Dealing with employees who want to run the show

It’s a phenomenon you don’t hear a lot about: That staffer or club of staffers who want to “run the show” and will sabotage your management efforts. These are the people who think they know better than you and can make your life miserable.

I’ve been on teams like this. During a meeting, you can find one or two of these people smirking or exchanging glances at almost everything the manager is saying. I will concede that sometimes a manager is not on the right track, but there are better ways to handle it.

In a piece called, Fire people who think they’re entitled to run things, writer Ben Leichtling calls this sort of behavior a pattern he’s seen in several organizations. They are, according to Leichtling, righteous and arrogant people who:

“…feel entitled to special privileges. They make their own rules and have double standards. They’re self-reinforcing and ignore or don’t care about what other people think.”

Take a look at the piece to see what the implications of such behavior are and what actions you can take to remedy it.