Someone spoke to you in a way that would never be acceptable from anyone else in the room.

Afterward, a colleague pulled you aside and said something meant to help: "That's just how they are." But you heard what nobody is saying out loud:

"We decided their value outweighs your experience."

In this episode, I'm breaking down what happens when one person is so 'valuable' to an organization that the friction they create gets waved away as the cost of doing business.

Key Takeaways:

• The real cost of protecting one valuable person over the rest of the team
• How the halo effect blinds good leaders to behavior everyone else can see
• Why explained-away behavior never stays contained, it spreads
• The question that should follow "that's just how they are" every single time

This episode is for you if you've ever explained someone's behavior to the person on the receiving end of it, because the truth was the organization couldn't afford to lose them.

Want to explore what systemic change could look like in your organization? Visit https://bit.ly/strongface-ep8 to learn more about working together.

__

Strong Face is for leaders caught between caring for their people and enforcing a system that wasn't built to do so, without losing themselves in the process.

Hosted by Tamara Steward, organizational consultant and founder of Spark the Firm, each episode takes one situation you're likely living through at work right now or have seen before, and shows you what's actually broken, and what's yours to fix.