3 Ways To Manage Entitled Employees

What happens when your top salesperson is also your number one problem? Here’s how to deal
with those with a sense of entitlement

Depending on your work history, you may have worked alongside an entitled employee. These
colleagues can exhibit selfish behavior when they believe they’ve been treated unfairly.

While most of us would prefer to steer clear of these individuals, Emily Zitek, assistant professor of
organizational behavior at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, actively
seeks them out.

People who are entitled feel they’re more deserving than others, Zitek says. “[The behavior]
manifests as complaining a lot, requesting a bigger raise or more resources than others without
additional effort, blaming external factors, and thinking others treat them poorly,” she explains.

Fast Company spoke with Zitek to learn how companies can better manage entitled employees.

Most consequences of entitlement are negative for both the manager, as well as the entitled
employee himself, Zitek notes. For example, the manager has to supervise a difficult person while
trying to minimize conflict with other employees who are stressed out by that person’s behavior.
Meanwhile, the entitled person experiences negative feelings associated with believing he’s being
treated unfairly. However, Zitek and Lynne Vincent, a research scholar at Vanderbilt University’s
Owen Graduate School of Management, recently published a study finding a surprising benefit to
entitlement: creativity. The study, appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, suggests encouraging feelings of entitlement can lead to creativity.

While this silver lining approach doesn’t diminish the difficulty of working with a difficult employee,
it does offer some insight into harnessing that energy and redirecting it into productive behavior.
Here are Zitek’s three tips for dealing with an entitled employee:

1. REIN IN THE ENTITLED BEHAVIOR

One way to reduce entitlement is to make the entitled person feel similarly situated to the other
employees. Research shows making entitled people feel equal can make them feel less entitled,
because feeling different from–or better–than others is a key component to entitlement, Zitek says.

2. ASSIGN TASKS THAT HIGHLIGHT THEIR STRENGTHS

Another option is to assign roles or tasks to entitled employees that play to their strengths. Entitled
people are ideally suited for brainstorming tasks, such as coming up with a new product idea or
marketing plan, because they think differently and creatively, usually aren’t afraid to suggest ideas
that are outside the norm, and want to be seen as different from their peers, Zitek notes.
They also may be good at negotiation because they’d have the opportunity to make demands and
show how they’re different from other employees, she says.

3. TREAT EMPLOYEES THE SAME

Have entitled employees? Turns out, it may be your fault. Zitek is working on another study about
which management practices lead to entitlement. Some potential indicators of problems are
managers who are too lenient, and making exceptions for one employee versus having consistent
rules for everyone.

Entitlement Might Make You More Creative (But You Probably

Knew That Already)
According to a new study, the more entitled people feel, “the more willing and able they will be to
generate creative solutions.”

A strong sense of entitlement doesn’t come with many redeeming qualities. Entitled people are
bratty and hostile and selfish, and they’re unapologetic about being bratty and hostile and selfish
because they think they have the right. Workplace entitlement is especially problematic (if
overblown among Millennials): it causes conflict with colleagues, requires special treatment by
managers, and can potentially lead to unethical behavior. There’s little incentive to frame the quality
in a generous way, either, since the last thing entitled types need is encouragement. That said, a pair
of management scholars believe they’ve found an unexpectedly positive consequence of
entitlement. In a new paper in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Emily Zitek of Cornell
University and Lynne Vincent of Vanderbilt University report that a temporary feeling of entitlement
seems to lift a person’s creative powers. The offensive air of superiority that entitled people possess
might increase a drive for uniqueness that, properly harnessed and directed, results in heightened
originality.

“When people feel more entitled, they will think and act differently than others,” write Zitek and
Vincent, “and the more they do so, the more willing and able they will be to generate creative
solutions.”

Zitek and Vincent reached their conclusion through a series of studies designed to see how test
participants would perform on creative tasks after being put in an entitled frame of mind. In one
experiment, participants who spent five minutes writing why they deserve more in life than others
outperformed a control group on a common creative task that involves coming up with novel uses
for a paperclip. They also drew pictures of aliens that were judged to be more creative.
In a second experiment, test participants were given another common creativity measure known as
the remote associates test. The RAT shows people three words (such as “falling,” “actor,” and
“dust”) and asks them to come up with a fourth related word (in this case, “star”). Once again,
participants made to feel entitled did better than their counterparts, answering more of the RAT
problems correctly on average. A third study using slightly different methods found more of the
same results. This time, rather than writing an essay about superiority, test participants unscrambled
sentences that either had entitled messages (“You deserve a great vacation”) or a neutral one (“She
wore the gloves for the whole day”). Despite the subtle and indirect approach, participants in the
entitled group still performed better on RAT problems, and also generated more novel potential
uses for vacant retail space.

