The Empty Persona

This chapter builds on a lesser-known but excellent article, “Managing Away Bad Habits” by James Waldroop and Timothy Butler, published in Harvard Business Review in 2000. It also draws on, and gives full credit to, Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster, whose book “Working with You Is Killing Me” inspired this series.

“I was here on Saturday afternoon. Where were you?” That kind of quiet pressure to work every hour of every day is typical of the Hero, one of four characters in this chapter. This chapter is about the colleagues who drive you mad, but who you find almost impossible to challenge, because they are star performers. They are star performers with a dark side, though: a personality flaw or a psychological limit that shadows their achievements, holds them back, and makes life difficult for everyone around them.

Most of us have worked with someone like this: brilliant at the job, but held back by one serious flaw that makes life hard for the people around them, limits their own effectiveness, and often ends up costing them their career. Robert Hogan took a taxonomy built for mental disorders and applied it to organisational life. He identified eleven traits that hold star performers back and cause misery for everyone near them. He called these the “dark side” of personality.

Waldroop and Butler narrowed these down to six patterns of destructive behaviour, which they called “bad habits”. They use the term as shorthand for a deep-rooted psychological flaw. These are not small compulsions like nail biting or swearing, and they are not the same as someone who occasionally bullies a colleague or gets too negative or argumentative. They describe high performers whose psychological makeup shows up as consistently difficult behaviour. This dark side is not incidental. It is central to who they are, and it drives how they behave day to day. I call it the Empty Persona Syndrome, because something is missing or shallow in their character. They are all front, without much underneath. This chapter looks at four empty personas: the Hero, the Bulldozer, the Rebel, and the Pessimist.

Type 1: The Hero

Heroes are the workplace’s superhumans. They take pride in solving whatever problem lands on their desk, and they are resourceful, capable, and competent in almost any situation.

Heroes are driven by a need for achievement. They thrive on impossible challenges and spend their working life moving from one target to the next. Their inner voice says “hurry up”: work fast, deliver a lot, in a short time.

Heroes push themselves hard, and by extension, they push everyone who works for them. They work too much, take on too much, and keep going too long. Their strengths are drive, energy, a can-do attitude, efficiency, and firefighting. Their weaknesses are empathy, reflection, attention to detail, reliability, and precision.

You will recognise a Hero by their habits: first to arrive, last to leave. Cancelling holidays because of work. Letting family down by always being busy or breaking promises. Taking on problems well outside their job description. Sending emails to colleagues and clients late at night. Treating their phone as an extra limb.

The root cause behind the Hero’s bad habits is ego centricity: an inability to see the world from anyone else’s point of view. They struggle to step outside their own frame of reference and understand things from someone else’s side. The gap in their character comes from a lack of empathy. A Hero is welcome to work seven days a week if they choose to. The problem is expecting everyone else to do the same, without any regard for other people’s values, priorities, or circumstances. That pressure burns people out and kills morale.

Managers are often the last to want to change a Hero. Why would you tamper with someone who gets through more in a day than most people manage in a week? But over time, the Hero’s constant push adds a lasting cost to the business, even when short-term results hide it. Behind every Hero is a trail of burnt-out, disillusioned, and demoralised employees, or good people who eventually gave up trying to match a superhuman pace and left.

Type 2: The Bulldozer

The second empty persona is the Bulldozer, driven by a need for power, who runs over anyone in the way of it. Bulldozers decided early in life that the world is a hostile place, and that the safest strategy is to get to others before they get to you, with interest, just to make the point clear.

Bulldozers are driven by a need for power. Their inner voice says “be strong”: cope with whatever comes your way. Their strengths are decisiveness, getting things done, firmness, and handling a crisis. Their weaknesses are sensitivity, openness, and the ability to show emotion.

You will spot a Bulldozer by how they operate: they take no prisoners. They make tough calls and stand by them. They think highly of themselves, often too highly. They need to control everything around them. They have no patience for weakness, hesitation, or dependence on others. They are fiercely independent.

The psychological process behind the Bulldozer’s bad habits is a failure to judge when and how to use power. Most people feel some unease about using power at all, rooted in an unconscious fear of their own capacity for harm. Bulldozers do not share that unease. They are entirely clear and decisive about using power: use it or lose it. They are happy to seize power and then wield it bluntly, like swinging a club rather than handling a scalpel with care. Underneath, their distrust and fear of being cheated, ignored, criticised, or treated unfairly convinces them that if they do not take control, someone else will control them.

Bulldozers deliver results, but at a heavy cost. Their path is lined with intimidated, bullied staff. They alienate everyone they work with. They do not trust others, and others do not trust them.

Type 3: The Rebel

The Rebel, the third empty persona, pushes back against authority and convention almost automatically. Workplace rebels are, ironically, conventional in how they react against the status quo. They see themselves as radicals, but most of their protest against “the system” stops at complaining. They rarely act to change what bothers them.

