Everybody notices the exception
Leaders sometimes imagine these arrangements are invisible. They aren't. Everybody notices. Your team does not spend all day studying the values written on the wall. They study what leaders actually tolerate. One person ignores a process. Nothing happens. They behave badly towards colleagues.
Nothing happens. They refuse to do something everybody else is required to do. Still nothing. Eventually the message becomes very clear: If you're valuable enough, different rules apply. That is a cultural statement whether you intended to make it or not.
The tail starts wagging the dog
I sometimes describe this as the tail wagging the dog. Instead of the person fitting into the organisation, the organisation starts bending itself around the person. Meetings are arranged around them. Processes are changed because they refuse to use them.
Managers avoid challenging them because they know it will be unpleasant. Other employees are told: "That's just what they're like." The business becomes frightened of upsetting them. At that point, who is actually in charge? The organisation? Or the employee?
A strong performer should be valuable to the business. They should not become more powerful than the business.
Great results do not buy an exemption from standards
This is where leaders sometimes become confused. They think: "Yes, but look at the revenue they bring in." Fine. Include that in your assessment. Commercial contribution matters. But don't stop the calculation there. Ask: What does this person's behaviour cost everybody else?
How much management time do they consume? How many people have they upset? How much work gets rearranged around them? How many good employees have had to pick up the pieces? What standards have been weakened because nobody wanted the confrontation?
What behaviour has now become harder to challenge in everybody else? The real performance calculation may be much wider than the individual's sales figure.
Performance is not just the number
This is why I am cautious about defining a high performer only by output. Imagine two managers. Manager A hits the target. But their team is exhausted. People leave. Standards are inconsistent. Nobody develops. Problems constantly escalate.
The manager ignores agreed processes and creates chaos for other departments. Manager B also hits the target. But builds capable people. Follows through. Works constructively across the organisation. Improves systems. Develops successors. Which is the stronger performer?
A number may be part of the answer. It is rarely the whole answer. What does success actually look like in the role? This is why defining What Success Looks Like matters. If you only tell somebody: "Your target is $2 million." and they deliver $2.2 million, they can reasonably claim success. But perhaps the job also requires them to:
develop their people; work constructively with colleagues; follow agreed systems; protect margin; manage customers appropriately; build capability beneath them; behave consistently with leadership standards. Those things need to be visible too.
Otherwise you risk rewarding one dimension of performance while quietly absorbing the cost of everything else.
Culture is built by what you reward and tolerate
Culture does not live primarily in the values statement. It lives in ordinary leadership decisions. Who gets promoted? Who gets praised? Who gets challenged? Who gets exceptions? What happens when a high performer behaves badly?
What happens when a quieter, reliable person consistently does the right thing? People are watching those decisions. That is how they learn: what really matters around here. And tolerance is one of the strongest cultural messages a leader sends.
If you repeatedly tolerate behaviour that contradicts the standard you claim to value, the behaviour becomes the real standard.
Protect your good people
There is another part of this problem that leaders sometimes overlook. Who pays the price when poor behaviour is tolerated? Often your best people. The reliable ones. The people who turn up. The people who do what they said they would do. The people who help the team.
The GAF'ers — the people who genuinely give a fuck. When somebody else gets away with poor behaviour, who picks up the slack? Usually them. They cover. They compensate. They work around the difficult person. They try to keep everything moving. And eventually they begin asking:
"Why do I bother?" That is a dangerous question. Because one day they may decide not to bother. They may simply leave and become a star performer somewhere else. So managing a difficult high performer is not only about that individual. It is also about protecting everybody else.
Don't punish the people who behave well
Think about the message you send if one person is excused from a standard because they produce strong numbers. The conscientious employee may think: "Why am I following this process?" The collaborative manager may think: "Why am I spending time developing my team?"
The reliable person may think: "Why do I bother meeting the deadline?" The organisation starts teaching people that doing the right thing is optional if you become commercially useful enough. That is not a good incentive system.
Don't make the conversation about personality
When you finally address the issue, avoid: "You're difficult." Or: "People don't like you." Those are broad judgements. Be specific. What happened? What behaviour is the problem? What was expected instead? What impact did it have? What has been discussed previously?
What evidence exists? For example: "The agreed process requires X. On these three occasions you did Y instead." Or: "We have now had these four examples of team members being spoken to in this way." Or:
"You were asked to involve your manager before making this decision. That did not happen." Now you have something manageable.
