Should you fire a high-performing but toxic employee?

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Episode runs 20 minutes.

The two easy answers that both fall short

Most leaders reach for one of two responses when a valuable but difficult person becomes a problem. The first is to tolerate the behaviour because the results are good. The second is to move them on because culture matters. Tommy argues that neither is good enough on its own, because anyone who has actually managed people knows the decision is rarely that clean.

“It’s not simply should we keep them or get rid of them. The better question is, can we keep the value they create without continuing to pay for the damage around it?”

Headline performance is not the same as net contribution

The first trap is calling someone a high performer just because one number looks good. A salesperson tops the leaderboard while delivery spends three weeks fixing problems they never agreed to. A technical expert solves what no one else can while making junior staff feel stupid and keeping knowledge trapped in their own head. The headline is easy to see. The real cost usually is not.

“Sometimes a person looks more valuable than what they really are because no one is measuring what they cost.”

When a strength becomes a shield

The same strength that makes someone valuable externally is often the strength they use internally to avoid the standard. The strong salesperson points to the scoreboard. The analytical person uses logic to win. The technical expert buries you in complexity. The client favourite reminds you of the relationship. Suddenly the manager is no longer talking about behaviour, they are trying to prove they understand the person’s world well enough to challenge them.

“That is the strength shield. When someone uses the thing they are genuinely good at to protect themselves from feedback.”

Don’t fight on their turf: the jujitsu reframe

If you try to win in their strongest field, you will likely lose. Instead of trading blows, Tommy suggests using the force of their own argument to move the conversation somewhere more useful. When they ask “do you want me to hit my target or not?”, the answer is not a trap to accept.

“Yes, I want the target hit and I want the target hit in a way the business can deliver repeatedly. I don’t want to make a choice between performance and standards. The question is how we do both.”

Respect the strengths, remove the exemption. That is the reframe.

The five steps to work it through

Rather than deciding from fear, frustration or a slogan, Tommy walks through a cleaner way to test whether the value can stay and the damage can reduce.

1. Identify the strength and the shield. Before the conversation, work out this person’s extreme strength and how they might use it to control the room. Prepare for the real conversation, not the ideal one.
2. Move from the incident to the operating model. Do not spend the conversation proving yesterday was wrong. Reframe their argument into a design brief for next time: speed without chaos, client confidence without over-promising, an escalation rule sales can use without bypassing delivery.
3. Build alignment through micro-agreements. Connect the conversation to the bigger picture of a business that can scale, then stack small agreements that are hard to reasonably reject. The aim is mutual understanding, not a big admission of fault.
4. Turn the agreement into if-this-then-that behaviours. Vague promises to “communicate better” are not strong enough. A standard becomes real when it tells people exactly what to do next time, written down as a shared operating standard, not a punishment.
5. Follow up and review the evidence. Book the review when you make the agreement. Did they do what they agreed? Did you? The follow-up is where the agreement becomes evidence.

“A standard becomes real when it tells people what to do next time.”

The net contribution test and dependency risk

When you follow up, stop relying on feel and run the net contribution test. What did this person genuinely produce, and what did they cost that never shows up on their personal scorecard? Is the team performing because of this person or despite them? Would you tolerate the behaviour if the number was only average? If the honest answer is that you cannot challenge them because the business depends on them too much, you have found a different problem: dependency risk.

“If one person has become too valuable to manage, the business and the leader of that team has allowed value to become leverage.”

Part of the plan then becomes reducing the dependency: share the client relationship, document the process, cross-train another person, build the next layer of capability.

The real question to ask

Do not tolerate poor behaviour just because someone gets results, because that teaches everyone else the standard is negotiable. Equally, do not rush to the culturally popular answer and lose real commercial value. The best outcome is not that the person leaves. It is that they keep creating value and stop creating unnecessary cost around it.

“The real question is, can we afford to keep protecting the exception?”

About Lead to Grow

Lead to Grow explores the people principles behind high-performing businesses. Hosted by Tommy Sim, the podcast focuses on leadership, performance, culture and decision-making, with practical insights leaders can apply immediately.

New episodes are released regularly. If this episode helped you rethink how you weigh performance against behaviour, share it with a leader who may need it. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or subscribe on YouTube for future episodes.

The Resilience Blind Spot: Why Strong Teams Need Strong Foundations

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Episode runs about 24 minutes.

Resilience is not a Victorian dad with a clenched jaw

Tommy opens by taking apart the version of resilience most of us inherited. It is the grit your teeth, push through, keep going model. Useful for a moment, but far too thin for modern work and for leading a team well.

