Yes, in most cases. In three decades of coaching brilliant and abrasive leaders at organizations including Nestle, Novartis, CERN and the United Nations, I have found that the behavior is almost always transformable, because it is almost never the thing people assume it is. The leader who interrupts, dismisses, humiliates and steamrolls is rarely cruel. He is anxious. Once you understand what he is defending against, the behavior becomes something you can work with rather than something you have to tolerate or remove.

That said, change is not automatic and it is not universal. Three conditions have to be met, and when they are absent I say so early rather than take the engagement.

The three conditions for change

The first is that the behavior must be driven by anxiety rather than by contempt. An anxious leader is protecting something: a reputation, a standard, a fear of being found out. A contemptuous leader believes other people are genuinely worth less than he is. The first is coachable. The second rarely is, and I decline those engagements.

The second is that the leader has to feel the consequence. Not be told about it, feel it. A brilliant jerk who has been rewarded for twenty years for exactly the behavior you now want changed has no reason to believe you. Something has to have shifted: a promotion that did not come, a team that will not stay, a board that has started asking questions. My most successful clients arrive at the moment the evidence has become impossible to argue with.

The third is that the organization has to stop sending mixed signals. If the leader is told his behavior is unacceptable while his results continue to earn him protection, he will read the protection and ignore the words. Coaching cannot outrun an incentive system.

What the coaching actually involves

I work through the 3D Leadership Framework, which moves a leader through three dimensions rather than handing him a list of behaviors to suppress. Suppression does not hold. Under pressure the old behavior returns, usually worse, because now there is shame attached to it.

The first dimension is self-awareness, which in practice means showing the leader the gap between his intention and his impact, using data he cannot dismiss. Brilliant people argue with opinions. They do not argue with patterns. The second is the awareness of others, which is where a leader begins to understand that the reaction he provokes is information rather than an insult. The third is deliberate practice in the moments that matter, because interpersonal change happens in about four situations per week, and those are the situations we rehearse.

Most engagements run six to twelve months. Visible change in how a leader is experienced by his team usually appears in the second or third month, which is earlier than most organizations expect and one of the reasons this work is worth doing rather than waiting out.

Why the two usual responses both fail

Organizations tend to do one of two things with a brilliant jerk, and both are expensive. They tolerate him, which teaches every talented person in the building that behavior has no consequence when the numbers are good, and quietly costs them the people who leave rather than escalate. Or they fire him, which removes the behavior along with the expertise, the client relationships and the institutional knowledge, and starts a search that will take a year to replace what walked out.

The third option is the one almost nobody takes seriously, which is to keep the brilliance and coach out the cost. It is slower than firing and harder than tolerating, and in my experience it is the only one of the three that leaves the organization better than it found it.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to change an abrasive leader?

Most engagements run six to twelve months. The leader’s team usually notices a difference within two to three months, well before the leader feels the change is complete.

Can a brilliant jerk change without wanting to?

No. Willingness is the one thing coaching cannot supply. What can be supplied is the evidence that makes willingness rational, which is why an honest picture of the leader’s impact is always the first piece of work.

Is it cheaper to coach a difficult leader or replace one?

Coaching is almost always cheaper. Replacing a senior leader costs a multiple of salary once you count the search, the vacancy, the ramp-up and the relationships that leave with the person. Coaching costs a fraction of that and retains the expertise you were trying to keep in the first place.

Work out whether your most difficult leader is coachable

Dr. Katrina Burrus, PhD, MCC, was the first International Coaching Federation Master Certified Coach in Switzerland and a founding board member of ICF Switzerland. Her TEDxMakati talk, Transforming Brilliant Jerks into Inspirational Leaders, has been viewed more than 161,000 times. She is the author of Managing Brilliant Jerks and Global Leadership.

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Related reading: What is a Brilliant Jerk? and the keynote Transforming Brilliant Jerks Into Inspirational Leaders.