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Managing Away Bad Habits

We’ve all worked with people who are star performers but have one serious personality shortcoming that makes life difficult for everyone, limits their effectiveness, and often proves to be their professional undoing. One person, for instance, constantly takes on too much work. Another scorns the behind-the-scenes politicking needed to win support for most projects. A third sees the downside in every proposed change. In the words of one executive we worked with, such people are “95% brilliant, 5% disaster.”

A version of this article appeared in the September–October 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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