As Published in Business 2 Business, December 2007

Hiring Competent Jerks or Lovable Fools

By Ira S Wolfe

Imagine you hired a manager who consistently exceeded his goals but also treated his peers and reports with contempt.  He rarely did anything for your company unless it directly benefited him.  Do you consider this person a good hire or a bad hire?  When faced with the choice between hiring a competent jerk or a lovable fool, who would you choose?  You might be surprised how most people answer.

People choose work partners based on two criteria:  competence (Does Joe know what he is doing?) and likability (Is Mary enjoyable to work with?). The obvious response is both competence and likability matter. Less obvious is how much they matter. 

In a study of over 10,000 work relationships, researchers at Harvard and Duke University discovered a preference in terms of how much people personally liked one another compared to how well they did their job.  Their findings confirm my less-than-scientific but to-date accurate observation: people hire on skills, fire on attitude.  A root cause of this perpetuated mistake is that managers do what they deem is intellectually the smart thing to do – hire and promote workers based on skills.  Managers all but ignore an individual’s potential to mesh (or clash) with co-workers and the culture.  Employee terminations and turnover result not to mention the stress involved in letting a top producing jerk go.

These researchers discovered four types of workers:

1. “Competent jerk” - knows a lot but is difficult to work with.
2. “Lovable fool” - doesn’t know much but is a pleasure to deal with.
3. “Lovable star” - is both smart and likeable.
4. “Incompetent jerk” – need I say more?

You’ve probably already identified workers and managers who fill each category. Thankfully organizations are pretty good at weeding out the hopelessly incompetent and the socially clueless.  Everyone can identify with the lovable star while nobody wants to work with the incompetent jerk.  But things get a lot more interesting when people are faced with a choice between competent jerks and lovable fools.

What most managers will tell you is competence trumps likeability.  But their actions and especially the responses of the rest of the workforce don’t follow what they are saying: their brains are thinking but their emotions are driving!  Personal feelings play a far more important role in forming work relationships than people are willing to acknowledge. 

What the research found is that if someone is strongly disliked, it’s almost irrelevant whether or not he (or she) is competent; people won’t work with him.  What are the unintentional but very real consequences when people steer clear of the competent jerk?  Quite obvious is the lost opportunity to tap his knowledge and skills.  But having to deal with the patronizing arrogance and demeaning attitude for many people is too much of a price to pay for the assistance these jerks can provide.  Some may even shun the jerk, denying him the satisfaction of knowing that his knowledge contributed to a project’s success.

These reactions might be justified.  Sometimes it can be difficult to pry the needed information from him simply because he is a jerk.  At other times, you might get the information but getting the jerk to answer any follow-up questions may be difficult if not embarrassing.  By requesting his help and especially asking any questions might reveal your vulnerabilities.

Does that mean that loveable fools should be the employees of choice?  If someone is liked, his colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence he has to offer.  They will even extend themselves to cover-up mistakes and shortcomings.  They will make excuses for missteps and even take the fall for them.  There is a lot of value to hiring and retaining people who get along famously.

At the top of the benefit list is that we enjoy working with people who are like us. Job satisfaction is high.  People who see things in a similar way reaffirm our own behaviors and attitudes. You don’t need to waste a lot of time figuring out what to expect from one another and explaining what you mean every time you say something.  That synergy helps projects flow smoothly and quickly. Even disagreements and conflicts seem to be easier to manage.  These feel-good work relationships encourage openness to new ideas, a greater willingness to help, and a trusting environment.

If you’re keeping score, the scale seems to be tipping toward hiring people you like over skills they have. Managing people who get along seems like a no-brainer strategy.

But there’s a catch.   

As one manager said, “if you keep hiring only people you like, you can kill a company.” Simply avoiding or shunning competent jerks allows much needed expertise and skills to go by the wayside. Even worse these people might go to the competition. Continuous innovation and solutions to complex problems are stifled when the people involved bring a limited range of perspectives to the table.  As challenging as they are and whatever the tensions and misunderstandings that arise by hiring and retaining competent jerks, the benefit they bring to an organization might outweigh the risks.

So what’s a manager to do?  Hiring only lovable stars is certainly the best solution.  Unfortunately these lovable stars are more scarce in today’s competitive and shrinking talent pool than snowballs in July.  The solution reverts back to my initial question – do you hire competent jerks or lovable fools?    The correct answer is both.

A slight nod goes to lovable fools. Leverage their strengths. They bring a valuable ability to communicate, collaborate, and network diverse groups.  Capitalize on their positive attitude. While they may lack the capability to become superstars, training and coaching them for new skills will only enhance their value to the organization.

But don’t discard the competent jerks.  Ask yourself, is their individual performance contributing to the performance of the organization as a whole?  Are they helping your reach your goals or hindering everyone who works with them?  If your answer is no, they may be costing you more than the benefits they bring. Do something – don’t procrastinate.  Jerks will inevitably drive off the lovable stars and lovable fools and what you’ll be left with are the jerks. 

While changing behavior is never easy, some things can be done or at least tried.  First and foremost, include the quality of relationships in their performance evaluations. Reward good behavior and discipline bad behavior – promptly.  Offer incentives for improving relationships upward, downward and sideways. 

Make relationship management a core competence.