There it is. The classic “high performer” who somehow manages to hit every number except the one labeled “basic human decency.”
If you’ve ever run a Hogan Assessments on this person, you know exactly what’s coming. Bright and Dark side lights up like a Christmas tree: Ambition, and maybe a splash of healthy amount of Mischievous for flavor. And then, like clockwork the overused strengths stroll in uninvited. Excitable, Skeptical, maybe a little Colorful doing stand-up in meetings no one asked for.
Suddenly your “top talent” looks less like a star and more like a live case study in how to quietly burn down a culture.
Robert Hogan tried to warn us. Performance isn’t just about capability; it’s about reputation. And reputation, inconveniently, is decided by everyone else in the room who has to deal with you.
Anne Chow’s point lands hard: if someone is crushing targets but crushing people in the process, they’re not high-performing. They’re just expensive and contagious.
Leaders love to play the “but they deliver results” card like it’s a get-out-of-values-free coupon. It’s not. It’s actually a signal flare to the rest of the team that your stated values are more of a decorative suggestion than an operating system.
And here’s the part that always gets glossed over: most of these individuals have never actually been told. Not clearly, not directly. They’ve been managed around, whispered about, or “handled.” Then we act surprised when nothing changes.
The uncomfortable truth is that leadership shows up in what you tolerate. If you keep the destructive high performer, you’re not making a pragmatic tradeoff, you’re actively defining your culture.
And yes, when you finally move on from that person, something almost magical happens. The team exhales. Collaboration improves overnight. The people you actually want to keep start acting like it’s safe to care again.
Funny how that works.
So if you’re sitting there rationalizing why your resident tornado is “worth it,” it might be time for a quick Hogan-style reflection: Are they high-performing, or are they just high-impact in all the wrong ways?
Because one builds your organization. The other just gives you better stories for posts like this. ;)
#leadership #highpotential