Talented Terrors: How to Deal With Toxic High-Performers

Enhancing productivity is a laudable and important organizational goal. In the current economic environment there is a heightened demand for high performers, which is further intensified by our new reality of being asked to do more with less. Finding ways to meet or exceed our performance targets keeps many senior leaders (and employees) awake at night.

Within this context, it may appear that performance is king. Although it may even seem more attractive to focus exclusively on the what (e.g., results), rather than the how (e.g., process), this may be a losing strategy — one with potentially long-term, debilitating impacts on an organization.