There are countless types of personas in a company and just as many ways to describe them with more or less colorful metaphors.
Just like many people, I've attended team building workshops that had a component of personality analysis. At this point in my career, I find these workshops to be basically group therapy sessions and the personality profiling output as useful as a horoscope.
Profiling your teams is still useful as a way to build a tailored support and development system. On the other hand, putting people in buckets is a horrible idea that creates, for everyone, a sense of finality due to their newly discovered immutable identity.
I'll cover the whole concept of identity and its perverse effect in another chapter though.
For now, there are two types of people that I think are worth discussing, identifying and handling correctly: The Bozo and the Golden Goose.
When I use these terms, I am not describing the whole identity of these individuals. I'm describing a set of behaviors in a given context. This is important to grasps because as you relate to this, as you find Bozos and Golden Geese in your surrounding, you'll likely come to think something along the line of "X is a great person when we do Y". The two aren't incompatible, so let me repeat: I am not defining identity, I'm describing a behavior in a given context.
Quantitatively speaking, these two types aren't representing any majority in any company. If anything, Bozos may account for 5-10% at most of the group. Golden Geese are incredibly rare, that is also compounded by the fact that they tend to be hidden by Bozos. Count yourself lucky if you have a Golden Goose in your company.
Still, they do matter a lot because their impact is defining for the team, the product and the company.
There is a very famous article that covered Bozos and cemented the term, but the definition there and the explanation for me is lacking depth.
The Bozo as defined in this article is someone who thinks they are smarter and more competent than they actually are.
I think the article makes the critical mistake of adopting a tone that diminishes two things: the skills and the impact of the Bozos.
Bozos aren't dumb people that landed top jobs by chance. Most of them are master manipulator and master social engineers - even though there is a range of skills in Bozoland.
They are insanely good and fast at identifying the dynamic at play in any given group, developing a path of least resistance that will ultimately and unequivocally push them to a position that will profit them at any costs to the rest of the team/company.
They use advanced level of intimidation, courting, gas lighting and control structure to channel the flow of information to their benefit.
They don't just hire more Bozos, they actively push out top performers they can't control or place in a situation where they can claim these top player's achievements as theirs.
They leverage the human need for blending the lines between work and friendship to their advantage. You will catch them talk ill of their boss while at the same time spending every week with them at a bar, golfing or other activity.
My point is they are smart and active rather than dumb and passive.
Incompetence itself is only a temporary state of a given individual. As a matter of facts, most of the people that delivered incredible things were completely incompetent at the beginning of the journey. Their attitude though, even if adopting some sense of 'fake it until you make it' is to figure it out and progress to push the common goal.
For instance, you can look at the recruitment material from Apple when they promoted how they figured out magnets out of complete ignorance before mastering them in most of their products.
The Bozo is different in the sense that it has no desire to skill up in a hands-on way. The Bozo wants to continue on a manipulating journey. For the Bozo, the end justifies any means, and the only end that matters is their personal, selfish gains. This is this attitude, this mentality, this craft-level execution of it that defines what a Bozo truly is and their true damage potential.
There are many ways a Bozo can hurt a company and its people, but out of all the negative things they can do, the worst is what they do with the Golden Geese.
They focus a lot of their attention to keep these exceptionally performant people out of the spotlight as to harvest all these 'eggs' and claim them as their own.
The Golden Goose is the type of person who perform so insanely well that when you describe the effort and/or the output, 99% of people think you're lying or exaggerating.
I'm not talking about that one person that saved the day when production went under.
I'm talking about the person that worked 18h a day, 6 days a week for 6 weeks to close the shit show of collections. I'm talking about the engineer that came in and delivered three times as much on its own than the previous team of 5 in half the time. I'm talking about the manager who unlocked the program that's been dead in the water for 3 months in one meeting.
(These are all true stories)
I've met and worked with a lot of Golden Geese. Many of my closest friends are Golden Geese. I married one. I'd be really hard for me to convince you there is no biases when I say this, but my wife is in a league of her own in the Golden Geese olympics.
So you can take it to the bank when I say these people aren't replaceable. When they are gone, you will definitely either accept a much lower output, a much bigger team or more likely both. If that's your definition of replaceable though, then I guess a horse is a replacement for an aircraft too.
Protecting and enabling them is obviously incredibly important.
Most Golden Goose has no realisation of their performance. They have a deformed sense of what's acceptable and live by a strong sense of principles that is tightly connected to their identity. For them, it's just inconceivable not to do it right, to let the team down, not to deliver what's expected, etc.
