Often this means that managers will need to step outside their comfort zone when it comes to communication, but discomfort is where leadership lives. Empathy should be at the heart of ensuring that people know what they have to do and how they have to do it. Help people to be more self-aware

I run a case in my programs featuring Joe (not his real name): A brilliant contributor, widely regarded by customers and his firm’s executives for producing hit products. On our dream team, there are no brilliant jerks as they are detrimental to great teamwork. We insist on decent human interactions, no matter how brilliant someone may be. When highly capable people work together well, they inspire each other to be more creative, more productive and ultimately more successful as a team than they could be individually.

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The latest offering from Joseph Charlton – writer of the award-winning ANNA X – is a thrilling, scandalous and exposing play about a (familiar) world-changing ride-hailing app. Art Petty is an executive and emerging-leader coach and a popular leadership and management author, speaker and workshop presenter. His experience guiding multiple software firms to positions of market leadership comes through in his books, articles, and live and online programs. Visit Petty’s Management Excellence blog and Leadership Caffeine articles. Most of us are not in a position where we can make any big changes to the work environment. Still, there are still some strategies to survive and maybe even make things a little better.

Contextual Performance MUST be made part of the key performance metrics at individual level : it is a measure of how well an individual encourages, enables and supports others in achieving their goals/targets. People are jerks because it has paid off for them in the past, so the manager must stop their jerkiness from paying off now. Starting in childhood, they "unconsciously" develop a pattern of behaviors that "work" for them - that support natural biases in their personality. It becomes habitual very fast.Brilliant jerks make a direct contribution to the immediate numbers and stretch others to do more while their negative impact is not understood nor objectively debated for they are often the darlings of the management. In my opinion, it boils down to the culture and leadership on how this issue is handled.