#167 | Your Best Engineer Is Your Biggest Leadership Problem - Now What?

Welcome to the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. My name is Alexander Leaminskam. I'm a former violinist turned management engineer, turned organizational psychologist, speaker and PCM leadership mentor and facilitator. In this space, everyone is invited to the table where we have real, eye opening conversations about tech leadership.

Two keywords utility and real life implementation. Knowledge tools, frameworks, ways of working, dos and don't. Taken from my personal experiences as a leader in the experiences of others is what you are going to get from every single episode. This is the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast.

Okay, so let's go and take some action. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. Today, I've decided to to talk about the subject that a lot of managers, a lot of leaders I discussed with and I've noticed the pattern here for over the years that I work with attack and the leaders that have we can say luxury problems, but in fact it is not so much of a luxury. I'm going to talk about the situation where you have a brilliant subject matter expert, brilliant engineer, amazing I see that delivers the job, but also destroyed your team.

So they're technically brilliant that they're extremely high level jerks to others. So let's talk about it today because I think it's something that we all experienced at least once in our lifetime as leaders, or we observed it or we heard about it from others. So this is about the situation where the job is done, the expertise is there, but the behave like they don't care about others, and they are aggressive. Sometimes they're arrogant, Sometimes they whine a lot.

Sometimes they say that this organization is trash and people don't know what they are doing with this organization. So they are become toxic to different to different people that are near them. And most of the time they treat them as mentors as role models because they want to be like them when they grow up. From the tech perspective, skills expertise perspective, So today I would like to go into why is happening and then what to do with that in real life because the diagnosis is the one thing.

The understanding of the situation is not it's one thing, but what to do with that When you have this kind of situation as a leader, this is the most important part of it as well. So let's start with the diagnosis itself, and I would like to focus on three things, three layers of this pattern and answer the question why is harder than it looks. So number one is going to be extremely unpopular and there might be some haters of this idea, which hear me it. Layer one is that the promotion system created this behavior.

When engineers are promoted based solely on their technical outputs, ticket closed system shipped back squashed. You're building a ladder that rewards exactly one dimensioned about so only expertise and efficiency matters. And the truth is that that kind of system selects certain personality based types, structures and communications and never build in the expectation that influence emotional intelligence, communication intelligence, or relational intelligence. We're also part of the job and it actually matters, So it's equally important to your technical skills to have a high level of communication intelligence.

So this is number one, and it happens all the time. Number two. The layer two is the leaders on ambivalence, because a brilliant jerk reflects something back as a leader, a version of themselves earlier in the career, or a type of intelligence that you are still unconsciously pressed. So maybe this is you from ten years ago, or maybe this is a skill set that you always wanted to have, or maybe this is a skill set that you need to have in a team to deliver business results that you're responsible for.

And the results are there, but the question is what is the cost of it? So from the will of conflict perspective, the question is is it a structural the conflict of structure, the conflict of relations or maybe a conflict of values because for some people relationships are just not that important. And land number three is the absence of contracting and this is happening all the time as well in most teams. No one ever made explicit what behaviors are actually non negotiable or what is the default when it comes to the behavioral level on how we treat ourselves in the team and between teams in the organization.

The tech board was clear, the tech part is always the easiest one, but the relationship bart was implied and implied contracts are hidden and they're honestly they're breathing ground for the brilliant jork to thrive because no one can point to what was agreed because we never agreed to have a contract on this level, so how we treat ourselves And for most of the people, most of the leaders, what I see is that they treat it as. A as a default or like something so obvious to treat others with respect without the aggression or commenting the behaviors that are visible or organizational decisions or something like that.

But the truth is that it is not obvious. It can be obvious for you, but you're not everybody, and you cannot project your mindset, your values in what is important for you or obvious for you to others because this is not fair. So you need good contracting, even if it means that you need to agree. And sales love things that are obvious to you and you would never do something in opposite to them.

But other people are different. This is the wake up moment, wake up call, even if you don't like it. This is really on you, It is not on them. Of course.

