"My highest performer is the most toxic"

How we dealt with it

In October last year an accountancy company reached out to me - their growth had been lagging, and after experimenting with marketing, sales and recruitment changes - they couldn’t figure out why.

When they reached out, their ultimate goal was to increase revenue.

They’d heard about the high return on investment with leadership training, so took a risk and brought me in to work with the team to figure out why their growth was so stunted.

I got curious, asking the team:

• What is one thing you love about the culture?

• If you could change one thing about the management of this company, what would it be?

• What is something you wish you could change about the culture?

The outcome was so, so interesting…

Regarding culture, they felt as though there was toxicity coming from one member of the team.

Regarding management, it was “I wish they’d deal with this one person”.

It turned out, there was one member of the team who was gossiping, causing high stress and anxiety and making the team generally feel belittled.

But they didn’t ‘dare’ report this person, they didn’t feel they had a leg to stand on because…

They were the highest performer.

They were the person that clients enjoyed working with.

They were bringing in the most sales revenue (The exact thing I’d been brought in to improve).

So we had a problem. The most toxic person in the team was also the highest performer. 

But whilst this 1 person was achieving 100%… His impact on culture meant the other 15 people were only performing at 40%.

So here’s what we did about it….

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