How to Deal with Toxic High Performers
Welcome to the #culturedrop. Every Tuesday, Galen Emanuele emails tools to advance leadership skills, team culture, and personal growth. No spam, just great content. Sign up now to get it in your inbox.
Addressing a dynamic that exists in companies and teams that I think a lot of organizations and leaders don't necessarily know how to deal with: toxic high-performers.
I am zero percent sorry to say this:
Get rid of toxic, high performing employees.
Let’s say you have an employee who’s a top performer — maybe they’re a very profitable sales rep or a leader who just gets shit done — but they leave a trail of bodies in their wake by being hard to work with; they’re chaotic, they don’t take feedback, are poor communicators, stir up drama, or play by their own rules and do not take accountability for their negative behavior or impact on others, etc.
You know who they are. Get those people off your f*cking boat. They. Are. Not. Worth. It.
More trouble than they’re worth.
Those people are not worth the damage they do to your organization; they are cancer to company and team culture.
“The cost of keeping toxic people is the morale and performance of your other employees.”
When you have employees like that, the other employees around them, or that they’re leading, suffer. The cost of keeping toxic people is the morale and performance of your other employees.
When you keep bad apples on your team, the impact on your other people will be that they either don’t want to come to work, they spent time stressing out or talking to friends and family about how bad it is at work, and ultimately often end up looking around and quitting their jobs because they don’t want to deal with this toxic person.
Zero regrets.
I'm going to share with you a list of how many organizations have ever regretted having that person leave or finally firing them after putting up with their behavior for way too long: None.
No company ever regrets having that person gone after the fact. The reaction is always that every other employee will give a great sigh of relief and suddenly enjoy their job and coming to work a whole lot more. They will also often spread their arms towards leadership with an exasperated look on their faces of “OMG, what took you so long to do that?”
People that help create a great positive culture are key to retaining talent.
“You’re losing your great and best employees by keeping people who are toxic.”
Yes, toxic high performers can provide a lot of value or profit to the company, but you're losing your great and your best employees by keeping people who are toxic. That also has a huge impact on your company’s bottom line.
A whole lot of people quit their jobs because of a leader or a coworker that they cannot stand working with. This is huge, especially in the war for talent that most organizations are struggling through.
Get toxic, high performers gone and out of your organization. You are paying them a salary to ruin your company.
I said what I said, and I ain’t sorry about it.
Want more?
This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
MORE
