It’s amazing to me how often I am asked to sort out common organizational problems and then inevitably learn that someway, somehow, there is a person with a pesky attitude problem at the heart of it. Every time it happens I think there is a Buffoonery School of Business hidden on some corner of the earth that I don’t know about and which teaches “All About Me Management.” I am sure however, that I have come face-to-face with many of its graduates. They tend to be overbearing, obsessed with control, always have to be right, override other people’s decisions on a whim and basically screw up the flow of work for all innocent bystanders. 

Invariably, my first question is always, “Have you considered firing that person instead of hiring me?” The answer is usually no and the reason is because the person brings value to the company.  So then I wonder if that means there is an inherent gap between talent and people skills.  But in business, if madness drives ability, then we’re really up a creek, because it means that the reason these people have their positions is inextricably linked to the reason we want them to go away.