Be equally clear about what is good
This is important. Do not turn the person into a villain. If they are commercially strong, acknowledge it. If customers value them, say so. If they possess deep knowledge, recognise it. The conversation might be:
"Your commercial contribution is extremely valuable. This is not a conversation about pretending otherwise. But success in this role includes how those results are achieved, and this part is not meeting the standard we require." Both things can be true.
They can be excellent at one part of the job and unacceptable in another. Good management can hold both truths at the same time.
Don't let fear of losing them prevent you from managing them
This is often the real issue. The leader is frightened. What if they resign? What if they take customers? What if revenue falls? What if nobody else knows the work? Those may be legitimate risks. But notice what that tells you.
If one employee has become so indispensable that you feel unable to manage their behaviour, you have created organisational dependency. That itself needs fixing. Perhaps knowledge needs sharing. Relationships need broadening. Other people need developing. Processes need documenting.
Succession needs strengthening. The answer cannot be: "They are too important to manage." That is how the tail keeps wagging the dog.
Reduce the dependency while you address the behaviour
You do not have to be reckless. If the person genuinely holds critical knowledge or customer relationships, manage the business risk intelligently. At the same time as addressing behaviour:
document important knowledge; cross-train others; broaden customer relationships; build succession; clarify processes; strengthen the layer beneath them. The objective is not to engineer their departure.
It is to make sure the business is never frightened of applying reasonable standards because one individual has become indispensable.
Don't create a special unofficial rulebook
If a rule genuinely does not make sense for this person's role, perhaps it needs changing. Fine. Change it deliberately. But that is different from everybody knowing: "The normal rule is X, except for Chris because nobody wants to deal with Chris." That destroys leadership credibility.
Either the standard matters or it doesn't. If legitimate role differences require different arrangements, document those differences. Do not let avoidance masquerade as flexibility.
Give them the opportunity to respond
Strong performers are not necessarily aware of the impact they are having. Sometimes businesses have tolerated behaviour for years. Then a new leader arrives and suddenly challenges it. The employee may genuinely think: "Nobody has ever told me this was a problem." And perhaps nobody has.
So have the conversation properly. What have you observed? What is the impact? What needs to change? Then listen. What do they think? What are they seeing differently? Is there context you have missed? Give them a genuine opportunity to respond. Clarity first. Then accountability.
Agree what success looks like from here
Do not finish with: "Just try to be a bit more of a team player." What does that mean? Be specific. Perhaps success means:
following the agreed process; attending the leadership meeting prepared; treating colleagues respectfully; working through their manager rather than around them; sharing key knowledge; developing another team member; meeting commercial targets without damaging agreed margins; following through on commitments.
Then ask: What are you going to do differently? By when? How will we know? When will we review progress? Now it is manageable.
Follow up
The first conversation is not the management system. What happens afterwards is. If behaviour improves, recognise it. If the person makes a genuine effort, notice it. If they struggle, coach them. But if nothing changes, do not endlessly repeat the same conversation.
At some point, the organisation has to demonstrate that its standards mean something. Otherwise every conversation before that was just noise.
Don't become so understanding that nothing matters
Managers should be curious. There may be legitimate explanations. The person may need support. There may be an unclear expectation. There may be a system problem. Fine. Investigate. But curiosity cannot become endless tolerance. If the standard is reasonable... the expectation is clear...
the person has the capability... the support has been provided... and the behaviour continues... then you have learned something important. Leadership requires acting on that information.
Consider the total contribution
When deciding how valuable somebody really is, broaden the assessment. Ask: What results do they produce? And: What capability do they build? What effect do they have on colleagues? Do they strengthen or weaken standards? Do they make the business more resilient or more dependent?
Do they share knowledge or hoard it? Do they make their manager stronger or continually undermine them? What does everybody else learn from watching how we manage this person? That is a much more useful picture of performance.
The decision may still be difficult
Sometimes the person responds brilliantly. They had never understood the impact. The expectations become clear. Their behaviour changes. Fantastic. Sometimes they improve partly. Sometimes they refuse.
Sometimes leadership eventually has to decide whether the commercial contribution is worth the wider organisational cost. That decision can be genuinely difficult. But avoiding it is also a decision. It means you are choosing the existing behaviour and all the consequences that come with it.
Ask the uncomfortable question
If you have somebody in your business who delivers strong individual results but repeatedly creates problems around them, ask: Yes, they're producing results — but what is it costing everybody else? Then ask: What am I teaching the rest of the business by tolerating it?
Because culture isn't built by the words on your website. It is built by: the behaviour you reward; and the behaviour you're prepared to tolerate.
And if being commercially valuable earns somebody exemption from standards, everybody will eventually understand the real value system of the organisation.