This is where the Bozos tend to come in. They sniff this out extremely fast, put the Golden Goose in a world of their own making, and make sure they are the one defining the rules of this world. For the Goose, it's like being plugged into the matrix, the Bozo is harvesting the energy and claiming it theirs.
The end result is always the same, severe burn out, depression and life-changing decisions for the Geese. I've been in these conversations countless times, it is devastating to see such top performers getting their life force sucked out for such selfish outcomes.
I despise mediocrity. It's a topic on its own, but in a nutshell, I tend to have a good idea of what could be achieved without the noise of selfish interests (mediocrity). Golden Geese are bringing the cheat codes to the pursuit of achievements and seeing them exploited or dismissed pisses me off. It's been the drive for me to stick my neck out and defend them.
Few people know how terrible I was at writing and speaking growing up. I was copiously mocked by my teachers and my classmates. I had no desire to be in the spotlight. Still, I picked up public facing positions because the Golden Geese I was working with didn't have anyone representing them, carrying their voice. In the same time, the other side's Bozos were bashing them as loud as they could. I was called all sorts of things, threatened, along with a collection of joyful things I can't talk about for doing this, because that's what Bozos do.
In private settings, I put my role in jeopardy for Golden Geese to have a chance to show their skills. Ultimately, they delivered and my judgement was acknowledged, but I always remind everyone that I did nothing, they did the work.
I've coached Golden Geese directly to provide them perspective and data behind their capabilities (acknowledgement & sense of normality), while at the same time helped them develop self awareness about their effort to protect against burn out (self preservation). I've crafted step by step plans and stayed in the shadow for them to reclaim the recognition of their effort. I've pick up the battles behind closed doors to defend their reputations, skills and positions.
I think you can see where I am going. I'm not about to promote something I don't do.
As a tech executive, you aren't here to shine for doing everything. You're here to bring the right people in and create the structure/environment that makes them shine.
I can tell you that you will suffer from executing this way though. Some of your superiors will not appreciate behind the scene work and will constantly have a biased recognition toward visible shiny things. Manage this as much as you see fit but never compromise the principle of your role because it is this way that you will create incredible teams that deliver incredible products.
Because I execute with my top player's interests at heart, I have a complete address book of top level players who regularly reach out to work again with me. This is just another validation that this is the right way to build teams and to see your role as an executive.
Be in the spotlight or not is irrelevant, protecting and enabling the top players is your number one job.
As for Bozos, very few organizations have a solid handling structure. Those who do have one, tend to cut out wide, eliminating people trying their best while in denial, seen as Bozos even though they are not; or worse, have a defensive, borderline toxic handling with a systemic 'what have you done for me lately' Bozo hunting policy.
Neither of which is particularly effective since, when discovered - or when the current company is dying -, the Bozo will leverage a shiny achievement in the current company to find a new host to infect.
Instead, try to look at it this way:
1/ If they report to you:
Develop back channel with everyone in your teams, so you can get a glimpse at what's truly going on. Keep in mind, most people won't take the chance to speak openly about their superior/peers. It's a bad deal for them. So little to gain, so much to lose. It's your job to make them feel comfortable and to develop their trust in you.
Challenge decisions in a calm manner. Develop a habit of asking 'Why' until you go as deep as possible. Control the conversation towards a simple effort to understand the logic. This will eventually have the same effect as calling the Bozo out.
Call them out on what they are doing, not who they are. Tell them "Your job is to do X". Don't say "You're a Bozo". If they open up to vulnerability, you may not be facing a Bozo but a copy cat. A person that saw Bozos working and believe they need to do the same while not being a Bozo themselves. Otherwise, as I mentioned before most Bozos will promptly find a new host when called out, else get rid of them promptly. Bozos are like bar of soap, they will find all sorts of nonsense to evade. The whole effort is pointless. When you get rid of them, to the measure of what you can say, explain where the line is to your organization.
2/ It they don't report to you (peer or superior):
This is really, really hard. First of all, you have to ask yourself if the role you're in is worth it, because nothing that follows is going to be easy.
I oppose Bozos and Golden Geese because they are on the two opposite of the spectrum of those who make or break products/companies.
Bozos tend to be loud, Geese are quiet. Bozos tend to do little to no actual work, Geese do it all. Bozos tend to influence toward their own self interests, Geese tend to self-sacrifice (too much).
It's not a matter of policy to decide what to do, it's a matter of sanity.