Picture this: a subject matter expert whose deep knowledge should be a great asset to your team—but instead, it feels like a dangerous double-edged sword. Their expertise has become weaponised, leaving you and the rest of the team walking on eggshells around them because they’re being much too difficult to get along with.
If that seems familiar, you might have a Scary Specialist on your hands.
When this happens, the costs can be significant. Talented people are likely to be leaving or quiet-quitting in significant numbers because of them. Everybody has got used to tiptoeing around them, finding any attempts to innovate or improve things blocked or disputed.
But the good news is that addressing the issue can unlock better working relationships and the full potential of your team—as well as the Scary Specialist themselves.
What you might have first noticed
- They’ve practically weaponised their expertise, using it to make sure that no-one (their boss included) can disagree with them or control them
- They’re highly critical of their own staff and colleagues, trying to bully people into functioning at incredibly high standards of competence
- They frequently blame you, the admin team, the IT team, the marketing team, everybody really, complaining that they can’t function properly if you won’t do your job better
- If they feel they can’t control something the organisation is doing, they’ll likely be finding ways to block it or sabotage it.
Unlocking the Potential of the Scary Specialist
Leading a Scary Specialist can feel like an impossible task—daunting, frustrating, and at times, exhausting. Dealing with them successfully—without also losing the good things that got them there in the first place—requires a unique strategy and a lot of holding your nerve.
But here’s the thing: while their behaviours can push leaders and teams to breaking point, they also have the potential for incredible contributions. Turning this situation around isn’t just possible; it’s a chance to transform both their impact and your team’s overall dynamic. Let’s explore how.
I’m Nick Robinson and I’m an Executive Coach, helping leaders and teams to transform challenging dynamics into great working relationships for 25 years.
I’m the author of The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson. My book went straight into the WHS business book charts, was longlisted for the business book of the year, and is consistently in Amazon’s top rankings.
This article is part of a series for leaders dealing with all kinds of difficult people and teams at work. And there’ll be videos and shorts to go with them.
Please like this article and follow me if you found it interesting or useful, and for other updates about dealing with difficult people and teams and how to turn them into great working relationships.
In the rest of this article
- Know what to look out for, to be sure you have got a Scary Specialist on your hands
- The main strategies for leaders who want to deal with the Scary Specialist on their team
- How I work with Scary Specialists, using the coaching approach I’ve developed to help them find much more effective ways of behaving at work, so that everybody benefits.
Key Behaviours Leaders Should Watch For
When a Scary Specialist’s behaviour begins to negatively impact the team, it’s really helpful to recognise the patterns. Here are the telltale behaviours that leaders should watch out for.
Weaponised Expertise
You can’t argue, reason or disagree with them, because they always know something you don’t—and aren’t afraid to use it. This is their way of avoiding being controlled.
Covert Bullying
The highly-competent, driven people on their team are fine. But everybody else is likely to be suffering: bullied out or criticised into submission
Criticism and Blame
When they feel safe, they’ll be vocally critical of you and colleagues, for example in Senior Leadership or Partnership meetings. Blaming you for not raising the standards in the rest of the organisation that would enable their own department to triumph. At other times, they’ll be more subtle about this, briefing against people and/or getting others to voice their complaints for them
Blocking Change and Innovation
What a Scary Specialist really wants, is for you to make everything around them as perfect as possible, without disturbing anything they are doing. There’s some logic to this. You probably hired them because they’re so good at what they do. “Why can’t you just leave me alone to get on with it?” they ask. How you deal with this depends very much on your situation, which I consider below.
Other Impacts Leaders Might See and Feel
Then there’s the impacts you might see and feel, both on yourself and on the rest of the organisation, when a Scary Specialist has become much too difficult to get along with. These include:
Collateral Damage
People might complain how they’ve feeling belittled or bullied. You’ll probably get a little of this yourself. New recruits might be leaving almost as soon as they arrive. Despite their drive for results, performance might drop, as key people leave or quiet-quit from burnout.
Tiptoeing Around
You and senior colleagues are careful around the Scary Specialist. You’re postponing tricky discussions, worrying that one wrong move might set them off. You’re avoiding making cross-functional changes, because it just isn’t worth dealing with all the resistance you’ll experience.
The Drawbridge is Up
Under pressure, Scary Specialists are highly likely to disconnect from you, their colleagues and the rest of the business. It’s a pulling-up of the drawbridge or a circling of the wagons. You might notice that disconnection itself first. Or you might notice it by the absence of their participation in anything other than their own domain. All accompanied by a very clear ‘Keep Out’ attitude towards anything or anybody that might trespass on that domain.
Dealing with a Scary Specialist
When faced with a Scary Specialist, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed or even cornered. Their behaviour can be frustrating and draining, but with the right strategies, it’s possible to transform their impact from destructive to constructive. By holding your nerve, staying focused, and applying smart leadership techniques, you can unlock significant upsides—not only for your team but for the Specialist themselves.
What to Consider First
Before getting into action, it’s worth taking a moment to assess the situation. Ask yourself these key questions to understand the stakes and your capacity to address the challenge effectively:
- How valuable are they, compared to the damage they might be causing?
- Is your own leadership style also highly-task-focused, so that you might be overlooking their negative impacts on people and systems?
