The Hidden Cost of Protecting High Performers
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The Hidden Cost of Protecting High Performers
Every organization has them. The employee who delivers results, closes deals, solves complex problems, or brings in critical revenue. On paper, they look like one of your strongest high performers. But what happens when that same person quietly damages your company culture, weakens team communication, and drives away strong employees?
At Revela, we believe strong company culture is built not just on results, but on consistent leadership accountability and how people work together every day. On this episode of The Leadership Hustle podcast, Andrea Fredrickson and Michelle Hill discussed the hidden cost of protecting so-called high performers, and why excusing certain behaviors can slowly erode employee performance and retention and organizational trust.
High Performers and the Myth of Results at Any Cost
When leaders describe high performers, they usually focus on outcomes. As Fredrickson explained, these individuals are the ones who “get stuff done.” They hit targets. They bring in revenue. They carry certifications or specialized knowledge that’s hard to replace. Sometimes they’re deeply connected in the community or industry.
On the surface, protecting them feels logical. But there’s a myth hidden in that logic: that performance equals contribution to culture. In reality, many protected high performers deliver results while simultaneously creating team dysfunction. They may be late to meetings, dismissive in conversations, passive-aggressive with peers, or openly disrespectful.
They may “dump stuff and run,” as Fredrickson described, dropping responsibility onto others without collaboration. Yet they’re excused because of what they produce, and this bias becomes dangerous.
The Bias Leaders Don’t See
Leaders protect high performers for different reasons. It can be due to:
● Loyalty to early employees
● Fear of losing specialized skills
● Community connections
● Revenue impact
● Difficulty replacing them
● Lack of bandwidth to cover the role
But Fredrickson raised a critical question: “What are you not noticing because you’re protecting them?” Bias narrows vision. Leaders become so focused on preserving one contributor that they miss the systemic damage. Often, they don’t connect turnover, disengagement, and team dysfunction back to the protected individual. But once the behavior is corrected, the contrast becomes undeniable.
When Protecting High Performers Damages Company Culture
Culture isn’t what’s written in a handbook. Hill stated that it’s “...how we work together and get things done.” That includes how deadlines are handled, how people communicate, and how accountability is enforced.
When a leader protects one individual, everyone notices. Fredrickson said it plainly, stating, “Whoever you’re excusing, everybody knows. Everybody’s watching.” When deadlines don’t apply to one person, deadlines don’t matter. When collaboration is optional for one employee, collaboration weakens across the board. When disrespect goes unchecked, psychological safety disappears. The ripple effect moves quickly:
Standards drift
Morale drops
Trust erodes
Frustration builds
And eventually, the organization experiences clear signs of poor culture.
From One Exception to Team Dysfunction
The most underestimated impact of protecting high performers is the burden it places on everyone else. Peers begin working around the protected individual instead of with them. Conversations become guarded, emails increase for “covering” purposes, meetings become tense, and extra layers of communication are added to avoid confrontation.
Hill described scenarios where teams have to create communication triangles by routing information through others just to avoid direct conflict. That isn’t efficiency. That’s dysfunction. Over time, employees begin to disengage, not because they lack commitment, but because the emotional toll becomes too heavy.
This is where leadership accountability becomes critical. If an employee brings concerns forward and leadership justifies the behavior, trust declines rapidly. When you defend that protected employee, everyone else will stop coming to you for advice or help, because they know you’ll favor the other person. Silence replaces honesty and that’s when team dysfunction becomes embedded.
Employee Retention and Lost Trust
One of the most expensive consequences of protecting high performers is employee retention. You rarely lose your weakest people first. You lose your strongest.
Fredrickson put it bluntly when she stated that, “You’re sacrificing the masses for this one individual.” High-performing team members who operate with integrity eventually decide they can’t tolerate inconsistency. They leave quietly, or sometimes loudly.
With this comes talking and spreading information. Employees will tell friends, former coworkers, and sometimes share their experiences publicly. Reputation damage then spreads far beyond the original issue.
Meanwhile, leaders often justify protection because they “can’t afford to lose” the high performer. But they’re already losing something more valuable: cultural integrity and long-term employee performance.
Signs of Poor Culture Leaders Overlook
Many leaders don’t realize how quickly protection creates measurable cultural decline. Here are common signs of poor culture tied directly to protecting high performers:
Increased email documentation and “covering” behavior
Employees avoiding collaboration with specific individuals
Hesitation to speak up in meetings
Passive resignation instead of proactive problem-solving
Declining morale
High turnover among capable employees
You’ll start to see capable professionals begin to doubt themselves after repeated public questioning or interrogation from a protected peer. Over time, they second-guess their own competence. That damage isn’t always visible in KPIs. But it shows up in energy, engagement, and employee performance.
Leadership Accountability
Protecting high performers actively shapes your leadership reputation.
Fredrickson made this clear stating, “When you are protecting, you are creating the reputation as a leader who doesn’t address issues.” That reputation spreads quickly and employees will form conclusions like the following:
“Standards don’t apply equally here.”
“It’s not safe to challenge certain people.”
“Leadership won’t step in.”
Leadership accountability is not about eliminating high standards. It’s about applying them consistently. The irony is powerful: once leaders address the protected behavior, by either correcting it or removing the individual, the team often experiences an immediate weight lift.
