March 2006
Handling Prima Donnas and Office Ogres
By Kathy Graden, Contributing Editor
At a photo shoot for Vanity Fair magazine, Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria throws a hissy fit when Teri Hatcher snatches up the prettiest swimsuit before her co-stars have a chance to select theirs. The Philadelphia Eagles' Terrell Owens grabs headlines by demanding a new multimillion-dollar contract, arguing with the team's coach, Andy Reid, and lambasting quarterback Donovan McNabb. Stories like these may fascinate us and spark plenty of talk at the water cooler, but: we don't love bad behavior when people we work with are the tantrum throwers.
We've all encountered prima donnas or office ogres on the job. They're the star producers who possess degrees from the best schools, brilliance, and great looks — and aren't afraid to let management and the rest of the world know how wonderful they are. Companies love to hire superstars because they make productive, imaginative, and highly effective employees. The downside is, stars who are also prima donnas or office ogres can drive their coworkers crazy with temper tantrums, arrogance, condescension, rudeness, unsolicited criticism, and other displays of overweening narcissism. Instead of being inspired and motivated by the stars' brilliance, their colleagues either tune them out or head for the exits in self defense.
Prima donnas or office ogres can range from raging egomaniacs to subtle, passive-aggressive types to people who are, to put it nicely, "eccentric" or "quirky." They often consider themselves above the normal rules for office behavior, disrupting meetings, "forgetting" to report to superiors, bullying subordinates, and generally making life miserable for those around them.
How can you deal effectively with an office ogre or prima donna colleague? And if the ogre or prima donna is your client, does a workable strategy fall somewhere between smiling through gritted teeth and quitting your job? This article offers advice for defusing disruptive behavior (or at least, making it less stressful to be around).
Setting Boundaries for Misbehavers
Proactive managers often deal with prima donnas and office ogres by not hiring them. One way to identify prima donnas and ogres during interviews is to ask for examples of times when they succeeded as members of a team. If a candidate has trouble responding or shoots back with a strong individual achievement, that's a danger sign. If your organization has an open, team-spirited culture, you can also weed out prima donnas and office ogres who seem uncomfortable when you describe policies such as "no locked doors."
If you're a manager who already has badly-behaving people on board, try to understand what's driving their diva-dom before you choose a strategy for handling it. Remember these key points when dealing with office ogres and prima donnas:
They are used to receiving a lot of attention and being stars. They expect waves to part when they enter the room because they've had that experience many times since they were born.
According to corporate psychiatrist Pierre Mornell, "Underneath every big ego is a weak ego. (Prima donnas and ogres) are very, very fragile."
Working alongside brilliance challenges most people. Former Intel executive Dave House, who has worked with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs during his career, states that with such people, "You've got to get their respect and stand up to dealing with them."
Ask yourself if the prima donna or office ogre is worth the grief she or he is causing. The sheer bulk of administrative recordkeeping a badly behaving employee can generate may make your decision easy. Weigh the paper, and weigh the e-mails.Also ask yourself (and be honest!) if you are dismissing the person as an ogre or prima donna just because he or she is more vocal than most people about participating in decisions. Some managers mistake differences in style or opinion between them and their team members for attitude problems.
Decide whether the prima donna's or ogre's productivity outweighs behavioral issues. It may be OK to tolerate someone who is really, really different ... if he or she really, really delivers year in and year out. I once heard a manager say, "There is a fine line between a prima donna and an unemployed flake, and that line is productivity."
Determine how deep the person's bad attitude runs. If it's confined to the ogre's or prima donna's work role (and he or she behaves "normally" in more social settings), you stand a better chance of managing his or her obnoxious behavior. Also try to understand motives. If he or she bulldozes teammates, customers, and everyone else in a quest for attention and adulation, attempts to manage him or her probably won't work. But if he or she shows respect for people, procedures, and policies, find out what makes the prima donna or ogre happy (praise, time off, a raise) and provide more of it.
Even people with annoying personality traits can be difficult without being unethical or abusive. If your local prima donna or ogre considers herself or himself indispensable or above the law, you're better off without him or her.
Confront the bad actor (or actress) early, candidly, and in as non-threatening a way as possible. You may find that something unexpected is motivating his or her behavior. For example, when one of my direct reports repeatedly refused to go along with a new problem solution I had given her, I confronted her about it, thinking that she thought herself too smart to take orders. As things turned out, she was balking because she believed I had ignored her ideas for resolving the issue. Once the misunderstanding was out in the open and we discussed her ideas, she became more willing to try things my way.
It's wise to frame prima donna or office ogre behavior as a problem to be solved jointly instead of as a personal flaw the person must correct on his or her own. Tip: ask the employee to pretend to be you and ask him or her, "If you were in my place, how would you handle this?"
Treat prima donnas and ogres exactly like everybody else. No matter how valuable they are to the company, if you grant them dispensations from the rules, you create all kinds of morale problems and potential legal problems. However, you can make them think they're getting special treatment by assigning them to a lone project and telling them it's their opportunity to shine. They may well hit a home run for you.
Calming Troublesome Clients
If the ogre or prima donna making your life miserable happens to be a paying client, tread carefully. But don't think you have to smile and accept their tantrums. Here are some tactics for managing them:
- If a client insists that you do something illegal or unethical, such as cutting costs for art by scanning photos or illustrations from another source without obtaining the owner's permission, ask him or her how they'd feel if someone asked you to copy their work. Offer to obtain comparable art from a photo library such as www.clipart.com, and remind him or her that the small usage fee would certainly be cheaper than settling a lawsuit.
- If the client bombards you with huge e-mail attachments or becomes huffy when you don't respond instantly to an e-mail, tell him or her that in order to produce more work for them, you limit the number of times per day when you check e-mail. You can also ask politely if they'll send you files larger than 2 MB on recordable media, or if they'll include a note such as "large file included" in the Subject field of their messages.
- If the client maintains that a job you know will take days "is only a 5-minute job," argue back that to do the job well, you need the time to meet the client's requirements. If you explain all that the job entails, the client should realize that you've estimated the timeframe fairly.
- If a client claims to know someone who will do the job for a quarter of the cost, don't get into a bidding war to win the job. You probably were contacted because the client has seen your previous work and liked it; remind him or her that your price is based on the time and effort it will take to achieve the quality he or she admired. Tell the client you can lower your asking price only if you can cut back on some services.
- If the client wants a design or content change that will decrease the usability or attractiveness of the project, don't say, "You're wrong"; the client will only become defensive and press harder. You're better off saying, "I understand what you're trying to achieve, but how about this solution?," and then offering them an alternative.
We spend about 25 percent of each year at work, so don't spend that time being frustrated and irritated by people with porcupine personalities. Try some of these techniques, and you'll have more time for the things at work you enjoy.