Almost every manager I coach has one. They don't lead with it. We'll be twenty minutes into a session about strategy or a reorg, and then it comes out, usually with a sigh: "And then there's this one person on my team…"

You know the one. Every molehill is a mountain. Every setback is a betrayal. Meetings get hijacked, the mood of the whole team seems to hang on their morning, and you've started quietly arranging your week around their reactions. You're not imagining it, and you're not a bad manager for finding it exhausting.

So let me walk you through what I actually do with managers when this lands on the table. Not theory. The moves.

First, we drop the label

I get why you call them a drama queen. It's shorthand, and it's a relief to finally name it. But here's the problem with the label: it tells you the person is the problem, and that there's nothing to be done except wait for them to leave or change. Both of those put you in the passenger seat.

So the first thing I do is take the word away from you. We stop talking about who they are and start talking about what they do — the specific, repeatable behaviour. "Turns a scheduling change into a personal grievance in the team channel." "Comes to me with problems, never options." "Goes quiet and wounded when given feedback, so people stop giving it." That's not a personality. That's a pattern. And patterns you can work with.

The question I ask before anything else

"What are they getting out of it?"

Managers usually pause here, because it feels unkind. It isn't. Nobody keeps running a pattern that costs them everything and pays them nothing. The drama is doing a job. Usually it's one of three: it gets them attention they don't know how to ask for straight, it gets them off the hook for something, or it gets them a feeling of significance — being the person the room revolves around.

Once you can see the payoff, you can see your part. Because here's the uncomfortable bit: the payoff is usually you. Your attention, your reassurance, your habit of smoothing it over so the meeting can move on. You're not causing the drama. But you may well be funding it.

You are not their therapist, and you're not going to personality-transplant a grown adult. What you can do — starting this week — is change what the behaviour earns. Here's how I break it down.

Tell the difference between drama and distress

This matters, so don't skip it. Sometimes what looks like "drama" is a person who is genuinely struggling — overloaded, going through something at home, burning out. The behaviour can look identical from the outside. The tell is what happens when you offer real, practical help: someone in genuine distress takes it and uses it; someone running a pattern tends to bat it away, because being helped would end the story.

If it's distress, you're in a completely different conversation — a human one, maybe with HR or occupational health alongside you. Don't playbook a person who's actually drowning. When I coach managers, we always check this first, before anything else.

Protect the team without becoming part of the problem

The rest of your people are watching how you handle this, and they're tired too. You protect them in two ways. First, you don't join the gossip — the moment you're rolling your eyes about someone with their colleagues, you've started your own little drama triangle. Second, you make it safe and normal for everyone to raise things the straight way, so the dramatic route isn't the only one that gets a response. When calm, direct communication reliably gets heard, theatrics lose their edge.

When it doesn't shift

Sometimes you do all of this — consistently, for a couple of months — and nothing moves. That happens. At that point it stops being a coaching conversation and becomes a performance one. You name the gap plainly, you put it in the expectations you'd hold anyone to, and you follow through. "Being difficult to work with" is a legitimate performance issue when it's affecting the team, and you're allowed to treat it as one. Kindly, clearly, and without apology.

The shift I want you to make

Stop waiting for this person to become someone else. That's the trap, and it keeps you stuck and resentful. Your power was never in changing them. It's in changing what happens next — what you reward, what you redirect, what you hold the line on. Do that with a steady hand and one of two things happens: the pattern fades because it stops paying, or the person self-selects out. Both are fine outcomes. Both are you leading.