High Performers or Culture Killers? The Brutal Truth Leaders Avoid

So you have high performers who's killing your culture. You might have it. Person that's maybe putting up 30%, 40% of your revenue. Thank you so much for being here. It is an honor to have you here. Okay, we're going to talk about golden handcuffs. We had them as employees, we get them as business owners as well as we say we wouldn't tolerate. We all of a sudden we get a little success, we start tolerating. This is what the golden handcuffs are. So you have high performers who's killing your culture. You might have it. A person that's maybe putting up 30%, 40% of your revenue can pretty much do whatever they want. But also it's not allowing you to grow in your culture or anything because you're afraid of losing them. So you know who they are. They produce results, but poison the wealth. They hate their numbers, but hurt the team. You keep them because you fear short term pain of losing them. That's what it is, right? So they produce results, but they poison the well. Think about it. Who is it in your team that's doing it? So these are the warning signs, tolerating bad behaviors from irreplaceable team members because they're too valuable to lose. Who's too valuable to lose in your organization that you've maybe tolerated some, right? They're silent resentment from the rest of your team. They resent them because if they speak up, leadership won't act. You can tell, you can tell that other people don't like this person. You can tell that this other person is entitled. You can tell that they maybe feel protected. Okay, you feel trapped between keeping them or losing their protection. You don't want to fire them, but keeping them is also hurting your business. Where do you stand? So what is it, the decision that you need to make? They know they have leverage and they use it as well. So how would your team culture operate if everybody lived under the same standards? These are the golden handicaps. It's a guy that shows up, doesn't come to all the meetings. Maybe eyerolls is probably sitting around on their phone texting or doing something, can't wait to get out. They say, oh man, I gotta do some calls, I have a meeting. They can make excuses and not come to the meetings where the team, they get a pass. What's the real cost in all this? Team morale deteriorates. Other employees feel undervalued or mistreated because they feel like the rules don't apply to everybody. The culture stagnates and you're vulnerable. If they suddenly leave, what happens? This is one difficult conversation you've probably been avoiding with one of these guys that you're like, man, if I lose this guy, I'm gonna lose 30 to 40% of my revenue. And I don't know how I'm gon making. That's a golden handcuff right there. Yeah. So you need to know what the difference is. So wait, what does it do? How do you break free of those? First of all, you have to assess the real cost, calculate the true cost. What's the revenue versus the damage. So with their revenue generation against the damage they cost. And sometimes it's really not as much as you possibly think. See, we had somebody on our team that was putting up what, 600, 4, 5, $600, half a million a month? Yeah, it was between five and $600,000 a month in revenue. And when we had to let it go, we're like, damn it, we're gonna lose half a million dollars of revenue every month. That's a lot, right? For business. And when we did that, guess what? We realized that we didn't lose that $500,000 in revenue. What happened is that those were not self generated leads. They were our leads. That person was good at closing them. Now what happened is that that revenue went to maybe two or three other people, but our revenue didn't go down. So if you really like looking at how much you would really lose, like really see if they're self generated leads or if they're leads that you're giving to them. So this is a bacon fee. Develop a backup plan. So what does that look like? Prostrate others. Strengthen your recruitment and diversify skills on your team. That's it. If you have a high producer like that and you're not hiring other people, then you are going to be stuck in that situation if you have somebody that is an adult. So it's all about developing those backup plans so you don't build on to those golden handcuffs that some people might have. You know, you always have to have people prepared, not just one person. Because if you don't, if you don't do that, you know, you're, you're depending on too much on that. Set clear standards. So great companies prioritize culture alongside performance. So they don't just keep top performers, they build a culture where leadership, teamwork and growth are, you know, are just as important. As a result, we're going to talk about how you reinforce that as well. But you have to identify who in your business is seasonal and who is not. It's really important. That's the difference between being capable and being reliable. You might have somebody that's a high driver, but you really don't trust them, and they're not that reliable. You have to know that you have to have both, obviously, in order to become, you know, you need to be a good leader to build both of those, because we want both of those. And if necessary, once you have that difficult conversation that we're talking about, you know, be prepared to fire those that don't align. And don't take it personally when they quit on you. They weren't meant to be with you anyway. And you have to protect the loyal ones. Above all. It's really important.