The sum of the evidence convinced Zitek and Vincent that entitlement itself–and not some other
factor–was the source of this creative spark. Using standard emotional questionnaires they ruled out
the possibility that either power or positive affect were responsible for the originality gap; on these
measures, all test participants scored the same. Instead, the researchers traced creativity among
entitled participants to a “need for uniqueness” inherent in the mindset.

“Taken together, our results suggest that people who feel more entitled value being different from
others, and the greater their need for uniqueness, the more they break convention, think
divergently, and give creative responses,” they conclude.

Just as every entitled person deserves to be cut down to size, some limitations of the research must
be mentioned. For starters, some of the creativity tasks used in the study–namely, the paperclip
task–have trouble distinguishing between someone who’s truly being creative and someone who’s
merely being different. Fashioning a paperclip into an emergency keychain is MacGyver-caliber
clever; using one for an emergency earring is a tetanus shot. A far bigger problem with the results,
one acknowledged by the researchers, is that the entitlement mentality produced in test
participants was a temporary one. In other words, they tested entitlement as a fleeting state of mind
as opposed to an entrenched personality trait. Indeed, Zitek and Vincent found no relationship
between trait entitlement (as identified by a standard psychological measure) and creativity in
another experiment. The researchers suspect that while a burst of entitlement might yield a burst of
creativity, a lifetime of it might drain a person’s motivation; after all, if you deem success your birth
rite, working for it seems besides the point.

Still, the potential creative benefit of temporary entitlement alone is intriguing enough to explore
further. It might help explain, at least from an evolutionary perspective, why such an ostensibly
negative trait has endured through the ages. It raises the prospect of other potential positives
embedded in entitled minds: an inflated sense of worth might help people during public speaking or
idea pitching, for instance; a superior outlook might encourage whistle-blowing. It could even
prompt some teachers or managers, rather counter-intuitively, to elevate feelings of entitlement
before certain situations requiring unconventional thinking.

Then again, best not to get too bullish about the upsides of entitlement. The entitled can do plenty
of that for themselves.

How To Fake Humility (And Why You Sometimes Should)

Psychologists have found that even the most effective leaders benefit from being self-deprecating.

We’re generally quick to celebrate arrogant, egotistical people, especially when they’re clearly
talented (Kanye, anyone?). But what if–like most people–you’re not extraordinarily capable? The
answer is simple: You’re better off being humble.

Or at least seeming humble to others. Psychological studies have found that when people appear to
be less competent than they believe–when their self-image is more positive than others’ views of
them–they’re likely to be less popular and successful. In other words, confidence and assertiveness
are adaptive only when they’re proportionately backed up by competence. Thus we are better off
seeming more competent than confident, even if that might mean faking humility.”

THE CULTURAL ELEMENT

Most people aren’t naturally humble. That’s true despite certain cultures valuing outward shows of
humility more than others.

According to Gaijin Pot, a website that helps people around the world find study, jobs, and travel
opportunities in Japan, “my stupid son” and “my foolish wife” were common expressions used by
Japanese men to refer to their families until quite recently. “It is said not only because is it frowned
upon to say nice things about your family, but it is actually better to sound like you are putting them
down,” the site’s blog informs Western readers. And as the British social anthropologist quips in her
2004 book, Watching the English, the typical Brit would only report being “quite good” at a sport
only if they’re the world champion in it.

While every culture has its own norms for encouraging modest self-presentation, most people (and
societies) favor humility when interacting with friends and family, yet permit a measure of
braggadocio when dealing with strangers. Either way, it’s likely there will be certain occasions where
you’ll need to deliberately come across as more humble than you actually feel. Here’s how to do it
convincingly.

