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Oscar Wilde famously noted, “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” It is arguably one of the best brief illustrations of emotional intelligence (EQ), a trait that became popular thanks to a nonacademic best-selling book by journalist Daniel Goleman, in which he insinuated that EQ is a more important driver of success than IQ (a claim that has been discredited).
And yet, there’s no shortage of evidence for the importance of EQ when it comes to predicting interpersonal effectiveness, defined as the ability to manage yourself and others in everyday life. In fact, long before EQ was coined in academic research (before Goleman popularized the term), decades of personality research had already highlighted reliable individual differences in the propensity to engage in more or less effective intrapersonal and interpersonal behaviors. In fact, way before HR managers celebrated EQ, your grandma called it good manners.
Problematic personalities
Now onto the actual research: Here are five science-based generalizations about people with challenging personalities; that is, people who are significantly more taxing, unrewarding to deal with, and demanding on others than the average person is.
(1) Empathy deficits (and why empathy alone is not enough): Difficult individuals often struggle to accurately recognize or care about others’ feelings, perspectives, and needs. Yet, as Paul Bloom has argued, even empathy itself is an unreliable foundation for moral or cooperative behavior, because it is selective, biased, and easily withdrawn from those we dislike or see as different.
(2) High neuroticism and fragile core self-evaluations: Elevated emotional reactivity, anxiety, and sensitivity to threat make everyday interactions feel volatile. When people possess low core self-esteem or unstable self-confidence, they are more likely to overreact, personalize neutral events, and drain others’ emotional energy.
(3) Low agreeableness masked as EQ or blunt honesty: Some difficult personalities score low on agreeableness, meaning they are less inclined toward cooperation, trust, and concern for others. In workplace settings, this is often misinterpreted as emotional intelligence, confidence, or refreshing candor, when it is in fact poor impression management disguised as authenticity.
(4) Lack of self-awareness, especially among self-centered narcissists: Many difficult people are strikingly unaware of how they come across. Narcissistic individuals, in particular, tend to overestimate their competence, underestimate their impact on others, and interpret feedback as hostility rather than information.
In a way, this is what makes challenging personalities so difficult to deal with: They are either unaware of how unrewarding to deal with they are, or simply don’t give a damn! Neither are particularly useful. When others are of the opinion that you suck, and that you are unaware of the fact that you suck, they will think quite poorly of you (unless you are a fictional character like David Brent or Michael Scott, in which case they will laugh . . . cathartically).
(5) Low external pressure or weak incentives to be rewarding to others: Finally, difficult behavior persists when it is tolerated, rewarded, or unpunished. Power, status, or perceived indispensability often insulate individuals from social consequences, reducing their motivation to regulate their behavior or invest in being pleasant to work with.
As I illustrate in my latest book, this explains the unfortunate fact that when people rise to the top of organizational hierarchies they stop feeling pressure to adjust their behavior to meet others’ needs. This kind of raw authenticity is a privilege for the elite, the status quo, or those who can afford to neglect situational demands to adjust their behavior in order to act pro-socially. But the less people care about their reputation, the more other people will care—and not for the right reasons!
What to do
So, how best to work with these individuals, which will inevitably be required if you have a job that has you interacting with colleagues, clients, or coworkers (which basically applies to all jobs)?
Here are some basic recommendations:
(1) Learn their typical patterns: The Norwegians have a saying, namely that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong choice of clothing. In a way people are just like the weather or climate: If you forget to check the forecast or are unaware of the climate, you only have yourself to blame for not being adequately equipped. So, if you have a moody colleague, irritable boss, or self-centered client, the mistake is not expecting rain, it’s turning up in sandals and acting surprised when you get soaked.
Once you recognize someone’s stable patterns, you can start to personalize your behavior, adjust your expectations, and optimize your responses accordingly. In essence, there’s always a strategy for improving how you deal or interact with someone, regardless of how difficult they are.
(2) Avoid trying to change them: One big issue with difficult people is that we are often tempted to try to change them, assuming that insight, feedback, or goodwill will eventually override deeply ingrained tendencies. In reality, most personality traits are relatively stable over time, especially in adulthood, and attempts to “fix” others usually create frustration rather than improvement. To be sure, this does not excuse their bad conduct, but it does prevent you from wasting emotional energy on futile hopes that they will suddenly become someone else.
