Tina Fey Fridays, Part 2: You need the eggs, but not if they’re rotten.

In her book Bossypants, Tina Fey offers several pieces of advice for managers who have to make decisions about the selection and management of “crazy” people. At first glance, some of the thoughts she shares on this topic might seem to contradict one another: at one point in her book, she seems to be advocating for including “crazy” people in your work teams and working around their unreasonable ideas, whereas at other points she seems to be specifically advising against the hiring of “crazy” people. If you read carefully, though, you’ll find that the apparent contradiction comes from the fact that Fey is talking about two different kinds of “crazy:” the first is a sort of unconventional creativity that can often seem odd to other people, whereas the second refers to people who are routinely negative or even abusive at work – the kind of person Robert J. Sutton would call a “certified asshole” (if you don’t remember this from our blog series a few months ago, take the self-assessment here). So from this point on, I will refer to Tina Fey’s two kinds of “crazy” as “creative insanity” and “destructive insanity,” just for the sake of clarity.

As an example of how to work with those who suffer from “creative insanity,” Fey shares a lesson in managerial style that she learned from a former boss, Lorne Michaels (creator and producer of Saturday Night Live): “Never tell a crazy person he’s crazy.” She goes on to relate this pearl of wisdom to an old joke: “A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘My brother’s gone crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the psychiatrist says, ‘Have you told him he’s not a chicken?’ The man replies, ‘I would, but we need the eggs.’”

According to Fey, Michaels’ management philosophy included the acknowledgement that “the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff.” This is extremely important for managers to understand, because sometimes one of the biggest challenges of being a leader is to provide guidance and support while still allowing people to be who they are and think the way that they think. And it’s incredibly important that leaders do this: allowing individuals to be independently creative not only creates a more positive environment for your team, since people respond well to the message that their thoughts and opinions are respected and valued, but it is often the best path to innovation as well.

Again, though, the use of the word “exhausting” above does not mean that managers should accommodate or reward the behavior of those who are hurting the well-being of an entire team by creating a negative environment. In two different places in her book, Fey advises against the hiring of individuals who suffer from what I am referring to here as “destructive insanity.” For example, in a brief description of her own managerial techniques, she writes, “I have met some very dangerous, erratic, funny people over the years, people I admire, but I don’t want to work with them every day. Go do your own show, tough guys, and I will gladly watch it from the safety of my home. I hire the most talented of the people who are the least likely to throw a punch in the workplace.”

In other words, of course you need creative people on your team, and sometimes those people can be a bit unpredictable, unconventional, and maybe what some would call “crazy.” But it’s important to draw a line between the kind of erratic behavior that goes along with a creative personality and the kind of erratic behavior that indicates someone could become a destructive team member. If you are getting some indications that a job candidate or a new hire is emotionally volatile, unreasonably demanding, or otherwise not the kind of person who is capable of positively interacting with others, it probably is not the best idea to have that person on your team. You “need the eggs,” yes… but they won’t do you any good if they’re rotten.