
It's 12:40 pm on a Thursday at a fintech start-up racing to close a big lead. The product manager is scrambling to prep for a demo starting in 20 minutes.
“Demo is broken! We are getting non-stop alerts on PD. Where is Veilev ?”
“Home?”
“Well, she is not online.”
“She turned off her Slack and went on a coding spree yesterday. Logs show she pushed code to prod around midnight. She will probably be back on Monday. Or Tuesday. Depends.”
“??”
“Well…we do have an unlimited vacation policy so, technically, I guess she can do that 🤷”
At a different company, a newly hired entry level engineer shows up in the office at 8 am, before anyone else is in, excited to finish coding up what they left unfinished the day before. They scratch their head as they see that all their code has been rewritten and a new pull request is submitted on their behalf.
“Huh? That’s so strange…” the poor soul thinks.
Checking the PR logs the engineer finds their code has been redone by a @J.DeCrabette.
The engineer looks up “J.DeCrabette” in the company directory and finds that J.DeCrabette is employee No. 2 in this 500-person organization. The entry level engineer wonders why J.DeCrabette reports to a mid-level manager. Someone like that should be reporting to the CTO! Heck, they should be the CTO, no?
The engineer has no idea how to handle this “invasion” so they plan to contact the mid-level manager and ask for advice. Little do they know that this will not be the first or last time the poor manager has to deal with Baron DeCrabette’s clacking and clawing…
It’s not Funny. It’s Flight or Fight.
Funny stuff, right?
Not so much to those who’ve survived a “Veilev” or a “Baron DeCrabette” 😓
Veilev represents an archetype I’d like to call the Vampire while I’d like to call DeCrabette a Space Invader. The Vampire vanishes when you seek them and reappears when you forget they exist. The Space Invader is the opposite: they show up uninvited when you least desire and too busy when you truly need them.
The Vampire and the Space Invader are “twins”. On the spectrum of “engagement with others” they latch on to the two extremes. The Vampire enters into a mode of extreme absence of engagement, while the Space Invader acts with an extreme presence of it.
When I discussed this with my friend, Dr. Crystal Dilworth, – an expert in neuroscience – she explained that this is the behavior of highly motivated individuals.
“The problem is that, just like the rest of us, these individuals succumb to human instinct when under pressure. That means they are likely to freeze, flee, or fight to avoid what’s stressing them out” says Crystal.
“The Vampire exhibits flight reactions while the Space Invader fights,” she adds.
Healthy Boundaries
Hmm…sounds like the Vampire and the Space Invader need to be taught how to navigate healthy boundaries. How do you teach them that?
First, you have to acknowledge that both the Vampire and the Space Invader are trying to solve real and possibly serious problems (however misguided their approach is). That’s a good thing. It means they are aligned with the team’s goals. Alignment is good.
Then explain that shipping the product is not the only metric for success. Their team is also a system that needs to stay functional and highly performant otherwise the risk of sustaining or growing the product decreases exponentially. Give them a set of performance metrics to make it real:
Tell a Vampire the task isn’t done until they communicate it’s finished and get an acknowledgement before moving on. I love how Sam Corcos puts it: “If you cure cancer but don’t tell anyone about it, have you really cured cancer?”
Tell a Space Invader their role is to set a high bar and help the team reach it—not jump over it themselves. If they do, they’ve failed their task.
Finally, emphasize workplace reciprocity. Help them define and express their boundaries on paper, understanding that give-and-take helps consciously explore those boundaries and possibly improve them over time.
If you’ve got Vampires or Space Invaders on your team — or see those traits in yourself —Crystal and I are planning workshops on managing these and other "Too Smart to Lead" archetypes. 🙂
Sign up here and we will let you know when we have openings.
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