How to manage a challenging, but valuable, employee

Genius often comes with downsides. If you have a valuable, but disruptive, employee on your team, try these tactics:

1. Understand the risks. Your job is to balance cohesion and creativity on your team. If the employee is negatively affecting the culture, weigh the costs of keeping them around.
    
2. Don't stifle people. The employee's limitations may be the same source of their talents. Take a control freak who wants to own a project completely. If you view this as their work style instead of a difficulty, and perhaps give them a separate project to run with, you can leverage this talent instead of squashing it.
    
3. Keep things moving. Give creative individuals enough independence to innovate, but then move the project forward with individuals who can act.

The above leadership tip...
was sent in response to a question from a participant on our 10/10 leadership development and mentoring programme and adapted from How to Manage Your Smartest, Strangest Employee by Jeff Stibel. Whether you're a first time manager or an experienced leader, straightforward, practical advice on best practice is hard to find. Until now. To find out how you, your team or your organisation can benefit, please join us on our next complimentary webinar or contact us.