When Travis Kalanick was in charge of Uber, aggressive growth was everything—top performers who behaved abusively with yelling, public shaming, condescending behavior, or those who created a workplace filled with fear, mistrust, and emotional exhaustion were tolerated because they drove outcomes and got results. Their toxic culture, which was rooted in fear and favoritism, led to many scandals, lawsuits, and Kalanick’s eventual resignation.
Some teams at Amazon worked with a Darwinian mentality: “If you can’t survive, you don’t belong here.” High achievers thrived by undermining others, pushing too hard, ignoring boundaries, and fueling a high-pressure, low-safety environment.
Employees cried at their desks from facing humiliation and harsh treatment. Protecting top performers who ignored basic respect led to high turnover, burnout, and mental health issues. When Amazon’s culture of toxic, relentless performance became public, the brand took a hit with global scrutiny, forcing leadership to take a hard look at the culture within their teams.
What about you?
What do you do when your top performer is also your team’s biggest problem—when they’re smart, driven, and effective, but also dismissive, manipulative, and downright destructive?
They silence others in meetings.
They create a false sense of urgency to push unrealistic deadlines.
They take credit for others' work.
They refuse to collaborate unless they’re in charge.
On one hand, they’re your superstar. On the other, their toxic behavior builds quiet resentment, leads to rising tension, and damages morale in the team. You can always count on them because they take ownership and get things done. But while the outcomes they achieve look great, no one wants to work with them as they leave others feeling undervalued and unsafe.
It may be tempting to look the other way and delay action, as you fear how the message might land and what if it drives them away. You worry about losing them and the results they consistently deliver—the deals they close, the projects they ship, and all the visibility they bring to your team. But each time you excuse toxic behavior, you send a strong message to everyone else that behavior doesn’t matter as long as performance is strong.
When you quietly settle for toxic behavior, you don’t just affect morale; you lose trust and credibility. People begin to disengage, collaboration breaks down, and psychological withdrawal sets in as they start believing that the workplace isn’t fair and safe for everyone. Slowly, mediocrity creeps in—team members stop speaking up, stop stretching themselves, and start looking elsewhere.
The best bosses do more than charge up people, and recruit and breed energizers. They eliminate the negative, because even a few bad apples and destructive acts can undermine many good people and constructive acts.
— Robert Sutton
Confrontation is hard, but your job isn’t just to chase performance, but to also draw a line between excellence and harm. It’s to set clear boundaries, make the hard calls, and build a culture where results are valued, but not at the expense of trust, respect, and well–being.
When dealing with a toxic top performer, don’t act impulsively. Respond decisively and deliberately using these strategies:
Assess their impact.
When looking at the impact of a high performer, it’s easy to be dazzled by their results—high-quality projects they have delivered, complex problems they have solved, and the number of times they have stepped in to save the team from failure and chaos.
But assessing only what they contribute minimizes the impact of their behaviors that may be subtle, but corrosive—interrupting others, dominating discussions, resisting collaboration, or creating a culture of fear and intimidation. When looking at their impact, you need to balance their contributions with their cost.
How do they make others feel?
Do they focus on making the team better or just making themselves look good?
Do people actively seek to collaborate with them or quietly avoid doing so?
How has the team morale or engagement shifted since they joined?
What happens to the mood in the room when they talk? Does it open up or shut down?
Do they create space for others to speak or try to dominate conversations?
Do they elevate others or tend to compete with them for attention?
Do they share information freely or withhold it to maintain control or status?
When things go wrong, do they take responsibility or shift blame?
Collecting this data is important because confronting a high performer without solid data and examples to back up your observations can definitely backfire. You can’t have a conversation based on your gut feeling. You can’t be emotional or impulsive. You need to ground the conversation in facts, patterns, and specific behaviors—not judgments, opinions, or hearsay.
Have conversations with people from different teams and functions who have worked closely with the top performer. Your goal isn’t to collect complaints, but to gather insights. Ask how it feels to collaborate with them, what the day-to-day interactions are like, and whether their presence lifts the team or wears it down. Pay attention to recurring themes. One bad interaction or a one-off conflict can happen with anyone—it doesn’t make them toxic.
But persistent patterns like creating stress, dominating conversations, or sidelining others point to deeper issues. What you’re looking for is not isolated frustration, but signs of emotional wear—low morale, hesitance to speak up or reluctance to partner with them again.
When a workplace becomes toxic, its poison spreads beyond its walls and into the lives of its workers and their families.
― Gary Chapman
Toxicity isn’t always loud or obvious. It often shows up in how people feel after working with someone. By
Give feedback in person.
Top performers are driven by outcomes and impact. They thrive when they can see how their efforts create meaningful results, which makes them open and curious to understand how something they’re doing is getting in the way of that impact.
But how you deliver feedback makes all the difference. If you focus on personality or character by saying things like “you’re too aggressive” or “you’re too manipulative,” it’s likely to trigger defensiveness as they may feel criticized, misunderstood, or unfairly targeted. Such feedback may come across as judgmental, opinionated, and biased, making them hate or turn against you.
Your purpose is not to make them feel bad, challenge their behavior, or ways of working—that only hurts their ego, which makes them resistant to whatever you say. Instead, do this:
- Share your observations. Use words like “I noticed, I heard, I observed, I saw, I was told,” and not words like “You have, you did, you said, you made.”
- Focus on specific behaviors, not the person.
- Stick to facts and observable patterns, not assumptions.
- Emphasize the impact of their behavior on the team and outcomes.
- Empower them to reflect and contribute to a solution, instead of dictating one.
Making them part of a solution gives them an opportunity to rethink, reevaluate, and reconsider. When they don’t feel attacked or ridiculed, they’re more likely to be open to change—not because you demanded it, but because they can see why it matters.
