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This is my experience - they are very often people who are so highly specialised in one thing that they lose the ability to talk to other people. Their egos are inflated (as no-one else understands them) they go around causing havoc.

I tended towards this but was - I guess - lucky to have had a manager who identified this and helped me grow.

My approach: the young ones need to fail. Hard. Then they'll learn.

The older ones who failed and reacted badly (it was everyone else's fault). I take them out of their comfort zone, tell them about my experiences and talk about the feeling of self-doubt when moving to different domains. Work with them to turn them into truly excellent team members (which they - in my experience - can be as they're usually driven, hard working and egotistical).



I've also had them read "Being Geek" and "Managing Humans" (as those books are what made it finally click for me).

Turns out the blog linked in the first post was written by the same person.




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