Are Toxic Employees Really Toxic? A Counter-Argument

In a recent HBR article by Dylan Minor entitled “It’s Better to Avoid a Toxic Employee than Hire a Superstar", followed closely by a recent LinkedIn post and meta-analysis by Janet Britcher entitled “How to manage toxic employees”, a curious phenomenon emerged, namely, that high-performing employees have the tendency to also be toxic in the workplace.

Playing the role of 'Devil's Advocate’ (a role I relish), I propose an alternative conclusion to the arguments drawn in the original HBR article, along with Ms. Britcher's meta-analysis, and suggest that the causal relationship between high-performance and toxic behaviour has been fundamentally misunderstood by both writers, and more worrying, by senior leaders in management roles.  

“You can't manage what you can't measure” - Peter Drucker

The original HBR article quoted findings that the top 20% of an organisation's workforce contributed 80% of the organisation’s outcome (classic Pareto). Given the Druckerian reality in which most companies now operate, comparative and transparent measures of employee performance are now the norm and are readily available to employees and employers alike. Employees are more aware than ever of the personal impact they have on the organisations in which they work.  

Then and Now

A hundred years ago, manual labor jobs (and indeed, labor-intensive jobs today) were rewarded on a piece-basis. The difference between a low-performer and a high-performer in this case would have been minimal, and any knowledge about completing a task more efficiently would have represented a minimal improvement in the employee’s output. A high-performer working twice as hard would be hopeful of producing twice the result.

As we shift into a knowledge economy, where knowledge is self-evidently the key differentiator in employee performance, the difference in generated value between a high-performer and a low-performer can be an order of magnitude or more, and achieved in far less time. 

The key difference between low- and high-performing employees in an organisational context is that the high-performers firstly know and understand the worth that they are contributing, and secondly, are in a position of strength in being able to decide where they work. High-performers are therefore empowered to raise their voices to mediocrity in the workplace.

A telling quote from Ms. Britcher’s post, highlighting interesting passages:

There is one other reason managers become vulnerable to toxic yet seemingly productive employees: they are knowledgeable . Perhaps they have been with the organization a long time and have deep product or customer knowledge . Or they came with a technical or analytic specialty that’s unique to the organization . Another factor that’s tough to ignore: they produce the greatest sales revenue .

I would argue that Ms. Britcher’s argument is self-evidently flawed. Employees that produce the greatest sales revenue are not seemingly productive. They are, by every objective measure of productivity, more productive than their lesser-productive counterparts.

Time vs Value vs Effort vs Reward

Given that the antiquated Industrial-age rewards system in most organisations has not yet evolved to reflect the difference in time spent versus value generated, it seems the challenge is that high-performing employees have no incentive to share their key competitive differentiator with other employees.

Considered within the context of the organisation, it makes sense that employers would encourage employees to work together to achieve the outcomes of the organisation as a whole. However, the same argument could be applied to organisations with respect to other organisations. Why won’t an organisation share its key competitive differentiator with another business, in order to serve the needs of humanity as a whole? Such actions would be tantamount to corporate suicide, and given the nature of NDAs and the like in the tech sector, where knowledge alone is the single key differentiator in the success of a business, we can easily understand why.

In fact, Ms. Britcher’s quote above holds the key; high-performers hold a significant knowledge and competitive advantage that allows them to produce more value in less time and with less effort. High-perfomers may be many things, but they are not dumb. Given that high-performers are not renumerated based on their value (Problem 1), and are therefore wholly disincentivised to give up their competitive differentiation with their lesser-knowledgable colleagues (Problem 2), it is no wonder that high-performers are often seen as difficult to manage. They are given no reason to do so.

The Peter Principle Prevails for Poor Performers

A manager with a high-performer as a direct report is indeed a unique challenge. Micromanagement, the common default position of well-meaning but uninformed managers unable to deal with a high-performer, usually results in more problems that it solves. After all, the same antiquated organisations that separate value from reward are similarly set up with a top-heavy organisational structure that rewards compliance over value.

Disenchanted high-performers are left with three options:

1. Stay and endure, with the possibility of a termination due to insubordination looming, 
2. Speak up, makes waves and expedite the termination process, or;
3. Leave the organisation on their own terms.

Evolution at work

Over time, a curious evolutionary phenomenon emerges. Through a process of attrition, as high-performers are selected out of the organisation, management selects for and promotes from the remaining pool of low-performing employees. Those that fit the criteria are those that accept the status-quo, or are adept at political manoeuvring and posturing (of the form most successful managers exemplify), and are those promoted to senior leadership roles.

It should therefore come as no surprise when the senior leadership exhibits a low-performing culture; all the low-performers are running the show, selecting from and promoting those that align with and reflect their own values and beliefs. As Simon Sinek, the well-known ethnographer comments,

‘A culture is simply a group of people with a common set of values and beliefs’.

Addressing the challenge

McKinsey, a management consultancy, makes it a well-known point to hire ‘insecure overachievers’; high-performing individuals with chips on their shoulder. Why? Because correctly managed, a small team of high-performers is able to achieve far more than a large team of low-performers. The ‘up-or-out’ policy promises a path to promotion based on merit - not on mediocrity. Collaboration is incentivised, as is high-performance, given the well-established growth paths in the firm. Whilst the model is unsustainable over the longer-term (most management consultants transition out of their roles after between two to four years), ironically, the same consultants transition into leading roles in the organisations they were unable to be promoted in earlier.

To both authors (who I can only assume were well-meaning in their respective analyses), I'd like to leave both with the following question:

Were the employees 'toxic' prior to coming into the firm, or could it be that the firm's culture promoted the prevailing toxicity?

Answering this question may reveal an important truth, along with a far greater degree of introspection, about the origin and nature of workplace toxicity.

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Petar is a consultant and engaging public speaker to corporate, academic and governmental organisations worldwide. With three international careers as an academic, in corporate and as an entrepreneur - on three continents so far, Petar is a passionate speaker on the subjects of innovation, the changing face of higher education, and the role of Millenials in corporate cultures today. He is based in Dubai, UAE and Melbourne, Australia.

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