TALK LESS ABOUT YOURSELF

Research shows that there’s a positive correlation between how frequently people use self-
referential pronouns–words like “I,” “me,” or “mine”–and their likelihood of narcissism, a trait
describing self-centered, egotistical, and entitled behavioral tendencies. And while we all talk about
ourselves without even noticing it, those who come across as more humble spend less time focusing
on themselves while speaking with others. So if you consciously tamp down how often you refer to
yourself, you’re likely to appear more modest.

DON’T TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY

If you do have to talk about yourself, do it light-heartedly. Although humor is somewhat culture-
specific, the ability to laugh at ourselves is pretty much universally advantageous. If you can be a
little self-deprecating, you’re likely not just to seem modest but also witty, moral, and smart. Even
leaders have been found to be more effective when they use a dose of self-effacing humor.

COMPARE YOURSELF TO MORE (NOT LESS) CAPABLE PEOPLE

A simple way to aim high while remaining humble is to put your performance into context with
those who are more capable and talented. You’ll still benefit from putting yourself in their
theoretical company, but you won’t seem obnoxious in the process. By the same token, if you draw
comparisons between yourself and those who are generally seen as low performers, you may
artificially inflate your ego while seeming arrogant and tone-deaf to others.

RESORT TO (GENTLE) FLATTERY

No matter how smart we are, most of us are highly susceptible to flattery, even when it’s blatantly
false. In fact, even computers are deemed more likable when they suck up to us. Stroke other
people’s egos and they will see you as both more genuine and more humble. And the good news is
that this is probably the easiest rule to implement. As the hedonistic villain Svidrigailov in
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment puts it, “nothing in this world is harder than speaking the
truth, nothing easier than flattery”–uncomfortable coming from him, but not too far off the mark.

If feigning humility feels dishonest or manipulative, think of it this way: You’re simply toning down
what you believe to be your praiseworthy accomplishments to give other people a chance to see
them as clearly as you do. After all, just consider the alternative; people who spend most of their
time talking about themselves, being “brutally honest” and critical of others, and taking themselves
way too seriously often end up worse off. Rest assure that despite appearing genuine, people who
operate this way are likely to be unpopular (this is true even on social media, by the way).

So just as there are times when you’ll want to fake confidence when you’re feeling unsure of
yourself, remember there are other times when you need to do the reverse. A little modesty goes a
long way, no matter how self-assured–or even arrogant–you may actually feel.

How To Discreetly Look For A New Job While You’re At Work

You can’t always do your job search after-hours. Here’s how to be inconspicuous when you have to
do it at work.

If you clicked on this article, there’s a high probability that you’re considering finding a new job.
Maybe you’re actively applying. Maybe you’re just “keeping an eye open” (or you know, just
“sneaking a peek” at those LinkedIn job alerts). Regardless of where you stand, though, you know
the one cardinal rule: Do not, on any account, job search at work.

Seems obvious, right? You’re being paid by your current employer, and so you should use your work
hours to do your job. Even if you’re unhappy. You’re ethically and contractually obligated to do the
work they’re paying you for . . . right?

Well, here’s the “unpopular opinion” part. Following that rule–the one that we all know by heart
because it’s just so obvious–is actually impossible. We’re about to argue that you can’t not job
search at work. And–dare we say this– that’s okay.

Related: Former Recruiters Reveal The Industry’s Dark Secrets That Could Cost You Job Offers

ON WHY MOST OF US DO IT

Simple facts first. You spend at least 40 hours a week at work, probably more. And you’re not alone.
As a society, we’re at work longer than ever. And that’s problem No. 1.

It’s one of the biggest catch-22s of the working world. Everyone has standard work days (more or
less), meaning your next potential employer does, too. They’re busy, they’re distracted, and they get
to you, the applicant, when they get to you. They go through resumes when they get in on Mondays,
respond to questions about timing between afternoon meetings, send requests for a link to your
portfolio or references on a 2 p.m. whim. That means all those emails and calls hit you when you’re
supposed to be focusing on something else, namely your current job. So you’re faced with a
decision: Do you respond immediately to make sure you don’t miss the opportunity, or do you do
the “right” thing and wait until after hours?

Back in 2011, a Monster survey found that one-quarter of people are spending over three hours per
week searching for a job at work. Presumably that number’s only climbed higher over the last six
years. Our access to smartphones means the risk of companies tracking what we do online is much
lower. And that means that we’re even less concerned about getting caught.

