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Hi there! My name is Marcus Collins, DBA, and I study culture and its influence and impact on human behavior at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Each week, this column will explore the inner workings of organizational culture and the mechanisms that make it tick. Every entry will be accompanied by an episode from my podcast, From the Culture, that digs deeper into the culture of work from my conversations with the organizational leaders that make it all happen. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you are not having. Sign up for the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a beat.
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Culture eats strategy for breakfast. We’ve all heard this misattributed Peter Drucker quote and instinctively understand the disproportionate influence culture can have on an organization’s business. However, if you asked five people to define organizational culture, you’d likely get 55 different answers.
Chief among them would be something along the lines of “organizational culture is how we do things around here,” the behaviors and norms that make up how a company engages in the collective production of work.
Sounds about right, right? Sure. However, a century’s worth of literature on the matter would say otherwise.
A social operating system
According to Émile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, culture is a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern what people like us do. It’s a social operating system by which we collectively see the world and, subsequently, behave in it . . . together. What we wear, how we talk, what we do—they’re all byproducts of our cultural subscription.
The same goes for organizational culture, the shared operating system for an organization that helps employees collectively see, so that they might collectively do. Therefore, reducing our concept of organizational culture to merely “what we do around here” ignores half of what makes culture . . . well . . . culture. It’s this half, the way the organization sees the world and makes meaning of it, that dictates what we do.
Take Airbnb, for example. The company sees the world as a place where everyone belongs, so its behaviors are demonstrative of this perspective. That’s why Airbnb adheres to a “No Meetings Wednesday” tradition to accommodate team members who tend to be more introverted, so everyone belongs. They practice radical acts of transparency so that information is available to everyone, not just those “in the know.” They also provide employees with an annual $2K travel credit to encourage people to go out and experience the world the way other people do.
For everyone at Airbnb to feel like they belong, it’s important that employees see themselves as a part of a global community, not just as coworkers. World travel helps this endeavor by fostering the kind of empathy that drives connection. These ways of “doing things around here” at Airbnb are byproducts of how the organization “sees around here.” Together, the seeing and the doing constitute the organization’s culture.
Culture isn’t just values
Of course, there are those of us who understand this distinction. However, far too often we mistake the organization’s perspective for its values; but the two are not analogues. Values are what an organization deems to be important. The way the organization sees the world, on the other hand, defines the truths that the organization holds about the world and why certain things have any importance in the first place.
For instance, Patagonia believes in “climbing clean.” The company envisions a world with minimal human invasiveness on the planet and, therefore, it values environmentalism and integrity, which, ultimately, inform its ways of working. Its values—which the organization deems important—are informed by its perspective.
Values alone are hollow without the deeply held truths of the organization’s perspective that undergirds them. It’s no wonder that research from the MIT Sloan Management Review’s 2020 Glassdoor Culture 500 study found no correlation between a company’s stated values and the lived experiences of its employees. Culture is not a company’s values; it’s the system upon which these values are constructed. So, without a clear perspective of the world, an organization’s values are typically meaningless and have no impact on its behaviors. They’re merely pretty words beautifully stated but rarely integrated.
This is a significant challenge for business leaders who have reduced organizational culture to a set of rituals, rules, and words. Culture is so much more than these components, but since so many of us have defined culture so narrowly, we have not yet fully realized its impact. Culture, as Durkheim asserts, is an operating system, and this system is the most influential external force on human behavior that we aren’t fully leveraging. Not because of a lack of skill, intelligence, or technology, but because of a lack of understanding.
That’s why this column exists—to examine the whys and hows of organizational culture so that we might get better at it. It’s also why I created a podcast—in a world where there are probably too many podcasts, quite frankly.
Culture is an organization’s biggest cheat code, but the only way to use it properly is to understand it deeply. So that’s what we’re here to do . . . together. And this is our first unlock, with many more to follow. If we want to get better at the way we do organizational culture, it starts with getting better at the way we see it.
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.
