In This Issue...          WHAT IF TERRELL OWENS WORKED FOR YOU?

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We're all used to seeing those big promotion headlines on the seminar brochures touting "How To Handle Difficult Employees." Usually the targets of such management strategies are nicknamed Gossipy Gus or Hard-Headed Hanna or Tardy Tim or Forgetful Fran. But how about Terrible Terrell?

If you're a sports fan, and maybe even if you're not, you'll recognize the name Terrell Owens. He's the wide receiver in the National Football League who talked himself out of two jobs, the latter of which paid him about $49 million for seven years. Yeah, nice work if you can get it, eh?

I bring up his name because the very prestigious Wharton School of Business at UPenn put his situation under a microscope and delved into the dilemma of handling a difficult subordinate who also happens to be your MVE (Most Valuable Employee). As both Wharton and a book called "High Maintenance Employees" point out, those star employees who are a royal pain in your butt can also be the tail that wags the dog (it's beginning to sound like a posterior convention, eh?).

The bottom line, according to some apologists for these disrespectful, erratic, and defiant souls who produce great results, but also great amounts of agita, is, well, the bottom line. They produce, they stay.

I say: Rubbish. Actually I'd say something much stronger, but this is a family column. (As a family "aside," my cousin Brad in Peoria actually reads all my rants in Soapbox. He says he can tell when I write the column, because I put in so many asides, in parentheses. I have no idea what he's talking about!)

Anyway, getting back to these high-maintenance star performers…some of the strategies for dealing with them offered in the book and Wharton article include: ignore them; wait for things to improve; (I love this one) hire an outside mentor or coach to work on their foibles; give them more attention and support.

Here's my strategy: Fire their butts. (Oops, there's that rear reference again, rearing its ugly head.) (Oops, there's that aside in parentheses again rearing its parenthetical head.)

I guess I've been lucky. Almost all my colleagues over the years have been both low-maintenance, and productive.

But there was this youngish woman who took all of three weeks after being hired to: a) decide that she knew more about employment law than anyone here at work, including myself; b) start delegating half of the work she had been hired to accomplish to people who had been here for almost 10 years; and c) come thisclose to having to eat a six-pound law book because of her insolent demeanor. Guess what happened to her? But that's another column. (See, I didn't even use parentheses to set off that last aside!)

So if you're lucky enough to not be irked by high-maintenance stars, thank your lucky stars. And if you are one of those high-maintenance types, take Santana's measured advice, and change your evil ways. Of course, the story of Terrell Owens doesn't end nearly as badly as I had hoped. He signed with the Dallas Cowboys for something like $25 million for three years. Who said acting out doesn't pay?

Good luck, stay legal, and opt for low-key — it works for me.

Brian L.P. Zevnik
Editor-in-Chief

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