Actually, a 2015 Pew Research Study found that 28% of U.S. job seekers (and a whopping 53% of 18-
to 29-year-olds) use smartphones during their job search. The study also found that 43% of people
ages 18-29 and 36% of people ages 30-49 now use social media to look for work as well. Given that
checking texts or tweeting personal updates from the office is rampant these days, it’s easy to see
why more and more of us are actively looking for jobs at the office.

Related: Five Things To Do When You’ve Exhausted All The Job Boards

ON WHY IT CAN’T BE HELPED

But just for the sake of argument, let’s say you don’t. You define clear boundaries. You keep your
worlds separate. You’re ethically sound with a glorious amount of willpower–the kind that helps you
just say no to checking your personal email at work, even when you’re waiting to hear back about
your dream job. Major props. But . . . what happens when you get home to an email asking you to
interview next Tuesday at 11 a.m.?

In this scenario, all of us feel awkward. How do you ask for time off when you’re using it to
potentially leave your company behind? For some of us, there are personal days that we can take,
no questions asked—although I’ve yet to encounter that. For the rest of us, our companies just don’t
really operate that way.

Most of us, when faced with this dilemma, do some variation of a theme: We lie. We tell our bosses
that we have a doctor’s appointment, or we call out sick. And in each of these cases–personal day,
sick day, vacation day–we’re using paid time off to talk to another company. We’re missing
important work hours simply because that’s how job searches work. It’s a sticky situation, one that
inevitably feels a bit like betrayal. But when was the last time someone offered you an after-hours
interview? What choice do you have, really?
Related: How To Tidy Up Your Digital Footprint Before Your First Job Search

Let’s let go of illusions. Even beyond interviewing, we’ve all used work hours to search for a job.
Some of us go full-on, scrolling through job boards when no one else is around, and some of us will
try our best to just . . . not. But if a recruiter asks you to take a 15-minute pre-screen call without
much notice? Chances are you step out into the hall.

Some might argue such moments don’t count as “job searching at work.” You’re entitled to breaks,
and if you want to use one to talk to a recruiter, it’s your time, not your company’s. But even if
you’re using personal days or lunch hours to work on job searching, every time you step away to
focus on finding a new job, you’re taking your concentration off what you’re being paid to do. And
every time you step back, you spend more time reconnecting to the tasks at hand.

Until the interviewing process changes (and it won’t), you will job search while at work. The system
is stacked against you–from when hiring managers schedule meetings, to the extra hours you have
to log to updating your portfolio and resume, thus resulting in creative burnout come Monday.
Adding the burden of job searching to an already packed schedule means that you won’t be able to
give 100% of yourself to your current work. It’s okay. Repeat this to yourself if it helps: I am in a
transition period, and some things will slip through the cracks.

It doesn’t make you a bad person. It means that you’re prioritizing your own career and growth and
putting yourself first. You’ll have to accept that you’re cheating a little. But it’s only temporary,
right?

ON JOB SEARCHING AT WORK THE HARD WAY

You can’t avoid the overlap, but the trick is doing it in a way that will least offend anybody. Here are
some rules you should follow. They’re a little less black and white.

Just Don’t:

Use your company email address, phone, or computer for job searching. Honestly, this is less out of
respect for your company (although that too) than it is for preserving your position while you still
need it. Because yes, in some cases, you can get fired for looking for another job.
Over-explain when you ask for time off for an interview. The more fake details about your illness you
give, the more likely they’ll suspect you.

If you’re updating your LinkedIn, be careful about alerts. It’s pretty obvious that you’re job hunting if
your coworkers or, worse, your boss, gets hit with a bunch of LinkedIn update emails when they
walk into the office.

Share with your coworkers that you’re hunting. At least not yet. There may be a time and a place
when you need to use a trusted coworker for a reference, but keep in mind, you’re then asking them
to take time away from their work to go to bat for you. It’s a big ask, and one that you’ll need to plan
carefully.

Slack off. Look, we know it’s tempting, and that some of it can’t be avoided. We also spent this
whole article telling you to cut yourself a break. But (because always) you don’t need to scroll job
boards during normal work hours. You really don’t. Save the cheating on work behavior for the times
it really matters, like when you need to leave early for an interview. After all, you might need those
references next time you find yourself hunting.