Employee Performance Thrives Under Fair Standards
There’s a common fear that addressing a high performer will reduce output. The opposite is usually true. When leadership accountability is applied consistently:
Collaboration improves
Standards clarify
Employee performance rises across the board
Removing toxic dynamics allows strong contributors to operate fully. Instead of managing tension, they focus on innovation and execution. As Fredrickson shared, she has “never once seen” a team not elevate once the protected behavior is corrected or the individual exits. The cost of protection is almost always higher than the cost of correction.
Protecting High Performers vs. Protecting Your Culture
The real issue isn’t whether someone delivers results. It’s whether their behavior aligns with the organization you’re trying to build.
When leaders protect high performers, they frame it as a business decision, like revenue, expertise, or influence. But culture is also a business decision. What you tolerate today becomes tomorrow’s standard.
If someone succeeds by dismissing collaboration, bypassing accountability, or undermining peers, that behavior becomes instructional. Others learn that output outweighs respect and that some people operate under different rules.
That’s where misalignment begins. You may say you value teamwork and trust, but your actions communicate otherwise. And the gap between what’s stated and what’s practiced is where culture fractures.
Protecting your culture means reinforcing standards that make performance sustainable, not just impressive. Results that erode trust aren’t high performance. They’re short-term wins with long-term cost.
A Hard Question Every Leader Must Answer
As a leader, you must always ask: Who are you protecting? And more importantly: What is it costing you? Protecting high performers may feel strategic in the moment, but over time it weakens company culture, damages employee retention, fuels team dysfunction, and erodes trust. The cost of excusing behavior ripples outward, affecting employee performance and shaping how safe and fair your workplace feels. Leadership accountability is not optional. When leaders stop protecting and start addressing, culture stabilizes and teams elevate.
At Revela, we believe strong leadership means holding standards consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable. To continue exploring how leadership decisions impact company culture, employee retention, and long-term performance, listen to The Leadership Hustle podcast, where each episode offers practical insights to help leaders build stronger, healthier organizations.
About the Hosts
Andrea Fredrickson
Andrea Fredrickson is a thought leader and consultant at Revela, an organization based in Omaha, Nebraska specializing in the development of leaders, culture alignment, and business strategy for private and family businesses of all sizes. Revela is one of the region's most experienced thought challengers, helping individuals and companies find their greatness. Andrea has built an amazing team by believing that fundamentally people want to be successful and become better versions of themselves.
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Andrea has degrees in education, management, and business. She is the author of Insight Unseen; How to lead with 20/20 business vision. She helps people see things differently, self-reflect, and never stop looking for ways to improve themselves on a personal and professional level. Andrea has spent more than 30 years researching and developing methods to help people communicate and lead more effectively.
When Andrea isn’t working with clients, you’ll find her spending time with her family & friends and making memories by exploring new cities.
Michelle Hill
Michelle Hill is a master facilitator and coach at Revela, an organization specializing in the development of leaders and aligning the culture of privately held and family businesses of all sizes. Revela is one of the region's most experienced thought challengers, helping individuals and companies find their greatness.
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An ambitious leader, Michelle has the natural ability to create forward momentum to build teams and get results. She inspires others to look within themselves and to challenge the status quo. She helps create high-performing environments. Michelle brings a diverse background: operations, employee development, and sales in the steel, hospitality, and consulting industries.
Outside of work, you will see her competitive side engaged in her daughter’s sports and ISU athletics. She loves life, her four-legged companions, and captures all the moments through her camera’s lens.
TRANSCRIPT
Andrea Fredrickson:
On this episode of The Leadership Hustle, we’re going to talk about that high performer who might be costing you more than you realize. Hello and welcome back. I’m Andrea Fredrickson and I’m joined by Michelle Hill.
Every CEO I talk to has that one person they protect. Whether you’re a CEO, an executive, or a leader somewhere in your organization, stop and think for a second. Who are you protecting? Sometimes it’s loyalty. Maybe they’ve been with the company since the beginning. But more often than not, it’s someone the leader considers a high performer. So let’s look at that. What is this myth of the high performer?
Usually when people talk about high performance, they’re talking about results. They get things done. It can be any role, any title. Sometimes it’s also the connector, the one with strong outside relationships or visibility in the community. There are organizations where those connections elevate someone regardless of how they actually work with the team.
I’ve even heard leaders say they hired someone because of all the relationships they were supposed to bring in, only to realize later that the results didn’t match the expectation. And even when the relationships do produce results, the consequences often show up in how that person works with others.
So here’s the myth. They may have a special skill, certification, or network, but how they go about their work is not high performing. There’s a bias from the leader protecting them. The justification becomes, “They bring in money,” or “They’re hard to replace,” or “They’ve been here forever.” Meanwhile, behaviors get excused. They’re late. They don’t collaborate. They communicate poorly. They dump work and run. And because the results exist, the behavior continues.
Michelle Hill:
So how does that impact the team? We’ve talked before about culture being how we work together and get things done. When someone becomes the exception, everyone notices.
Andrea:
Whoever you’re excusing, everybody knows. You’re not hiding it. You think you’re doing a favor, but what you’re really doing is sacrificing the rest of the team for one individual.
If one person is late to meetings and nothing happens, apparently deadlines don’t matter. If communication issues are ignored, people start drifting. They adjust their behavior around that person.
And it’s often how they treat others that creates the biggest issue. Leaders justify it by saying they’re busy or producing results, but the team feels the impact.
Michelle:
And when behavior is never addressed, people naturally push boundaries. It becomes a reward. If nothing changes, it must be okay.