He offers a sharper definition. Resilience is the ability to successfully adapt and respond to challenges and difficulties, rather than letting them defeat you. Notice the words adapt and respond. That is very different from merely enduring pain until you go numb.

“But if the only model of resilience is a Victorian dad with a clenched jaw, it is not enough for modern work, and it is definitely not enough if you are trying to lead a team well.”

The blind spot: leaders forget they are part of the environment

A lot of leaders look at a team under pressure and quietly ask, are these people not tough enough? They might phrase it more politely. They lack resilience. They are a bit fragile. But underneath sits the same question, and it puts the problem safely over there, with the leader as a commentator sitting above the game.

The uncomfortable thought is that the leader may be helping create the conditions that weaken the team. That is the blind spot Tommy wants to name.

“The resilience blind spot is not just that leaders forget the environment, it is that leaders forget they are part of the environment.”

Foundation one: constitution

Constitution is simply the strength and energy a person has available to meet the demands in front of them, physically, mentally and emotionally. Leaders underestimate it because we turn into backseat psychologists and miss that a problem can be partly physiological. Someone is sharper one week and reactive the next, and we jump to their character rather than the fact that they are under slept, over caffeinated and running on fumes.

In that depleted state, little problems feel bigger, patience is lower and confidence drops quickly. Then the leader looks at the reaction and calls it weakness.

“Well, maybe because at that moment they are weak. Not morally weak, not genetically weak, just depleted.”

Battle hardened, battle weary, battle worn

Many leaders assume only battle hardened exists, so when someone looks battle weary or battle worn they add more pressure and expose them to more difficulty. But hard work alone does not harden people. Challenge only builds strength when it is paired with clarity, support, learning, standards and recovery.

“People do not become battle hardened simply because work is hard.”

Foundation two: perception

Perception is how people interpret what happens. Same event, different reading, completely different response. And teams learn how to interpret pressure partly by watching the leader. If the leader catastrophises every issue, the team learns to catastrophise. If the leader hunts for someone to blame, the team learns that mistakes are dangerous and defensiveness is smart.

Tommy frames it through the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. The Circle of Concern is the giant bucket of everything you can worry about and cannot change, and it is a very unhappy place to live. The Circle of Influence is smaller, and it is where agency sits. A good leader still acknowledges reality, then moves the conversation towards what the team can actually do next.

“There is no point complaining from the circle of concern about your team living in the circle of concern. That is just hypocrisy with a better job title.”

Foundation three: actions

The actions you take before things go wrong create the conditions in which people are more or less likely to cope. Clear priorities, a useful operating rhythm, one to ones that are actually about the person, specific recognition, feedback that helps rather than vents, and training on the hard parts of the role. Build the rhythm when things are normal, because people fall to their level of preparation when the pressure hits.

“When the pressure arrives, people tend to fall to their level of preparation, not rise to the level of your motivational speech.”

Calibrate the challenge, do not remove it

This is not a case for wrapping people in cotton wool. Removing all pressure can make people less capable, because they never get to develop strength, judgment and confidence. Tommy uses stress inoculation versus stress saturation. Inoculation is exposure at a level that helps you adapt. Saturation is exposure that overwhelms the system.

“A good leader does not avoid challenge. A good leader calibrates it.”

Strong teams are built, not born

If you look at your team and think they lack resilience, start with diagnosis rather than judgment. Are they genuinely fragile, or are they depleted, unclear, or stuck in reactive work that gives them no sense of progress? Then ask the hardest question. What foundations have we built that would make it realistic for this team to be strong?

“Weak teams are not always made of weak people. Sometimes they are made of capable people inside weak conditions.”

About Lead to Grow

Lead to Grow explores the people principles behind high performing businesses. Hosted by Tommy Sim, the podcast focuses on leadership, performance, culture and decision making, with practical insights leaders can apply immediately. New episodes are released regularly.

Mentioned in this episode

• The Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence
• Stress inoculation versus stress saturation
• High value activities, covered in a future episode
• The Lead to Grow episode on giving feedback

How to Hire Salespeople and Build a Sales Talent Pipeline

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Episode runs 21 minutes.

The question every business leader asks

“Can you refer me to any good salespeople in your network?” It is a question business leaders ask all the time, and it is easy to see why. It sounds efficient, practical, a shortcut to growth. The thinking goes: if I can just get someone proven from the industry, someone who knows the acronyms, the players, the objections and the customers, then they can hit the ground running and solve my problem quickly.