- What’s your scope for taking action—in particular—how much power do they wield in your organisation?
Leadership Strategies to Deploy
Once you’ve considered your position, it’s time to act. The strategies below will help you manage your Scary Specialist in a way that balances maintaining their strengths and dealing with their negative impact.
1. Rearrange things around them
In your business, the Scary Specialist might be so crucial to your success, or have so much power, that you decide it’s worth putting up with any problems they might be causing. You wouldn’t be the first leader to come to this conclusion. But first make sure you’re not just putting things off or storing up big trouble for the future.
Here’s some steps you might want to take anyway:
- Surround your Scary Specialist with highly-competent people at all times. And make sure your human resources support, especially recruitment and employee-relations policies, are effective and water-tight—you’re going to need them
- Check that any supporting processes and staff who contribute to the Scary Specialist’s department are equally highly-functioning and understand what’s needed of them
- Make sure that you or someone else is doing the big-picture thinking for your organisation. Your Scary Specialist will be so focused on doing things well, that they may not stop to think about whether they’re doing the right things well.
2. Become more scary yourself
If your natural leadership style is reasonable and measured, that’s a good thing and people around you will benefit from it. But a Scary Specialist might be taking advantage of your unwillingness to be scary and unreasonable.
You need to understand that a lot of their unacceptable behaviour is driven by their own unconscious fears and habits, especially their lack of concern about people and their disregard for the strategic bigger picture.
If you can, raise the stakes so that a fear of your disapproval becomes greater than anything else that the Scary Specialist is worried about.
Before you do that, be aware that people don’t usually just become difficult in a vacuum. Consider what else in the organisation (for example, pressure to deliver) might also be driving their behaviour, and see if you need to deal with that too.
3. Demand that they raise their game
Above all else, a Scary Specialist values competence in others. So an often successful leadership strategy is to explain to them, in no uncertain terms, that the negative impacts they are having on other people in your business are a sign of incompetence on their own part.
Frame it as a series of skills that they need to develop, or else.
It’s not enough that they be highly-skilled in their area of expertise. Work these days is too interdependent for that, too reliant on whole teams of people collaborating together really well. Everybody needs skills in getting on well with others and supporting the systems that enable effective collaboration.
Coaching and Developing a Scary Specialist
Great coaching of a Scary Specialist requires a balance of empathy and firmness. By tapping into their strengths and addressing their blind spots, you can help them grow into a leader who uplifts the team rather than unsettles it.
At their best
At their very best, A Scary Specialist is a valuable member of your business, consistently delivering high-quality results again and again.
As a leader themselves, they will work hard to create the conditions where like-minded people can really shine.
When things are going well, they’re a great contributor to your team, helping to raise standards everywhere, setting the pace for success and often operating as the powerhouse for your business.
If you follow the leadership strategies above and support the coaching and development tips below, you can have a Scary Specialist who is no longer scary. Instead, they’ll use their skills to help everybody drive results and quality in a way that benefits your whole organisation.
Coaching and Development Tips
As a leader or another professional aiming to support the growth of a Scary Specialist, getting a good response when you’re coaching and developing them rests a lot on your own personal power, especially:
- Matching their competence – they’ll be keenly scanning for any signs that you’re not up to the task, so be very good or go home
- Expertise – they’ll want to know that you’re not delivering a ‘one-size-fits-all’ developmental process and are tailoring what you do to exactly suit them and their circumstances
- Authority – don’t let a Scary Specialist put the responsibility for their development back onto you (which they will try to do). These are skills they need to develop because their ability to get things done well is being compromised by their lack of people and strategic skills. You’re there to support them—not do the work for them.
If you can exercise your own personal power with the ‘Fierce Compassion’ I describe in my book (empathy plus no-messing around), then here’s what else you’ll want to cover with them:
- Hidden Shame about being unpopular – lots of Scary Specialists know that people don’t like them, but are afraid to confront it. Ask them: ‘If there was a way of still being really good at your work, without winding other people up, would you adopt it?”
- Self-sabotage – assuming that nothing can change without getting worse
- Blaming others – protecting themselves from overload by blaming others for what isn’t working, rather than working together to solve things
- Visionary Leadership – developing skills in having a wider, longer-term focus and being able to inspire others with it
- Coaching and Developing others themselves – this is often the missing link for Scary Specialists. Instead of demanding that other people be instantly competent, they learn how to share their expertise and drive in a way that enables lots more people to become top performers.
Next Steps
If you think you might be dealing with a Scary Specialist – the expert who really isn’t afraid to let you know they’re the expert – try the leadership strategies and coaching tips I’ve suggested in this article. It will demand a lot of you, but then that’s one of the huge benefits you want to unlock from your Scary Specialist—they do demand a lot of others. Use my approach to help them do that in a way that benefits everyone.
Dealing with a Scary Specialist requires courage, insight, and the right strategies. If you’re ready to turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships:
- Start Today: Grab a copy of my book, The 9 Types of Difficult People, available on Amazon and at all major booksellers. It’s packed with practical advice to help you lead effectively.
- Follow me: For additional resources, including videos and shorts, that expand on the insights shared here.
- Work With Me: If you’re looking to turn the challenging dynamics of a difficult person or a tricky team into great working relationships, I’d love to explore how we might work together. Get in touch today.
