How to Deal With a Toxic Top-Performer

Every founder hires a brilliant jerk at some point. What begins as a dream hire—fast, capable, indispensable—slowly morphs into a cultural liability no one wants to confront. This piece shows how to handle these team members by shifting from personality to structure.

Key Takeaways

• Brilliance ≠ Irreplaceability: You’re not stuck because they’re brilliant—you’re stuck because your company depends on knowledge only they hold.
• Coaching Fails Narcissists: True narcissists resist change; they nod, deflect, and weaponize feedback rather than grow from it.
• The Real Fix Is Structural: Solve the capability gap by extracting and codifying their knowledge—not replacing them outright.
• Use the 5×3™ Framework: Identify five pillars of their expertise, add three examples per pillar, and create fast, focused training.
• Flip the Script to Engage Them: Present a draft 5×3™ and invite critique. Let their ego drive the transfer—then use it to train the team.

Every founder eventually hires a brilliant jerk.

At first, this person seems like a dream hire—brilliant, fast, and capable in ways that feel rare.

They know the domain inside out, hit deadlines with ease, and deliver results no one else can. You start relying on them more and more, and wondering how you ever got by without them.

Then, things start to unravel. Team members go quiet around them. You hear feedback:

• “They’re difficult.”
• “They don’t listen.”
• “I don’t want to upset them.”

But they keep getting results, so you tell yourself that friction is just part of high performance.

Eventually, the pattern becomes too clear to ignore.

They dismiss others, undermine ideas before they can take shape, and leave a trail of destruction behind them.

Their power doesn’t come from a title, but from knowledge—and they use that power to control, not to teach.

It starts to feel like no one can work with them. But also like no one else can do what they do.

And now you’re stuck.

Why Coaching Often Doesn’t Help

Your first instinct is to coach them out of it.

Maybe they just need better feedback. Maybe a few workshops will smooth things over. Maybe the team needs to learn how to work with “strong personalities.”

However, many brilliant jerks aren’t just difficult... they have narcissist personalities.

Narcissists crave control, lack empathy, and inflate their own importance.

Sound familiar?

It’s this combination that makes them so effective—and so corrosive. And in cases like this, coaching rarely works.

They nod along and promise change. Then they continue exactly as before.

They might even start using the language of feedback as a weapon: blaming others for poor collaboration, quoting coaching frameworks to justify their behaviour, or painting themselves as the misunderstood genius.

Coaching only works when there’s genuine self-awareness and a desire to grow. Narcissists aren’t interested in growth—they’re interested in control.

Which brings you back to the problem: they’re brilliant, and corrosive, and they won’t change.

The Narcissist Trap

When you’re in this dynamic, every option feels bad.

You could fire them. But you worry their function will collapse. No one else has the context. Projects will stall, and you’ll be pulled back into the weeds.

You could do nothing and let the damage continue. But you know the culture is deteriorating—and that eventually, someone will force your hand.

None of these feel like good choices, and they each come with a real cost.

So what do you do when you can’t coach them, can’t fire them, and can’t live with the status quo?

It's Not Actually About Them

You’re not stuck because this person is brilliant. You’re stuck because the company is dependent on their brilliance.

That’s not the same thing.

What you’re facing isn’t a personality problem—it’s a structural weakness. Your organisation lacks the capabilities that this individual holds exclusively.

You have a capability gap.

The goal isn’t just to replace the person. It’s to extract what they know, codify it, and build company capability around it. Because once that knowledge is embedded into the business, you’re no longer stuck.

That’s how you move from individual heroics to organisational resilience.

How to Turn Individual Knowledge into Team Training

I use a simple framework for capturing individual excellence and turning it into usable training material. It’s called a 5×3™—and it’s so effective, I trademarked it.

It captures the essence of teaching in a compact format, and it works equally well for skills and process knowledge. The best part? It’s fast to build and easy to use.

Here’s how to create one:

Step 1: Identify the Topic

Pick one area where the person is operating at a high level—something others depend on them for. This could be a skill (like “closing enterprise deals”) or knowledge about a process or function (like “our analytics architecture”).

Ask yourself: If someone else had to take this over, what would they need to learn?

Step 2: Map the Territory

Break the topic into five core pillars.

Why five? Because three is often too few to cover the full landscape—and seven is too many for people to remember. Five is the Goldilocks zone: just right.

• For skills, think of five key principles.
• For process knowledge, think of five steps or categories.

Example: If the topic is “Customer Onboarding,” your five might be:

1. Kickoff calls
2. Success planning
3. Risk detection
4. Executive communication
5. Handoff to support

Step 3: Add Examples

Training doesn’t fail because people don’t understand the theory. It fails because they don’t see what it looks like in practice.

So for each pillar, add three concrete examples.

• For skills: three observable behaviours that show the skill in action.
• For process knowledge: three sub-steps or illustrative examples that bring the step to life.

If you’re stuck, ask:

• What are great examples of this?
• What can you actually observe? (i.e. see and hear)
• What must people always remember?

When you’re done, you’ll have a 5×3™: five areas, each with three examples—simple, structured, and usable. It fits on a single page as a simple table. And it becomes the backbone of your training.

Step 4: Run a Rapid Training

Once you’ve got the 5×3™, running a training is simple.

Just hold a session between the expert and the people who need to learn. The framework gives just enough structure to make the knowledge clear, while still leaving room for dialogue.

Start with a high-level overview of the five areas. Then go one by one, discussing the three examples under each. Let people ask questions as you go.

Even in a 30-minute session, the team will walk away with a shared understanding of what excellence looks like—and how to move toward it.

How to Lure a Narcissist into the Process

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that almost any knowledge or skill can be transferred with some focused effort.

But if you’re working with a true narcissist, there’s a catch: they may not want to participate. After all, training others puts them out of the spotlight—and could even reduce their perceived importance.

So what do you do?

You flip the script.

Create a 5×3™ for their area and present it as a rough framework. Then say something like,

• “I tried to map out how this function works—would love your feedback.”

If they have a narcissistic streak, the response will come quickly:

• “This is absolute rubbish—I’ll have to show you how it’s actually done.”

Perfect.

They rewrite the 5×3™ in their own image—and begin to take ownership. That’s the moment you’ve been waiting for.

Now give them a platform. Call it a “masterclass.” Frame it as a chance to teach the team their method. Let them walk through the 5×3™, one section at a time, with space for questions. Record everything.

After the session, use the transcript to build written guides, onboarding materials, or short Looms. What was once stuck inside one person is now available to everyone.

Whether they stay or go, the capability stays with you.

The Truth About Leaving Toxic Relationships

A friend of mine once dated a woman who was beautiful, charismatic, and smart.

Behind the scenes, though, she was manipulative, aggressive, and controlling. Everyone could see it was a toxic relationship—except him.

“She’s all I have,” he told me, when it was clearly falling apart. “If I leave, I know I’ll regret it. Plus, I’m afraid of what she’d do.”

We all knew he’d be much better off without her.

When they finally broke up, he said something I’ll never forget:

“The worst part wasn’t losing her. It was realising how long I believed I couldn’t.”

Founders fall into the same trap. A toxic employee performs just well enough to stay protected—while poisoning everything around them.

They make you believe you can’t live without them.

But you can.

And once you do, you’ll wonder why it took you so long.

Related readings

• How to Support a Team Under Pressure
• How to Ask Your Team the Right Questions
  
• How to Delegate Work So It Actually Gets Done 

Originally published on Jun 11, 2025.