Personalities Are The Problem
“Personality bias” impacts key decisions.
Take the Personalities Out of the Problem
Is there what I call “biased accountability” in your company?
The problem is when leaders stop evaluating performance or a key decision based on what the role (or decision) requires and start evaluating it based on how they feel about the person performing the role or decision.
This kind of personality bias cuts both ways.
Sometimes an under-performer gets protected because the CEO likes them, has history with them, or feels personally loyal to them.
Sometimes a strong performer gets questioned, sidelined, or pushed out because they are less politically smooth, less familiar, less flattering, or simply not part of the inner circle.
In either case, this usually doesn’t end well and could have been diagnosed much earlier.
One of the most important coaching tools I use with CEOs and leadership teams is the headline of this post.
Take the personalities out of the problem.
When emotions, relationships, history, and personal bias are clouding judgment, the solution is not more debate about the person.
The solution is to temporarily erase the person’s name and face off the board.
No name
No face
No history
No friendships
No frustrations
No narrative
Just the role.
Just the work
Just the scorecard
Just the capabilities required
Just the behaviors desired
Until a leadership team can define success and failure independent of the individual, they are usually not making a leadership decision.
They are making a loyalty decision, an emotional decision, or a political decision.
When Bias Enters the Equation
Bias shows up disguised as reasonableness.
Have you heard these phrases before?
“But they’ve been with us since the beginning.”
“She’s a good person.”
“He works really hard.”
“She’s loyal.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“The team likes him.”
“She just needs more time.”
“I’ve never really connected with her.”
“He’s too intense.”
“She’s not my style.”
“I don’t know, something feels off.”
These are all personality filters and not performance standards.
As I began writing this post, I was focused on only one side of the performance equation (the non-performer) but as I put words on paper, I realize that personality filters affect both low performers and high performers.
Most of us have seen the weak performers protected who should otherwise be moved out of critical roles.
These same personality filters also punish strong performers who may not fit someone else’s (let’s say the CEO’s?) preferred style but are delivering exactly what the business needs.
This is where great leaders separate themselves from just good ones.
Good leaders manage around personalities.
Great leaders define the job so clearly that personalities become secondary.
The Hidden Forms of Bias Leaders Bring into Accountability Decisions
There are several common biases that contaminate talent decisions:
1. Relationship bias
A leader is personally close to the person, so they unconsciously lower the standard.
2. Loyalty bias
The person was there in the early days, survived hard times, or “took a chance on us,” so their current performance is evaluated through the lens of past contribution.
3. Style bias
A leader prefers a certain communication style, personality type, or presence, and mistakes familiarity for effectiveness.
4. Recency bias
A recent miss or recent win gets overweighted while the broader pattern gets ignored.
5. Conflict avoidance bias
The leader knows a hard call is needed but avoids it because the conversation will be uncomfortable.
6. Narrative bias
An old story about someone becomes fixed: “high potential,” “not strategic,” “solid but limited,” “not leadership material,” even when the evidence has changed.
7. Political bias
The decision gets influenced by alliances, optics, or who will be upset if the truth is confronted.
Every one of these biases creates drag on organizational performance.
And the higher the role, the more expensive this political bias becomes.
My Framework: Take the Personalities Out of the Problem
When I coach leaders through this, I ask them to move into a “definition world” vs a “political world”.
Where the role is defined first with absolute clarity without names, personal history, or recent past history.
Step 1: Define the role based on the success required
Using the powerful questions framework:
What does success look like over the next 12 months?
What outcomes must this role produce?
What goals must be hit?
What metrics matter most?
What milestones must be reached and by when?
What decisions must this person be able to make?
What level of leadership is required for the company’s next stage?
What cross-functional influence must this role carry?
What part of the business breaks if this seat is weak?
Step 2: Define failure just as clearly (note - right side/left side simple T-Charts work well here)
This is where many leadership teams are weak with any “problem”.
They can describe what they wish would happen, but they fail to clearly define what “unacceptable” looks like.
Defining Failure:
What misses are no longer acceptable?
What behaviors are unacceptable (damaging trust; slowing execution)?
Are there areas in the organization overcompensating for this role?
What repeated patterns are putting the business at risk?
What is the cost of not fixing this role?
If you cannot define failure, you will tolerate it too long.
The first step of awareness is writing it down and staring at it.
Step 3: Separate outcomes from effort
Yes, effort matters. Character matters. Intent matters.
Ultimately, however, RESULTS MATTER!
