When The Smartest Guy In The Room Is A Jackass: How To Lead Clever People

Exceptionally clever and well-educated employees possess ideas, knowledge, and skills what allow them to produce results far disproportionate the resources and responsibility made available to them. Every organization has at least one of these institutional headaches, and every one of them is too important to let go and to maddening to tolerate daily. While this puts a great deal of stress on you as a leader, when properly engaged, they can become powerful assets.

What you need to know about clever people:

1. They do not want to be led.  Because these individuals know their value, and intellect, and know you’re aware of it too, they pose not just a problem, but a threat to your leadership.  They want their leaders on their own intellectual plane, but not outshining them, which is problematic, and seek freedom to explore their ideas.
2. They are organizationally savvy.  Expect this person to know your mission and policy better than anyone else, even while professing while not to care.  They’ll have it as a reference in case they ever need to “dig in”, and you should be ready.
3. They completely ignore hierarchy.  Meeting protocol might or might not matter (see above); the authority derived from an org chart most certainly will not.  Note that this also means you won’t be able to motivate these individuals with money and power.  Oddly, status will still matter to them—the social realm and the respect of their peers, whomever they determine that to be, will be crucial.
4. They expect instant access.  If you, your boss, your boss’ boss, a supplier, or anybody else denies access to this person, they’ll think the organization doesn’t care about them and disengage.  They probably doubt the seriousness because of the nebulous command structure described above already.
5. They are well connected.  Clever people frequently make it a point to avoid being simply defined; they’ll seek to build social networks within your industry, making them more of a flight risk.  They’ll also be exceptional at networking within the organization, making who they know as important as what they know, and somebody to keep informed of key developments and initiatives.
6. They have a low boredom threshold.  Engage them, or they’ll fulfill their flight risk and disengage.
7. They won’t thank you.  Even when doing a great job (and you read BizNinjas, so, that’s every day, right?), you won’t be noticed.  These people don’t want to be led.  If they don’t say anything to you, but stay engaged positively, you’re doing well.

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