What do you do with that person in your organization who is incredibly smart, incredibly knowledgeable, and incredibly good at their job–but also has very negative behaviors like bullying others, constantly criticizing, hoarding information…(fill in the blank)? Most of us end up tolerating the bad behaviors. We try to coach them on it. We bring it up in performance reviews (but not too harshly; what would happen if they got mad and quit?!). We frequently create alternate structures and processes to do end runs around this problem person. This all takes time and energy, but we convince ourselves that it is worth it because of their expertise, skills, etc.

But I’m sure you think to yourself every now and then (or perhaps daily), is all that really worth it? If you have to ask yourself that question, then I think you need to do some more work on clarifying your culture.

Everyone has both positive and negative behaviors in their repertoire, and everyone needs some coaching and feedback to improve. I’m even okay with being flexible around processes to play to people’s strengths. I don’t expect everyone to have the same level of skill in all areas. But some “negative” behaviors are more important than others, and the way you rank them depends on your culture, which, in turn, is based on what drives success for the enterprise.

So you have to be honest: if that smart person hoards information, how important is information sharing to your culture? How much does the free flow of information actually drive your success? If it’s truly critical, then you need to fire that smart person who hoards information. Period. Find another smart person who’s willing to share information freely. But you have to do the hard work of clarifying what is important and why. You can’t just pick a list of nice-sounding values (including sharing information). You have to take a stand on what is most important and why. Then you can hold people accountable to it. Then you will know if it is worth putting up with “negative” behaviors in order to get access to the smarts.