Personal experience has shown that it is very difficult working with controversial people. Simple issues to be solved can be dragged for hours without making any headway. As such, how best can one manage such people and still be in good relationship with them.
Autocratic Leadership Style will be appropriate to manage people who are controversial.
Try meritocracy and holocracy. Autocracy, I think, would be difficult to implement in your case, everyone would have their own oppinion on every matter. It would be thus difficult to consolidate authority, influence and power in hands of a single person.
We shall always have individual(s) with different kind of behavioral traits. There may be some genuine reason why an individual behaves negatively. Empathy and Leadership style such as Situational Leadership, help to adapt to individual personalities and task(s) in hand. Idea is to align style based on individual or group's ability and willingness to do a task(s).
You may find combination of one or many techniques from below useful to manage such situations effectively:
- Listening, Empathy, Assertive skills
- Performance Management:
-- Set SMART, Output-based goals. Performance assessment based on technical as well as behavioral skills such as ownership, commitment to deliver, pro-activeness, integrity, dependability, team work, entrepreneurship, creativity, etc.
-- Align individual goals with the division and organization
-- Provide formal feedback. Regular "formal" feedback, agreement on feedback is a KEY.
-- Create Individual development plan - could be for technical and/or behavioral, soft-skills improvement areas
- Rewards and Recognitions
- Matching individuals skills with Job content. May be an individual is more suitable for some other type of job.
- Managed attrition - Each one of us has to create value, equal or better, for our Cost to the Company (CTC). Managed attrition may be required, if (even after giving several opportunities to improve) an individual's outcome and values are not aligned with the organization goals.
- Leadership style aligning with organizational culture
- Following Lean management practices such as Daily stand-up meetings (10 to 15 minutes duration team meeting) to track progress towards goal(s), identify and fix show-stoppers, check morale of team, etc.
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