What Happened
A business commentary published in Nyasa Times argues that organizations are sabotaging themselves by protecting high-performing employees who poison their teams. The piece calls on CEOs to treat trust as a measurable performance metric and to stop excusing destructive behavior because someone hits their numbers. The argument is simple: results do not cancel out damage.
The Communication Angle
Picture this. A sales director closes the biggest deal of the quarter. The whole office knows his name. The CEO mentions him at the all-hands meeting. And quietly, three talented people on his team have already updated their resumes, because working near him feels like standing next to a lit fuse.
That scene plays out in organizations every week. And the reason it keeps happening is not a strategy failure. It is a communication failure. Specifically, it is what I call signal confusion, where the messages leaders send with their actions directly contradict the values they announce with their words.
When a CEO publicly rewards a toxic performer, every person watching learns the real rules. Not the values on the wall. Not the mission statement in the annual report. The real rules. And the real rule, in that moment, is: results protect you from accountability. That message travels fast and sticks hard. You do not need a memo to spread it. The celebration itself is the broadcast.
Here is what makes this so damaging from a communication standpoint: silence makes it worse. When leadership says nothing about behavior and says everything about numbers, they are not staying neutral. They are taking a side. Neutrality in the face of a known problem is its own message, and that message is permission. The team hears it clearly even when no words are spoken.
The fix is not complicated, but it requires nerve. Leaders need to start naming what they value in the same breath they announce results. Not a separate HR meeting. Not a policy update nobody reads. Right there, in the same moment of recognition, the message needs to carry both dimensions: what someone achieved and how they achieved it. "She hit her targets and she brought three junior colleagues with her." That is a complete sentence. That is a complete standard.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on delivering recognition covers how the words you choose in moments of praise do not just honor one person: they instruct everyone else. Most leaders treat recognition as a reward. It is actually a policy announcement. Once you see it that way, you become far more careful and far more powerful with it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
The next time you recognize someone publicly, whether in a meeting, a Slack channel, or a company-wide email, add one sentence about how they worked, not just what they produced. It takes eight seconds and it resets the cultural standard for everyone watching.
