What to Do With High Maintenance Personnel

"Should be eliminated" sounds  starker than what I remember - I think it was that "rock-star" employees (high ability but troublesome behaviour) should legitimately be tackled over their destructive behaviour, without the manager running scared of offending them because of their high technical ability.

Seems consistent enough to me - its about assessing the value of their awesome specialist contribution, and then subtracting a factor for the effects of them being a jerk. Maybe the rock-star behaviour (tantrums, sulks, unreasonable demands, unpunctuality whatever...) is too high a price to pay for the rock-star performance. Or maybe not. If you're the manager, you have to decide. You might be better off with the second- third- or umpteenth best performer in this area if they compensate by being a decent human being.

If you decide that your rock stars need to shape up then of course you need to give them a chance to improve - go through the proper feedback and coaching process before even thinking about "elimination".

My experience is that high maintenance people are the one's different from yourself, they will automatically feel like a pain in some situations, but be more then worth it in other.

I have a team of 6 directs which is 2 high S and 2 high C, 1 D and 1 I. The opposites are often looking at their opposites as somewhat high maintenance, this is not something that should be eliminated, but rather develop your people to  be able to work with each other more in a more effective manner. 

People not performing is a different cattle of fish and what you describe as high maintenance person CAN be in that category, but key focus is on ensuring you do what you do for the right reasons and not because someone is different from you.

Kind Regards
Mads Sorensen
Disc 4536