Culture Talks: Why Your Best Performer Might Be Your Biggest Liability

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Every leader has faced the same tempting trade-off: keep the toxic top performer because the numbers are good, or cut them loose and risk the hit to results. In the latest episode of Culture Talks, Lorne Rubis and Dave McCauley call this pattern by its name - the Brilliant Jerk - and make the case that no organization can actually afford to keep one.

Dave shares the story of a sales rep who was forging customer signatures to close deals, and a "current accounts" manager whose abuse toward coworkers was quietly costing the company more in morale and lost deals than his relationships were worth. Lorne brings it home with a scouting report from the San Antonio Spurs, who passed on a talented player for one simple reason written at the bottom of the file: "not a Spur."

Before that, Lorne and Dave tackle a hot-button topic making headlines — Adam Grant's New York Times research suggesting that return-to-office mandates are driven less by productivity data and more by leadership ego. Lorne shares how he built a "work when you need to, where you need to" policy at a 5,000-person financial institution back in 2013, and why it became one of the company's biggest competitive advantages.

It's a candid, funny, occasionally profane conversation between two people who've sat on every side of the C-suite table. Watch or listen to the full episode for the stories, the pushback, and the line that sums it all up: "I'd rather have a hole than an a-hole."

Culture Talks: Why Your Best Performer Might Be Your Biggest Liability

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