An old fable tells of a scorpion that asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog hesitates, fearing it will be stung. The scorpion reassures him that doing so would doom them both. Yet halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anyway. As they begin to sink, the frog asks why. “I couldn’t help it,” the scorpion replies. “It’s my nature.” The lesson is not about forgiveness or cynicism, but realism: Some interpersonal patterns are remarkably stable, even when they are self-defeating. Ignoring this does not make you kind, only unprepared.
(3) Be better than others: While difficult personalities can pose a challenge to most, your goal is not to find the perfect formula for dealing with them. Rather, think about being better in your interactions with them than most people are. In other words, it’s not how well you can handle them compared to how you handle other people, but compared to how well other people handle them.
This relative advantage compounds: Difficult individuals quickly learn who escalates them, who indulges them, and who remains calm, clear, and consistent. Over time, they tend to reserve their worst behavior for those who reward it, and their best for those who do not.
Research on social learning and reinforcement shows that behavior is shaped not only by personality, but by the reactions it reliably elicits from others. When you respond with predictable boundaries, emotional restraint, and clarity, you reduce the payoff of difficult behavior. You may not change who they are, but you can often change how they behave around you, and they may even appreciate you for being more open to them than others are.
(4) Practice rational compassion: One of the critical challenges with difficult personalities is that it’s often quite hard to empathize with them. Examples include chronically anxious colleagues who catastrophize minor issues, abrasive high performers who mistake bluntness for honesty, or self-centered leaders who dominate conversations while remaining oblivious to their impact on others.
But as Paul Bloom notes, empathy is by definition insufficient to create civil and prosocial work environments and cultures. Why? Because we are prewired to empathize most readily with people who feel familiar, similar, and psychologically close to us. In contrast, when we perceive others as different or as belonging to a separate group or “tribe,” empathy quickly breaks down, which is precisely why inclusion is so difficult to sustain in diverse workplaces.
Bloom’s alternative is not coldness, but rational compassion: a deliberate commitment to fairness, tolerance, and restraint that does not depend on liking, identification, or emotional resonance. Practicing rational compassion means treating people decently even when they irritate us, setting boundaries without hostility, and choosing principled behavior over emotional reactions. This approach is especially useful with difficult personalities because it allows us to remain civil and effective without having to feel empathy we may not genuinely experience.
(5) Master strategic authenticity: One common feature of difficult personalities is that they make little effort to adjust their behavior to others. Instead, they default to a “This is just who I am” approach to interpersonal dynamics, implicitly placing the burden of adaptation on everyone else. This unfiltered version of authenticity is often celebrated through popular mantras such as “Don’t worry about what others think” or “Just be yourself and others will adjust.”
The problem is that this logic does not scale. If everyone follows it, the collective outcome is not freedom but a culture of entitled rigidity, where each person feels justified in prioritizing self-expression over social responsibility. A useful analogy is driving: Insisting on going at your preferred speed, regardless of traffic rules or road conditions, may feel good and taste like freedom, but it creates accidents, not progress.
Strategic authenticity is choosing when and how to express yourself so that movement remains possible for everyone. It means finding a workable balance between saying what you think and feel, recognizing that your right to self-expression does not override your obligation to others.
The inverse solution
Ultimately, working with difficult personalities is less about fixing others than about managing yourself with intelligence, discipline, and perspective. The best strategy is often to become the inverse of the problem (or, well, them): to show empathy where they show indifference, self-awareness where they show blind spots, and restraint where they seek release. Difficult people rarely improve because they are corrected, but because the environment around them quietly refuses to mirror their worst instincts.
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Remember that scene in The Devil Wears Prada when Miranda Priestly silences Andy Sachs with a perfectly delivered monologue about a cerulean blue sweater? Andy had dismissed it as trivial—just another fashion detail. But Miranda’s lesson wasn’t about the sweater. It was about power: When you think you’re outside the system, you’re actually reinforcing it. You can’t opt out of the fashion system. You can only choose whether you’re aware of it.
In an era obsessed with authenticity, what we wear is the first language we speak. Yet most leaders remain unconscious of this language’s strategic power. They treat their closets like personal decisions rather than professional assets. They should reconsider.
The Hidden Cost of Misalignment
Leaders are increasingly discovering what fashion psychologists have long known: Appearance isn’t superficial. It’s foundational. What you choose to wear tells people—in milliseconds—about your authority, perspective, and influence. It encodes identity, status, belonging, and intent. For leaders managing organizational stress, navigating role transitions, or recovering from burnout, this matters far more than aesthetics.
