When working with rock stars, get your M&Ms ready (Robert's Rule #6)

[Tweeted 2011-05-02]

Most managers I know claim that they would love to have a team of rock stars. Most of the time it's pretty clear that's because a team tends to make a manager look awesome (or not). It makes sense that managers would conclude that a team of rock stars would make the manager look like a rock star as well. Not all teams are comprised of rock stars though, and those that are tend not to maintain cohesion.

For a while I tried to determine why this is the case...why is it that a group of people, especially one where the majority is highly skilled, would spin apart after a period of cohesiveness. Here's what I've discovered: highly skilled people tend to not only be highly skilled but also have their own style, and everyone else's style is not as [insert your descriptor here]...and, simple as that, you find your rock star has become a diva, a word that has connotations beyond the "star" quality that it denotes.

There are two ways I've seen managers react to divas on their team:

• they tighten control as much as they can, making sure the "diva" knows the manager is in charge
• they stay out of the way of the "diva" as much as possible, working behind the scenes to make sure the obstacles are cleared

Having been on both sides of this particular equation, allow me to share the following. Reacting by making sure the diva knows the manager is in charge will backfire. The manager may be in charge, but yanking a dragon's chain seldom ends well. At the very least, the rock star will become miserable and rebel, reducing team morale and in some cases the rebellion has resulted in political intrigue that results in the termination of one or more of the parties. Keep in mind that even as a manager, you're only in charge as long as you're actually employed and have employees reporting to you.

In contrast, one of my best managers, one who dealt with several highly skilled technical people, all with strong personalities, said her formula for success was to hire rock stars and stay out of their way. That she enjoyed the success of a team that delivered solid, feature-rich, complex products ahead of schedule and under budget with extremely low defect rates is a testament to the validity of her approach.

She didn't sweat the small stuff and made sure that her team was rewarded adequately, and most importantly, she made sure that even if she didn't initially understand the reason for a request, she tried to move towards honoring it at the same time that she sought to understand it because, as it turns out, rock stars tend to have very good reasons for seemingly odd-ball requests (one of the most famous examples).

All this led me to Robert's Rule #6: if you want your team to be rock stars, expect a few divas and get those M&Ms ready.