Most leaders I know want brilliant, creative, genius outcomes from their employees. Awesome! I love high expectations.

Genius, though, is a fickle thing. 99.99% of us will never reach the genius stage in anything we do in life. If you’re lucky enough to work with, be friends with, or manage a genius personality, you know these cats aren’t normal.

Some folks can reach a genius level in one aspect of their life. This lady is a genius at selling software, no one is better. This dude is a genius at creating and improving processes like no one else.

Leaders usually try to manage the genius like every other ordinary employee.

Therein lies the problem. The genius isn’t ordinary, they’re extraordinary. We have a hard time wrapping our small leadership brains around this idea of treating one person differently than the rest is the right thing to do. We were ‘trained’ to treat everyone equally.

Some times the right leadership decision to set precedent. To treat someone differently than the rest because that’s what needs to be done to reap what the genius has to give you. It’s not that the genius necessarily wants or asks to be treated differently. It’s the fact that if you want genius you can’t manage them like their ordinary, otherwise, you’ll probably just get ordinary.