars of the organisation. Productive, flashy, and many times, the centre of attention, with a slightly abusive attitude and changing emotional states. Clients appreciate them, they have good results, and a profound belief they are entitled to much more. At the same time, they have a natural tendency to believe that rules don’t apply to them and that they are entitled to special treatment compared to their colleagues. 

How to recognize a prima donna

The prima donna is usually late for meetings but instead of apologising they get upset you didn’t wait for them. They expect the entire team to change their calendar to accommodate their own. They want to have the last word and don’t take kindly to a contrary point of view. 

They aggressively and ironically put down others' opinions. They exhibit a lot of self-confidence, but in reality, they have big confidence issues, in themselves and in others.

They’re never wrong. They mostly make mistakes because of others and believe their colleagues sabotaged them. If you call them out on an error or inappropriate conduct, they become aggressive and react disproportionately. If more people call them out on the same mistake, they scream “witch hunt”. 

They are narcissists in permanent need of praise. If you want to win them over, praise them and they will appreciate you. Ignore them, and they will take it personally. They don’t follow the rules and will feel entitled to do so. 

When they have to follow the rules, they act as victims and complain they’re discriminated. They create an environment of constant stress and annoyance in the organisation. They are unpredictable. They only work on the projects they want, how and when they want. Their language is abusive and so is their conduct.

Effects on the organisation

All-stars undermine the organisational culture and trust in the team. They create a pattern of wrong behaviour and a wrong educational model. In the long term, other colleagues will leave because of them - those colleagues who stand up to them and don’t adhere to their personality cult. Companies will invest a lot of energy and resources in accommodating the requests and needs of these all-stars. If the organization invested in the whole team, these resources would produce far better results.

What to do when we recognise this pattern of behaviour 

Many times leaders recognise the signs of a prima donna behaviour in its initial phase, but because of various reasons they don’t make a decision or make it clear on what’s to be done in such situations. Reasons vary from fear of confrontation to recognising talent and professional abilities. Even more so, some organizational leaders believe prima donnas should be tolerated and integrated into the team, especially because of their talent and professional abilities. The sense of value that prima donnas generally bring as the stars of the team also supports this opinion.

I believe though that those prima donnas must be excluded from the team as fast as possible because, in the long term, the health of the organisation is more important than the short term gain. On the one hand, you should begin the recruitment process as soon as possible. It must be a priority and a constant, related to the competencies of the said person. 

If, on the other hand, you are willing to invest time and effort in keeping the prima donna on the team and in setting the behaviour straight, there are a few steps you can make, before a permanent dismissal from the team. 

1. For one thing, you can turn to specialised help - a coach to help put a stop to harmful behaviour. This could be a solution if the prima donna admits to having a problem that affects the organisation, but this is hard to admit and to accept.
2. Secondly, you could restrict the tasks at an organisational level, to include only the exclusive competences of the prima donna. Unfortunately, most of the times the professional evolution towards a position with managerial responsibilities only takes into account these criteria, at which a prima donna excels at (results and performance), with only a little accent on managerial competences and soft skills.

Leadership positions require a different set of competences and skills than those of a prima donna. With a sound narcissistic side, they will assume this set of professional competencies will also recommend them for other areas such as management, financial, HR, etc.

Inevitably, they will end up suffering from Dunning-Kruger syndrome. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the misinterpretation of one’s competences as being higher than they are in reality. This happens because of the person’s inability to recognize the shortcomings in their level of competence, precisely because of their lack of knowledge. Inevitably, these people will not perform or will perform slowly and put a lot of pressure on the team and on the organisation. 

Encourage organisational transparency as much as you can, especially when it’s about unacceptable behaviours at organisational level. You can strengthen organisational culture and values through processes and communication. One way you can do this is by encouraging employees to publicly express their opinions and creating the context in which they can do that. This way, employees will have the courage to confront those behaviours that are not compliant. 

You can require employees to respect the organisation’s values and rules with rigour and integrity, with no exceptions and favouritism.  

You should, however, keep in mind that quick and strong intervention can save you from a lot of organisational problems ahead. ”A bad apple spoils the bunch!”

The Romanian version of this article can be found here.