A lot of leaders get trapped here because they admire the person’s work ethic, values, or commitment.
The question is not whether the person is trying hard. The question is whether the role (notice how I didn’t say “person”) is delivering the required results.
Bottom line: Is this role winning? Is this team winning? Are they progressing to a winning state or regressing to losing state?
Step 4: Define the required behaviors and capabilities
Every role should have a capabilities and behaviors required profile.
Both the WHAT needs to get done and the HOW it needs to get done. Bonus points if you can throw in WHEN.
Powerful Questions
Can this person lead through ambiguity?
Can they attract talent, build a team, not just do the work themselves?
Can they operate cross-functionally - influence their peers?
Can they make hard calls?
Can they earn trust at the board level?
Can they scale from startup hustle into system leadership?
Can they build systems, not just rescue problems?
Can they go from functional expertise to company wide leadership?
The issue is not always performance in the narrow sense. Much of what I describe above is “stage fit”. The company has outgrown the old version of the role and requires a new version of the role. “What got you here isn’t what it takes to get us there.”
Stage fit can only be handled well if leaders are honest enough to define it, actually see it, admit it, and have a good framework to communicate it.
Step 5: Build the scorecard
Create a scorecard with:
Success outcomes
Failure risks
Goals
Metrics
Milestones
Required behaviors
Required capabilities
Now stare at the scorecard instead of the person.
That’s it.
When I’ve had clients do this exercise, our conversation becomes much more objective, role-based, non-biased, and a lot of the previously mentioned biases and emotional fog clears.
Step 6: Now (and only now) Ask The Ultimate Questions
Once the role is clear, then and only then, start asking the original questions:
Do we have the right person for this?
If this seat were empty today, would we hire this same person into it?
Do we need to go get the best person in the market for this role?
Is there somebody else in our organization who maps more closely to these attributes?
These questions force honesty without starting from personality.
They bring leaders back to accountability.
Is your CEO or executive leader asking the above questions without doing the scorecard work? Partner with them and make sure this work gets done and to avoid the biases if these questions start being answered without doing the work.
What CEOs and Leaders Often Get Wrong
Many CEOs think they are being kind when they protect an under-performer they know personally.
Their blindspot is these leaders are usually transferring the pain to everyone else.
The exec team feels it. The strongest performers resent it.
The company reorganizes itself around the weakness.
What happens next? Have you seen this?
Standards erode
Trust erodes
Culture erodes
Eventually the CEO or the leader loses credibility because people conclude that accountability is not real. It is biased.
The reverse is also true.
When a CEO or leader develops a negative bias against a strong performer, the company also suffers.
Don’t Confuse Discomfort With Dysfunction
Sometimes the person is too direct/blunt
Sometimes they are not politically elegant
Sometimes they are not easy and don’t just “get along”
Sometimes they are simply saying the truth faster than others want to hear it
But they are delivering the outcomes, modeling the right standards, and carrying the real weight of the role, the leadership team has to be careful not to confuse discomfort with dysfunction.
Not Just A “People Issue”. An Operating Issue
When leaders fail to take personalities out of the problem, they make compromised talent decisions.
Compromised talent decisions quickly become compromised operational execution.
What happens next, we all recognize:
Strategy slows down
Decision quality declines
Standards and equitable fairness goes out the window
Politics rise
Performance culture weakens
The best companies do not eliminate humanity from leadership.
They eliminate avoidable bias from role evaluation.
Back to the Role Scorecard:
The next time you are struggling with a person decision, try this exercise:
Write the role as if nobody is in it.
Describe the next 12 to 24 months of success.
List the outcomes, metrics, milestones, behaviors, and capabilities required.
Then ask yourself:
Would I confidently match this person to this scorecard?
Your job is not to protect your personal biases or narratives.
Your job is to solve for the role.
Do you need to coach the person?
Does it mean the role scope is just too much?
Dividing and conquering everything the person is trying to do?
It may mean replacing them.
But your leadership requirement is the same:
Great leadership is not about who you like. It is about what the role requires.
The key questions are:
Do you have the courage to act on it?
Do you have the right framework to act on it?
WRAPPING IT ALL UP
The next time you are stuck on a difficult people decision, do this:
Erase the person’s face, name, vision in your head
Write up “the seat”
Define winning
Failure
Key metric and milestones required
Behaviors
Leadership capabilities
Now put the person back into this scorecard and map the answers to the person.
That is what I mean when I say, “Take the personalities out of the problem”.