Sometimes that works. But most of the time it is not a sustainable way to build a strong sales team, because what often sits underneath the question is not a hiring strategy at all.

“It’s urgency. It’s wishful thinking. It’s hoping that there’s this ready-made answer walking around in the market who can come in and save the day. All of our problems will be solved once we get this unicorn.” Tommy Sim

Fantasy one: they’ll bring their whole network with them

The first myth is that an experienced salesperson will bring a heap of leads from their existing contacts. To see why that rarely holds, flip it around. Imagine you have a supplier your team knows how to work with, your systems are built around their process, and your customers know what to expect. Now the salesperson from that supplier leaves for a competitor. Are you really going to overhaul your operations, retrain your people and take on the risk of switching, just because Bob moved?

Usually, no. You might take Bob’s call. You might even hear him out. But you are unlikely to blow up a working relationship for one familiar face. The idea that a salesperson simply brings the customers with them is overstated.

It only really works where the service is mostly the person, highly personal and relationship-led, like a physiotherapist, a psychologist or a finance broker in some contexts. When the customer is buying from a business with a broader offer, systems, delivery capability, brand and pricing, they are far less likely to follow one individual across. There can also be contractual issues around client ownership and data that get forgotten in the excitement.

Fantasy two: “they’re a gun salesperson”

Even when people insist someone is genuinely a gun, it is worth asking what they actually mean. Very often they saw one thing that looked impressive. Tommy describes assessing a candidate everyone insisted was a sure thing. When his team at Inject asked the simple question, “what is it exactly that has you so convinced this person is good?”, it came down to a single well-delivered product presentation.

Presenting well matters in sales, sometimes a lot. But sales is usually much more than presenting: prospecting, qualifying, building trust, uncovering needs, navigating objections, asking for commitment, following through, resilience, and doing the boring but valuable activities that create pipeline. Someone who can present a familiar product nicely after ten years of repetition is not the same as someone who is broadly excellent at sales.

Fantasy three: the target tells the whole story

“If they were salesperson of the year and hit target, that’s enough for me.” Not quite, because targets mislead when stripped of context.

“A result without context can create false certainty, which leads to a decision that is convenient in the moment only.” Tommy Sim

Were they a true hunter generating new business from scratch, or a farmer growing inherited accounts? Did they have the strongest support team and the most recognised brand? Were they riding a rising market where everyone was winning? Did one unusually large deal blow their number out, masking a weaker year? And if they came from a well-known brand, were customers taking meetings because of the badge on the shirt rather than the person wearing it? Move that same person to a lesser-known business and you finally see whether they can really sell.

The point is not to avoid experienced industry hires, some are genuinely excellent. It is to avoid confusing familiarity, favourable context and borrowed credibility with genuine, transferable sales capability.

The urgency trap

Because everyone else has the same idea, this person will be fielding multiple offers, which manufactures a sense of urgency: if other people want them, they must be good. Make that your only strategy and you put yourself in a weak position, dependent on finding ready-made talent externally. You are more likely to overpay, harder pressed to admit a wrong call, and more likely to tolerate bad behaviour because you are scared to lose them, while hearing “that’s not how we did it at ABC Limited” on repeat.

What to do instead: separate selection from recruitment

Split the problem into two parts. Recruitment is how you attract the right people into your opportunity. Selection is how you work out who is actually right for you. Start with selection, because until you know what “right” looks like, your recruitment will be vague.

Define the role properly, not just the title and target

People say they need “a salesperson” as if that is one generic thing. It is not. Some roles are pure hunters creating new opportunities from a blank page. Others are farmers growing existing accounts, deepening relationships and expanding value over time. Many are hybrids. Some are highly transactional and high-volume; others are slow, consultative and complex, demanding strong negotiation or deep discovery. Sometimes the person you most need to sell to is not even the end customer but a key influencer.

So define what success actually looks like in the seat. Picture a strong performer: what do they do each week, the key conversations they handle, the resistance they face, the customers they deal with, and the part of the sales cycle that matters most. Then analyse your existing team and look at who is genuinely succeeding and why, based on what they actually do in practice, not what you assume they do. If there is no team yet, you need to be that role model.

“If you cannot describe the transferable behaviours required in the role, then you’re likely to hire based on convenience, and convenience in hiring often becomes pain later on.” Tommy Sim

Select for attitude, aptitude and behaviours

People hire off the resume and qualifications, but fire off attitude, aptitude and behaviours. Sales is the clearest example: the resume can look fantastic, big names, good titles, strong numbers, and tell you very little. Be careful, too, with a consistent 18 to 24 month tenure pattern, which can mean the same cycle repeating: a strong first impression, a slow realisation that the substance is not there, pressure, then a move on.

