How do you deal with smart ass?

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  Pete Bonney said,

  Hi Sean,

  You are right, collaboration is all about sharing in a constructive manner, disinformation is affects the integrity of the content, be it code, or just some kind of wiki.

  However it seems to me that what your are alluding to above, is that you are on a project where one particular team member is making waves. If this is the case then the first action has to be raising the resource issue as a potential risk to project delivery. Speak to your PM about it, if you are the PM, then you have to sit down with the individual and work through the problem. If there is still no joy, escalate it.

  From a collaboration perspective, you have to establish some kind of governance over the data you are sharing, this is most important with scrum/agile project development styles as things are moving very quickly and you cannot afford to have individuals not working as part of the team. Additionally you should have collaboration guidelines in place especially if the tools you are using are as part of your implementation, if this person continually violates them, it gives you documented evidence to deal with the situation.

  Good luck

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  Jo said,

  From experience of leading teams, I would add: work hard to try and figure out why they are doing what they are doing. Sometimes that’s hard, if not impossible, but it often adds value and solves other problems on your to do list. In other words, rephrase this dillemma as you finding insigiht – it’s less frustrating and more profitbale. Or you use Ben Zanders expresssion – invite and apologize. Begin by saying I am soooo sorry this doesn’t work for you. Could you spend 5 minutes with me explaining what you need so I can do a better job?

  Pete, would you be willing to fill out some questionnaires for a psychology PhD student at Humboldt in Berlin. He is researching on agile methods.

  Sean, I love this blog. You are becoming a regular stopping point on my daily round.

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  Sean Lew said,

  Thanks Pete and Jo for your comments.

  @ Pete, I like your “documented evidence” bit. Sometimes I am so into the whole software that I tend to forget that what they write is documented and version controlled. Thanks!

  @ Jo, absolutely brilliant – “invite and apologize”. I will totally try this out. Thanks for reading and its great motivation for me especially in this world wide web where dreams are made but before anyone gets there, they are just a small fish in the ocean.

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  Pete B. said,

  Hi Jo, I’d be happy to. Can I contact you via flowing motion?

• Risks of Social Networking and Collaboration in Organisations | Synergise IT said,

  [...] networks can also be quite dysfunctional and counter-productive due to certain actors in the network or lack of social beliefs and norms within the environment where actors do not have a clear set of [...]

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  Redneck said,

  My brother is a smart ass i want to knock the living hell out of him he is 17 and i am 21 talk about no respect for elders

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  Andy said,

  Hi im 13 and have been friends with someone for about 6 years but in the past 2 years here at secandery school he has turned into such a smartass showing off everything he knows in different ways, thinking i dont know what he is doing. for example he asked me once if i wanted to play a game called would you rather for some reason then said if u were homeless with no money would you jump into a tank of alligators to get £10 at the bootom and i said i wouldent bother cuase they might bite me then he said that alligators dont eat humans then he said lets stop playing. i could easily tell that he only said all of that to showoff what he knew .could someone give me some advise for whenever he tells me something he knows, how to get him back.

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  Tammy said,

  Andy,

  Alligators do, have and will eat people… especially people who they feel threatened by… which I’m sure is anyone and everyone they see if they are being held prisoner in a tank! lol!

  You could’ve stood your ground with your friend and he would have come out looking like the idiot… But then, that would’ve made you no different than him… So I’m glad this didn’t come to your mind in that situation. You remained the “bigger person” by not coming back at him.

  What I think it boils down to is – he’s a bully. He, for whatever reason, feels the only way he can build himself up is to prove to himself somehow that he’s better than other people by highlighting their weaknesses. If something is said, and he believes it’s wrong or that he knows more, he’ll correct that person immediately, and often rudely so as to draw more attention to how much “smarter” he is. And he does this all without giving any thought or consideration to the possibility that he could be wrong as well.

  It’s really quite sad when someone has to resort to behaviors like this because it means they don’t feel good enough about themselves just the way they are, and therefor have to resort to living this way in an attempt to build themselves up.

  It never works however, because you can’t feel good about yourself when all you do is point out other people’s shortcomings. It usually leads to turning you into a bitter and lonely person because nobody feels comfortable getting close to someone who uses his knowledge of people to crush them and build himself up.

  I know this has been a long-standing friend of yours and you want to keep the friendship. I don’t blame you. Friends (especially the one’s we have some history with), are incredibly important. So if I were you, ask yourself if it’s worth putting yourself on the chopping block in front of him one more time… meaning, are you willing to extend to him your trust one more time in an effort to try and re-open your lines of communication and friendship again?

  If so, then confront him directly about it. Say something like, “When you cut me down about things it really bothers me… I thought we were friends?” Then this is were the risk is… he may come back at you with yet another stab. If he does, I would say he’s not going to change anytime soon, and your best bet would be to take that final blow from him as graciously as you can, express to him your gratitude for his past friendship but let him know you have to cut ties at that point so as to no longer allow him to be abusive toward you. It will be hard… but realize if he does stay in bully-mode, that the road he’s taking is not one you want to go down with him on. However, he may decide to actually hear what your saying and want to work on resolving the friendship. If this behavior just recently started and hasn’t been going on for a long while, there’s a chance he WILL hear you out and want to repair any damage he’s caused… but confronting him is a risk that could go either way. Knowing that there is a possibility he might strike at you and hurt you before trying to talk to him, will, at the very least prepare you to take the hit a little better than the times he has blind-sided you out of nowhere. So keep that in mind too when you are making your decision about whether or not to confront him. It’s a hard decision… feels like walking into a lions den… or should I say, “jumping into a tank full of alligators”? LOL… but valuable friendships are often times worth these kinds of risks in my opinion.

  Take heart Andy. I was bullied all through elementary school. One thing I noticed throughout middle school and on thru high-school is that the bullies ended up alone, often became drop-outs, or were constantly in trouble somehow… By the time I was in high school, everyone pretty much only pitied them. Very sad…

  I’m now into my 30′s and I promise you this… As people grow-up, they begin to see bully’s for what they really are – Individuals who for some reason, never found the ability to value themselves and are therefor desperate to find their own sense of importance in the world. They haven’t been able to realize their own value, so they aimlessly point out other’s short-comings in a vain attempt to make there perhaps “average” abilities in the same area seem somehow above-average. Problem is, it never works because other people’s short-comings have nothing at all to do with your strengths… So while they are spending all of their time looking for other people’s weakness, they spend no time looking for their own strengths, which is what they really need to spend their time looking for if they ever want to achieve the solid-sense of self worth they are so desperately looking for.

  Trust me Andy, you’re the bigger person by not resorting to the same behavior. Stay secure in your value, and you win… everytime. Good luck to you and I do hope you and your friend are able to remain good friends for many years to come!

  Sincerely,
  the red-headed shrimp, four-eyed, dork
  (and proud of it)

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