Rebels are driven by a need for aggression. Their rebellion is a form of passive aggression, with the aggression hidden behind an exaggerated concern for the organisation.

You will know a Rebel by how they show up: arguing for the sake of it. Enjoying the shock value of a provocative comment. Seeing themselves as independent thinkers. Taking the contrary position in any group discussion. Getting energised by conflict. Regularly clashing with authority. Asking the awkward question in every meeting. Making constant jokes about management. Publicly questioning the motives behind any change.

The psychological process behind the Rebel’s bad habit is an unresolved relationship with authority. Like the use of power, most people sit somewhere between two needs: the need to belong to something larger, and the need to stand apart from it. Getting stuck at either extreme causes problems. At one end are people who defy authority in every situation, no matter what. At the other are people who are overly deferential, taking anything, management says as true simply because management said it. Rebels are stuck at the first extreme.

Rebels wear their colleagues down with constant challenge, argument, and complaint. There is something self-righteous about it that people find hard to be around, and they start to avoid the Rebel as a result. The relentless criticism of the system, of management, of almost anything, drains energy from everyone nearby. When challenged themselves, Rebels get defensive, try to build a coalition against the “enemy”, and end up creating a divided, “us and them” culture.

Type 4: The Pessimist

The Pessimist focuses on the downside of every change, worrying about what might go wrong rather than what might improve. “We’ve always done it this way” is the Pessimist’s motto, and it is how they quietly crush other people’s initiatives to keep things as they are. Pessimists mean well. Their goal is to protect the organisation from harm caused by badly thought-through change. The trouble is, they consider nearly every change badly thought through. Sometimes their worries are fair. More often, they simply block creativity and shut down good opportunities.

Unlike the other three types, the Pessimist is not driven by a specific need but by fear of failure. They cannot tolerate the shame of being wrong.

You will recognise a Pessimist by their pattern: mastering the “yes, but” argument. Behaving with extreme caution. Analysing far longer than anyone else before committing to anything. Struggling to decide. Hating to make mistakes, and organising their behaviour around avoiding them. Staying quiet rather than voicing disagreement. Taking a long time to reach any decision.

The root cause behind the Pessimist’s bad habits is a poor self-image. Low self-esteem is painful, and it drives a constant effort to avoid ever feeling it again. That effort gets pointed at avoiding any situation where failure is possible.

The Pessimist’s caution adds up to paralysis by analysis: an indecisiveness that frustrates everyone around them. Left unchecked, this fear of shame can spread quietly through a whole organisation’s culture, until avoiding risk becomes the default, with serious damage to the business’s ability to innovate. Creative, ambitious, change-driven people find that kind of environment stifling, and they tend to leave for somewhere more dynamic.

Managing the Empty Personas

Changing an empty persona’s behaviour takes care. You still want them to keep doing the good things they do. At the same time, they need to understand the impact their behaviour has on the bottom line, which will likely come as a surprise, since they see themselves as high performers, not as a problem.

The Hero

Heroes are driven by activity. They like being busy and tend to firefight, which produces strong short-term results at the expense of the long term. The way to shift a Hero’s behaviour is to get them thinking about winning the war, not just the individual battles. Heroes are highly competitive, so a challenge will grab their attention, as long as it is framed as a long-term strategic goal rather than an urgent fire to put out. A good general knows when to pull back and fight another day. Reward the Hero for long-term thinking, and play down any short-term wins. Push back, too, on anything driven purely by short-term gain: firefighting, working absurd hours, or heroic last-minute efforts. Here is what that coaching conversation might sound like:

“You have proved yourself as an outstanding implementer. But to move up, and get the recognition you want, you need to show you can operate at a higher level. Everyone is impressed by your dedication and your ability to solve problems and handle a crisis, but you haven’t yet proved you can build and deliver a long-term strategic plan. Without that, you’ll get pigeon-holed as a firefighter. That might feel rewarding for a while, but it won’t be enough for someone with your ability. Eventually you’ll get frustrated watching others move past you, because you haven’t adjusted how you work.

On top of that, the intensity you bring costs you and everyone around you. I keep hearing complaints about long hours and weekends, and about the expectation that everyone else should match them.

You’re a high achiever, so here’s a challenge. Try getting the same results in eight hours a day, five days a week, instead of seventy hours a week. I’d bet it’s possible. It’s mostly about focus. Give yourself seventy hours, and you’ll fill seventy hours with activity. Limit yourself to forty, and you’ll get sharper, more efficient, more focused. Your home life will improve, your output will improve, your thinking will get clearer, and for the first time, you’ll actually have room to reflect.”

The Bulldozer

Bulldozers are usually reluctant to change a style that, in their eyes, works. To shift a Bulldozer, you need to show that their overall approach costs more than it delivers. Start the conversation by asking whether they know how many enemies they’ve made across the company. Follow it with something direct: “If it went to a vote, there’s no question, you’d be out.”