The behavior regulation, the emotional regulation, taking curve of the needs, physical, physiological, and psychological motivational is not only on you as a leader. It is equally on a person that that is your direct report. But you're the leader here, so you have the responsibility two to just teach others on how to do that, because a lot of times people just can't do it because they don't know how. No one never told them how to deal with that.

So what to do with this? I gave you three root causes possible root causes of this situation, and I'm going to give you three tools two be better in those situations because if you are not having one right now, there is a possibility that they are going to have it in the future. So to number one A solution Number one the behavioral contract conversation. This is not a performance review, not a warning, a genuine specific conversation about what the role that the person is in requires beyond technical delivery, coming with examples, come curious about the perspective and make explicit what was previously implied.

So treatediz like like you never had this conversation before, and most of you you never had. So it's not going to be exact imagine that imaginative situation. It is going to be a real one. So just come back to the contract on the team level, on an individual level, because this is something that is going to work the best.

So to come back to the ground rules and if it's not working for them, for this person, it is you know, it's undamn And this is going to be connected with with a two number three action. But two number two is the team caused audit if you're struggling with having this conversation with a brilliant jerk because you don't want to lose them because they deliver the work. They are great from the tech perspective, but it comes with a cost. So before this conversation, you need to do your own homework.

And the question is who isn't the team affected? And how by this behavior that you're observing have any strong people already left or pulled back because of this? What is the actual costs of inaction here? If I don't do anything?

What can happen in morale and retention in the junior engineers who are quietly deciding whether they belong here or even want to work here. So these are questions that you can ask yourself, be honest only with yourself, that you will have the truth. This is the cost of not having this conversation or not doing anything at all, because maybe it will change, or maybe this person will quit it on their round and the situation will just resolve on the aud its own. It is not going to happen, and it's not the leadership pattern you want to have in your two kit if you want to be a good leader for your people.

And last, but not least, two number three the decision framework. So there are only three possible outcomes to this situation. The first one is that they change, so they start thinking about their heaviers, changing your behaviors, they change in it in any way. The second option is they stay and don't change, which is a decision that leader makes, not a defaults.

Let's be honest here, or they leave only three and leaders who avoid this framework stay stuck forever. So this is your decision designed which outcome you are actively working towards because it is your poll and be direct, not aggressive, but direct. If after a clear contractive conversation the behavior doesn't change, it's just keeping them is a choice, and that choice has a cost that you need to own. It is rough.

Let's be honest here, But what I want to emphasize here that it is about the system more than a person, because the person can behave differently in different circumstances. And of course we cannot blame only the environment and system that the person is in because we are adult and we have well quality the developed brains that we can use. Sometimes it is only about changing one thing in the environment, for example, the contract that we have with our person to make to change the whole situation.

And it might sound silly, but it is what it is. So just to sum dein if you have someone on your team who fits this pattern this week's challenge, it is not to fix it surprise, surprise, but it is to diagnose it. Ask for yourselfts. Have I ever made the relational behavioral expectations of distin explicit?

Or how I just assumed everyone knows how it contracted with my people? Is a contract right, well designed and well said? Or maybe this is something that never happened because most brilliant jerks aren't jerks because they love it or because they were burned, but they're operating in a system that never told them the full job description. So start there to see what is going to happen.

And I know that it is difficult because you don't want to lose them. But if after this conversation from okay, okay, very focused and curious, they are still deciding to behave that way, or they agree and they do it anyway. I think that the better option is to just start looking for replacement because maybe it's just not a match and it costs more than it brings you value long term because maybe short term it looks great, but long term, believe me, it is going to backfire at you.

So this is it for today. I I want for you to have this episode to come back to it if you have a situation in the future. Yes, the brilliant jokes isn't just a personality problem. There are a mirror showing you exactly what your promotion system values and you, as a leader, have influence on that.

So just use this influence and do something great. Keeping my fingers crossed for area leadership battles that you're fighting every single day to be successful, and I'll see you soon.