By Tim Duggan
There’s a certain type of worker who pops up in almost every workplace, and you might immediately recognise them. They are, by most accounts, excellent at their jobs. They get quality results, exceed sales targets and complete all the tasks assigned to them with ease. But there’s one differentiating quality that really sets them apart: they are jerks.
The official term for this category of workers is “brilliant jerks”, a name popularised by Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings in a culture presentation that went viral several years ago.
A “brilliant jerk” is someone who consistently delivers high results as an individual, but poisons the work culture.Credit: Tamara Voninski
“Some companies tolerate them,” it read. “For us, cost to effective teamwork is too high.” There’s nothing wrong with having diverse working styles, he said, as long as you adhere to company values.
A brilliant jerk is someone who consistently delivers high results as an individual, but poisons the work culture of the wider team through bad behaviours such as arrogance, belittling others, ignoring feedback and always being right.
They lurk in all levels of an organisation. It might be the newest hire who is brilliant at wrangling difficult technology, but is terrible company to be around. Or a senior member of the executive team who got there because they smashed all their targets, somehow forgetting it’s because they smashed through their colleagues in the process.
Businesses usually put up with the behaviour for too long because of the results they bring, but it always eventually catches up with them. Workplace culture is such a fragile thing that it can be easily damaged by the presence of even a solitary toxic person.
Many businesses now add a “culture check” stage of the interview process, designed to pick up any adverse attitudes before they begin.
So, how do you deal with brilliant jerks at work? It really depends if you’re a hirer of one, or need to figure out how to work alongside them.
If you’re involved in the hiring process, there are some common warning signs to look out for, such as short tenure at a string of companies or holes in their personal references. Many businesses now add a “culture check” stage of the interview process, designed to pick up any adverse attitudes before they begin.
When you find yourself working with one, you can choose to deal with them internally and externally. Internally, protect yourself as much as you can by setting clear boundaries on the type of behaviour that you will tolerate, and disengage if it crosses it.
Externally, you can always approach them privately. If you’re comfortable having a difficult conversation, a useful framework is to describe concrete behaviours, explain the impact, then state a clear request.
“This morning you shouted several times in the meeting in front of my direct report and me,” you might hypothetically begin. “This means we couldn’t discuss the results of the project, so in the future I’d like you communicate in a calm and rational tone.”
Even if you deliver the message well, the most likely outcome is they still won’t change their behaviour. Instead, document everything that happens so you have a written record of their trail of destruction that you can escalate to senior management or HR.
The results a brilliant jerk can achieve might seem attractive for now, but the long-term impact to a team’s morale and trust are not worth the sacrifice. A healthy workplace culture is crafted by consistent actions over time and, once it’s gone, no amount of brilliance can ever bring it back.
Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com
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