A Bulldozer will typically push back: “I haven’t got here by being soft.” The right answer is: “I don’t care whether you think you’re the gentlest person alive. It doesn’t matter if I agree, because nobody else does. It’s like being a stand-up comedian: if you think you’re funny but the room doesn’t laugh, you’re not funny.”

Then spell out the actual cost of their behaviour to the business:

“We have eight people on this team, all capable. Because of how you operate, we’re not getting the best out of them. If eighty percent of the ideas in a brainstorm come from you, that isn’t proof you’re brilliant, it’s proof the rest of the team is too scared to speak, or never gets the chance, because you talk over them. In financial terms, we’re getting a hundred percent from you and maybe ten or twenty percent from everyone else. That’s not just wasteful, it doesn’t add up. It would make more business sense to lose you and get the best out of the other seven than to keep you and leave the rest under-used.

We’ve lost three good people in the past couple of years. Exit interviews pointed to the atmosphere you create as the reason. At their level, replacing someone directly costs around thirty percent of their salary. The indirect cost, lost opportunities, ramp-up time for the new hire, the disruption, runs about five times that. So your behaviour is costing me a great deal of money. I’m not denying you deliver strong results. But the price of those results is too high. What would you do, if you were in my position?”

The Rebel

Rebels enjoy a tug of war more than most. So the first move in managing one is to flip the dynamic: instead of the Rebel challenging you, put them in the position of being challenged. A typical conversation might open bluntly:

“I’ve noticed you’re very critical of how we do things here. Are you happy in this job? Are you thinking of leaving? You always seem to be pushing against the limits, venting your frustration, running down the organisation.

You’ll tell me that’s just how you talk, or that you’re joking. I don’t buy that. Whatever the intention, what you say lands on people, and it’s exhausting to sit through the constant criticism.

But here’s the point. You clearly think a lot needs to change around here. So here’s your chance to prove there’s substance behind what you say. Criticising is easy. Coming up with something better is harder. If you want to take on the parts of this place that don’t work, bring me a properly thought-through plan, not another round of complaints from the sidelines. Present it to the board. Be ready to defend it. You’ll need to show the benefits outweigh the cost of making the change.

You have a choice here. You can work to change things, or you can carry on being an irritant. If you choose the second one, your career will stall and your influence will stay exactly where it is now. I hope you choose the first, because you’re right about one thing: this place isn’t perfect, and we need people like you to help fix it.”

The Pessimist

Like the Rebel’s constant criticism, the Pessimist’s constant resistance to change becomes tiresome and exasperating over time. Eventually, people stop listening, and treat it as background noise. That is the argument to use in a coaching conversation: like the boy who cried wolf, constant alarm loses its effect.

“It’s fine to worry, but your concerns need to do more than just protect the status quo. They need a constructive edge.

I’ve been listening closely to your arguments over the last few months, and the pattern I see is that your risk assessment is one-sided. You focus on what could go wrong with change, but you rarely weigh up what could go wrong with doing nothing.

Next time a change is proposed, draw up a simple two-by-two: the pros and cons of making the change, against the pros and cons of standing still. Do that as a habit, and it will push you towards a more balanced view. I’ll also protect you from every kind of risk but one. If you try something new and it fails, I’ll take responsibility. If it succeeds, you get the credit. But if you block risk-taking, or get in the way of other people’s good ideas, that’s on you.”

What the Research Says

Robert Hogan’s dark side idea is grounded in a specific, widely used tool: the Hogan Development Survey, which measures eleven patterns that tend to surface under stress, once people stop actively managing how they come across. The eleven scales cluster into three groups, based on psychoanalyst Karen Horney’s 1950 theory of how people cope with insecurity: moving away from others through avoidance, moving against others through domination, or moving toward others by building alliances. The useful point for managers is that these are not separate flaws bolted onto an otherwise normal personality. They are ordinary strengths, drive, caution, charm, loyalty, pushed past the point where they help.

The cost of leaving these patterns unmanaged is not abstract. In a large 2023 study, 58% of employees who had quit a job named their manager as the main reason, and poor culture, often driven by a small number of difficult individuals, cost US employers an estimated 223 billion dollars in turnover over five years. The Bulldozer section above illustrates one specific mechanism behind that cost: a team that has stopped speaking up is not necessarily a healthy one. Harvard’s Amy Edmondson found the opposite of what she expected when she studied hospital teams. The better-performing units reported more errors, not fewer, because their staff felt safe enough to report them. Silence is not proof that everything is fine.

References

• Waldroop, J. and Butler, T. (2000). Managing away bad habits. Harvard Business Review, 78, no. 5 (September to October).
• Crowley, K. and Elster, K. (2006). Working with You Is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work. Warner Business Books: New York.
• Hogan, R. and Hogan, J. (2009). Hogan Development Survey Manual. Hogan Assessment Systems.
• Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and Human Growth. W.W. Norton.
• Society for Human Resource Management (2023). The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture.
• Edmondson, A.C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350 to 383.