Dedicated to learning better management techniques, I am an avid reader of everything management related.  My personal favorites are the “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, by John Maxwell and from “Good to Great” by Jim Collins.  Together I believe those two books will guide people with the aptitude for leadership to excel in management.  

They are an excellent tutorial on management leadership they are also very “politically correct”.  I am not “politically correct” and believe I have found a few pearls of wisdom that the inner leader in all of us might find enlightening. 

•  Manage the skill set and deal with the personality

The second bit of politically incorrect advice I can offeris to, “Manage the skill set and deal with the personality”.  In my 20 years of management I have hadtwo individuals whom have cemented this principle into my grouping ofmanagement facts.  Both of theseemployees were the absolute best in their respective fields, from a skill setperspective. 

The danger enterswhen those people realize they are the best.  That is the point in time, when you as a manager understandwhat they are like when they are no longer afraid of being able to find ajob.  Some are demanding, some areloud, some are inconsiderate and some are all of the above.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care howgood you are in your field there are still lines of conduct that cannot becrossed.  

If you determinethe skill set is valuable enough to go through the effort then I recommend thatyou learn to manage the skill set and deal with the personality.  Let me offer this in way of an example…

            Let’s take a senior Technology Architect whose job is to manage teamsof deployment engineers for multiple projects.  A corporate team comprised of an Account Manager, ProjectManager, Pre-Sales Engineer and Logistics team supports our TA.  The skill set possessed by our TA isphenomenal, he is more knowledgeable than the vendor’s own engineering team, hecan manage multiple teams of engineers and provide accurate, professionaldocumentation on every engagement on time and under budget.  The personality of our engineer isloud, foul mouthed, demanding, quick tempered, prideful, and stubborn. 

My tactic is simple; manageeveryone else away from the negative aspects of his personality.  I provide him a sounding board anytimehe needs it.  I push myself to beas good as he is from a conceptual level and to always understand something hedoes not. 

I place his skill set ona team of people whom I have managed into an effective unit to deal with eachother’s personalities to take advantage of their skill sets.  On internal conference calls I onlyhave a few rules, no personal attacks, respect one another and require everyoneto express their thoughts openly. By encouraging openness internally, it limits customer-facing issues andallows me to enforce strict professionalism code at all customer-facing times.

Remember this rule and you might avoid some of my early issues of trying to change the person, instead of just educating the skill set and dealing with the person.