Jennifer Heinen, a fashion psychologist who works with organizational leaders, puts it plainly: Clothing functions as a semiotic system. Your wardrobe sends signals whether you intend to or not. As Heinen likes to remind us, “Clothing is not the solution to everything—but it is the first layer of contact.” The question isn’t whether you’re communicating through fashion. It’s whether you’re doing it consciously or by default.
The problem emerges when there’s friction between your internal reality and external presentation. When someone emerges from burnout but is still wearing the costume of their old role, for instance, they create internal discord. The nervous system feels the mismatch. They perform coherence while experiencing fragmentation. This triggers constant self-monitoring—the exact nervous system stress that deepens burnout.
The 3 R’s: A Framework for Intentional Alignment
Heinen has developed a recognition-regulation-repair framework that gives leaders a practical road map. It’s designed not as a makeover strategy, but as a nervous system intervention.
Recognition addresses identity. It’s about feeling seen and contextually understood rather than misread or self-edited. When a leader transitions into a new role, the first step is recognizing what’s no longer accurate about how they’re being perceived. Often, they’re still dressed for the identity that once kept them safe.
Regulation focuses on the nervous system itself. This is where fashion psychology becomes a strategic tool. By intentionally shifting clothing choices—removing restrictive or sensory-overloading pieces, choosing fabrics and fits that support rather than stress the body—leaders can influence their own emotional stability and cognitive clarity. When a leader feels supported by what they’re wearing, decision-making under pressure improves. Fatigue decreases. Emotional resilience strengthens.
Repair addresses transition. It involves intentionally marking the end of one phase and the beginning of another—not just cognitively, but physically and emotionally. This prevents the kind of liminal anxiety in which people aren’t quite ready to let go of old identities. By curating a new look that reflects who they’re becoming, leaders give their nervous system permission to integrate change rather than resist it.
Moving From Performance to Presence
Here’s the tension most leaders live in: They invest heavily in mental health and physical fitness, yet they largely ignore emotional recovery. During times of economic uncertainty—when leaders manage layoffs, absorb team stress, and navigate complex organizational change—the emotional toll is significant. Yet corporate wellness conversations rarely address it.
Fashion psychology fills that gap. Clothing choices become a strategic intervention for emotional resilience—one of the most accessible tools available. When appearance and identity align, you eliminate the energy drain of code-switching. You move from constant self-monitoring to coherent presence. You show up as yourself rather than performing a version of yourself.
This is what I call “inside-out leadership.” It’s an authentic way of guiding teams in which leaders tap into personal experience and intuition, and encourage their teams to do the same. It requires vulnerability—a willingness to signal, through how you show up, that you’re genuinely aligned with what you’re doing. Your wardrobe either supports this or undermines it.
The Real Power: Magnetism Over Beauty
Tina Turner distinguished between beauty and magnetism in a way that reframes this entire conversation. In the mid-1980s, she spoke openly about self-confidence—owning her attractiveness and presence—as her source of power in an industry shaped by sexism and racism. Attractiveness, she understood, isn’t about conventional beauty standards. It’s about magnetism: the pull that comes from excellence and authentic confidence in your craft.
Fashion psychology operates the same way. It doesn’t create something false. It amplifies what’s already true about a leader’s capability. The real power isn’t in looking good. It’s in looking aligned with what you actually do well. Your wardrobe strategy becomes a competitive advantage rooted in authentic capability, not superficial polish.
3 Actionable Steps for Leaders
If you’re ready to treat your closet like a strategic asset rather than a personal preference, start here.
1. Audit for alignment. Spend a week noticing which pieces make you feel most capable, clear-headed, and present. Which ones trigger self-monitoring or discomfort? Which ones feel congruent with who you’re becoming (not who you were)? Document patterns. Your nervous system already knows what’s working.
2. Identify your identity markers. Work with a stylist or simply journal through three words that represent the essence of how you want to show up as a leader—confident, accessible, bold, precise, or whatever resonates. Then test every wardrobe decision against these markers. If a piece doesn’t align with all three, it doesn’t belong.
3. Mark your transitions intentionally. If you’re moving into a new role or emerging from a difficult period, resist the urge to stay in old uniforms. Curate one or two anchor pieces that signal the new phase. Make it physical. Make it visible. Let your nervous system know you’re really moving forward.
The wardrobe you choose is a form of leadership communication. Make sure you’re saying what you mean.
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