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Unfortunately, I cannot agree here more with you. I had also a "pleasure" working with such Rick. He was our team leader. At the beginning of our collaboration, things were looking quite ok. However, on the surface, he had serious problems with self-management, managing people and controlling. Later, he would preferably work alone in the office, strongly believing that he is surrounded by "idiots". Often he was not respecting others work, neither the requirements nor deadlines posed by higher management, as he "knew better". Without any doubts, he had a great knowledge, was a very skilled and intelligent guy, but, unfortunately, was becoming unbearable to work with. Putting such person in a management position was definitely a good idea, but, as far as I know, at that time he had the needed expertise to set up the crucial processes in the company. In the last months of our collaboration, majority of the projects he was leading were failing - he was not managing with the deadlines neither wanted to delegate tasks. That time, he would also arrive to the office on monday and would leave home on friday evening or saturday, having just a quick chat with his family in the evening. Without proper sleep, always tired and with huge amounts of stress, he was getting into the loop. He always just needed this extra few hours, almost being there. As a small team, we were strongly pushing him to take holidays, to grab some rest. We were also pushing for us taking more responsibility in the projects - we had quite having quite some personal discussions, but without any success (in the end, we are all just humans and even when you're being managed by a "bad" guy, when you see him completely burning out and losing mind, at least you try your best just to help; knowing that there's his wife with two little daughters waiting for the dad coming from work doesn't make this situation easier). In the end, he just "left" the company (not to face being fired) to a new one, leaving so too our team (we were just re-assigned to other teams) and to build a new one in a new place. Our Rick since the beginning had mental issues, which most of colleagues were not aware. At first sight, he was a very intelligent, charismatic and nice guy. However, the ones who had more contact or worked with him could agree that he exhibited behaviours as in typical Asperger syndrome, behaving also quite often schizophrenic. It's a pity that topic of mental health is quite often neglected, as a proper therapy and an early diagnosis, I guess, could help here, him, his family and his future. |