Dear Leah,
I’m Chief People Officer dealing with our highest-performing leader who’s also our biggest cultural problem. This person - let’s call them “Alex” - runs our most profitable division and consistently delivers 150% of target.
Alex’s leadership style is destroying people: high turnover, stress-related absences, and exit interviews consistently mention Alex’s “aggressive management” and “unrealistic demands.”
I’ve had three separate HR complaints in the past six months, but when I raised this with our CEO, the response was essentially, “Can we afford to lose someone who brings in £20 million annually?"
Alex’s defence is always that “high performance requires high standards” and that people today “can’t handle pressure.”
The irony is that Alex is genuinely talented and could probably achieve the same results with better people skills, but seems completely blind to the damage being caused. Meanwhile, other division heads are starting to copy Alex’s style because they think that’s what gets rewarded.
How do I address a performance versus culture dilemma when the CEO clearly values results over everything else?
- The Culture vs. Performance Paradox
Oh dear! You're watching your CEO trade long-term company value for short-term performance.
Alex isn’t the problem. The leadership team is confusing profit with sustainability.
DIAGNOSIS:
Alex has become the tail wagging the dog. Your CEO is scared of the temporary revenue dip that might follow intervention, so they're tolerating behaviour that's systematically destroying your talent pipeline and cultural foundation.
Meanwhile, Alex genuinely believes their approach works because nobody's shown them the true cost.
THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM:
Your organisation rewards outcomes without measuring methods.
Alex's £20 million looks impressive until you calculate the cost of constant recruitment, stress-related absences, knowledge loss, and the cultural damage that's spreading to other divisions like a virus.
THE PATH TO RESOLVING IT:
Speak to the CFO and make sure they are on-side. Together, present the CEO with hard numbers - replacement costs, lost institutional knowledge, litigation risk, and the productivity cost of running a division on perpetual stress. Then have the CFO express his support of your request that Alex invest in coaching for growth, not as punishment. Frame it as "unlocking even higher performance one conversation at a time."
If you need the support of the Chair, draft them in!
YOUR ROLE GOING FORWARDS:
Quantify the hidden costs.
Make the business case that Alex's style is actually expensive, not efficient.
Create accountability.
Include leadership effectiveness metrics in performance reviews, not just financial targets.
Offer development, not discipline.
Position coaching as leadership evolution, not correction.
Sometimes the most profitable thing you can do is teach your golden goose better table manners.