For example:
Instead of: You shout at others. This is no way to treat them. Learn to control your temper.
Say this: I have noticed that you tend to raise your voice during meetings. For instance: (state the fact using multiple examples). When you shout at others, it makes them reluctant to speak up. Without their contribution and agreement, we cannot make a decision or move forward towards our goals. This will delay the project and also prevent us from seeking diverse inputs to make better decisions (impact). What can you do to support others’ ideas so that they’re encouraged to share (solution)?
Instead of: You always make everything about yourself and never give anyone else credit.
Say this: In the client presentation last week, you mentioned the strategy as your idea, but didn’t reference the entire team’s contributions (state other facts as examples). When recognition isn’t shared, it creates tension and resentment, especially when people feel their efforts are overlooked (impact). How do you usually decide what to share in group settings to reflect everyone’s work (solution)?
Giving honest feedback is tricky, because it can easily result in people feeling hurt or demoralized. By aiming for candor—feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful—it’s easier to maintain a sense of safety and belonging in the group.
— Daniel Coyle
Feedback to a toxic top performer isn’t about calling them out—it’s about helping them see what they might be missing. By staying grounded in facts and focusing on impact, you can create space for awareness without triggering defensiveness. Change is more likely when they feel invited, not attacked.
Provide support, but draw a line.
Top performers don’t always become toxic out of arrogance or bad intent. Sometimes, their intense drive to succeed blinds them to how they affect others. They may be unaware of how they come across to others, how their ambition overshadows team members, or what earned them praise in one environment won’t be acceptable here.
Instead of confronting or trying to correct, approach the situation with curiosity:
Are they unaware of their behavior?
Are they open to feedback?
Can they grow through this?
Your goal is improvement, not
But make sure to draw a line when giving this support. Make it clear that behavior change is non-negotiable. Discuss how results and values go hand-in-hand. You can’t show indefinite patience for toxic behavior—compassion without consequence won’t lead to behavior change. Set a firm timeline. Align on a desired end state. Be explicit about what needs to change, how it will be measured, and what the consequences will be if nothing shifts.
Setting boundaries and holding people accountable is a lot more work than shaming and blaming. But it’s also much more effective. First, when we shame and blame, it moves the focus from the original behavior in question to our own behavior. Additionally, if we don’t follow through with appropriate consequences, people learn to dismiss our requests—even if they sound like threats or ultimatums.
— Brené Brown
Talent doesn’t excuse toxic behavior. Offering support signals that you value their contribution and want to see them grow. Setting boundaries makes it clear that culture matters and that certain behaviors, no matter how talented someone may be, won’t be overlooked. Good management requires you to do both—not one at the expense of the other.
Be prepared to let them go.
If your top performer refuses to change their toxic behavior despite the feedback, support, and clear expectations, you have to be willing to make the hard call. Letting them go is a tough decision—they may hold key knowledge, lead important projects, or have expertise in a certain domain. But, while the short-term results may suffer once they’re gone, the long-term cost of keeping them is far greater.
Letting toxic people stay in the system for too long undermines the efforts of many others. Emotional depletion from being around them impacts how they work, what they do, and finally what they collectively achieve together. If you keep someone whose behavior is consistently toxic, you communicate that outcomes matter more than culture, standards are flexible when someone performs well, and harmful behavior has no consequence as long as you keep producing results.
To build a strong culture where performance matters as much as respect, you’ve to not only speak it in words, but also demonstrate it in your actions. You’ve to show that the same standards apply to everyone without any exceptions. You’ve to hold everyone accountable, no matter how talented or how performant they may be. Letting go of a toxic high performer is not a loss; it’s a commitment to your people to prioritize their health over one person’s ego.
Letting a toxic top performer go requires clarity, calmness, and compassion. You need to own the decision, protect your team’s trust, and ensure the person understands the “why” without turning the conversation into a debate or blame game.
To do this, start by clearly stating the decision. Avoid sugarcoating or long justifications. Ground the message in past conversations and unmet expectations. For example, you may say:
I want to let you know that we’ve made the decision to end your employment. Over the past few weeks, we have had several conversations about the impact of your behavior on the team. We outlined what needed to change and offered support along the way. Unfortunately, that change hasn’t happened. This decision is not a judgment of your talent—it’s about the ongoing impact on the team and the culture we’re committed to building. I know this may be disappointing, but the decision is final. We are prepared to support you through this transition in a respectful manner.
Great leaders are willing to sacrifice the numbers to save the people. Poor leaders sacrifice the people to save the numbers.
— Simon Sinek
When one person’s performance comes at the cost of your entire team’s well-being, the real risk is in keeping them, not letting them go. Stand up for the kind of culture you want to build and promote. Make the tough decision. Let them go.
Summary
- Toxic high performers may deliver strong results, but their behavior can slowly erode trust, morale, and team cohesion.
- Instead of relying on gut instinct, observe patterns, gather input from others, and ask questions like “How do they make people feel?” to understand whether their presence lifts or drains the team. Look for recurring behaviors, not one-off moments, and focus on the effect they have on the people around them.
- When giving feedback, approach with respect, clarity, and calm. Stick to observable facts, describe the impact, and ask reflective questions to open the door for a healthy conversation. Avoid judging character—talk about what you saw, not who they are. Feedback should be a mirror, not a weapon.
- Support their growth with coaching and feedback, but be clear about what’s not acceptable. Performance and results don’t excuse behavior that harms others. Let them know change is expected, and while you’re committed to helping them out, continued damage to the team won’t be tolerated.
- If the behavior doesn’t change, be willing to act. Keeping someone who undermines the team sends the wrong message to everyone else. Letting them go isn’t a failure—it’s a powerful decision to protect the culture and prioritize long-term growth over short-term results.
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