Welcome to Manager Tools. Today's topic, how to manage an arrogant producer.

What do you do when one of your top performers is also a lousy team player? Or put differently,

what do you do when one of the most irritating people on your team is responsible for lots of your team success?

Well, whether you see it as a producer who's a jerk or a jerk who produces, the approach is the same.

And today, that's what we're going to talk about. Here we go. I got an email the email the other day I've been interesting to see whether you would answer it the same way and the email was what do you do one of your top performers a great performer right?

Great salesperson or a great technical person, great programmer, whatever, they're great, great, great, great, except,

except, they're a lousy team player and they're killing the team, right?

You know, it's, it's, right?

Right. Somebody who produces lots of value,

but it's just one of the most irritating people you know,

and unfortunately, they happen to be on your team.

Yeah you know we get this question a lot and frankly I think people are surprised by

the answer because it's counter to what the standard behavior is at least in terms

if you're an alien watching managers behave and it seems to get a lot of press this

idea of top performers who are I don't know different or unusual or arrogant you know the

cast is called the arrogant producer not because we're talking about a TV or director

TV or movie producer but rather somebody who produces good work.

I'm going to cut right to the end and then I'll go back and the answer is look if you've got

a top performer who continues to be destructive to your team you with them, and then ultimately you fire them.

Now, don't everybody jump through, you know, jump off a cliff and say, oh my gosh, what are we talking about here?

What we're saying is the common wisdom of managers saying, oh, I've got to figure

out a way to keep this person. Yeah, that's true, but that does not eliminate the possibility

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