Use valid and reliable tools. Ask behavioural questions, “tell me about one of your most successful sales experiences,” or “give an example of when you prospected and saw it through to closure,” and use the CAR or STAR method to learn what they actually did. If they describe the biggest deal in the company’s history, do not be impressed by the result; probe how they got it. Often the biggest deal was a customer who wanted to buy anyway, and the salesperson’s job was not to mess it up.

Ask probing questions without leading: “what were the biggest challenges along the way?”, “what was your approach to objection handling?”, “what did you do to get past the gatekeeper?” Transferable behaviours are far more valuable than one lucky win. On top of this, use valid psychometric assessments to gauge raw cognitive ability and, importantly, whether their natural behaviours align to your role, not their old one. If their natural energy is far out of alignment, you will be constantly chasing them.

Build your own pipeline of sales talent

Now recruitment. Once you know what you are looking for, the most sustainable answer is to build your own pipeline. It is not fast or instant, and it takes patience and discipline, which is exactly why many businesses will not do it. But done well it transforms the quality and sustainability of your sales team over time.

In practice that means identifying the feeder roles into sales, hiring earlier for attitude, aptitude and behaviours, and looking for the right raw ingredients: achievement orientation, resilience, communication, curiosity, coachability, rapport, willingness to learn and the energy to do the hard yards. Then actually develop them, with a clear pathway, a career development framework, explicit progression milestones, and remuneration structures that reward progression and performance properly. Give them coaching and exposure in feeder roles where they learn the product, the customer and your way of doing things before carrying a full quota.

“Instead of buying whatever the market throws at you, you’re building your own context. They learn your standards, your language, your method, your expectations.” Tommy Sim

This is not the only approach. You may still hire experienced people at a senior level when it makes sense, but external hiring becomes one lever rather than your only one. It matters most in two situations: when you want to deliver a premium service, and when you are trying to challenge the status quo in your industry. If your strategy is to do things differently, people deeply attached to “how we did it at ABC Limited” can be more of a drag than a help.

Are you being unkind to your future self?

“Can I just get this salesperson?” is really two questions: do I feel an urgent need to solve this now, and is this particular person actually the right answer? They are not the same. Short-term urgency manufactures certainty, so we tell ourselves a quick hire is the answer, just get a warm body in the seat. That creates a cycle: hire quickly, the fit is not quite right, six months later you are frustrated, eighteen months later they are gone, and the same panic hits again. What looked like action was really just pain relief.

“The best time to start building your internal pipeline of sales talent was five years ago. The second best time is today.” Tommy Sim

Key takeaways

Mentioned in this episode

• Why You Keep Hiring the Wrong Person and What to Do Differently

About Lead to Grow

Lead to Grow explores the people principles behind high-performing businesses. Hosted by Tommy Sim, Managing Director of Inject HR, the podcast focuses on leadership, performance, culture and decision-making, with practical insights leaders can apply immediately. New episodes are released regularly. Follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or subscribe on YouTube.

Connect with Tommy Sim on LinkedIn. Follow Inject on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Why Good Sales People QUIT!

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Episode runs 33 minutes.

The lie we tell ourselves about why salespeople leave

Almost every business owner has told themselves the same story. A good salesperson resigns. They mention a bigger offer. The leader concludes it was about the money. It rarely is.

“When a salesperson leaves and says it was for more money, don’t just take it on face value. More often than not, money is the justification. The real reason is the environment they experienced before they even took that call.” Tommy Sim

The on-the-surface logic is hard to argue with. Salespeople generate revenue. They get a share of it. They chase commission. They spend it on cars and watches and holidays. They leave for a bigger offer. So of course it’s about the money.

It’s not. Money is a scoreboard. The game is something else.

Money is the scoreboard, not the game

Tommy uses a basketball analogy that lands hard. Imagine someone tells you that you scored 20 points today, but you didn’t actually score them. They were just allocated to you on the scoreboard.

Technically the result looks good. Would that make you want to keep turning up?

For almost everyone, no. The score matters because it reflects something real. That we made a difference. That we used our abilities. That we were in the right team, in the right league, doing what we’re best at.

The fancy car, the watch, the holiday. They’re not the point. They’re signals. They tell the salesperson and the people around them: I’m winning, I’m capable, I’m where I should be. Take away those signals and the money does very little work.

The SCARF model: the five social drivers behind retention

David Rock’s SCARF model is the cleanest framework Tommy has come across for explaining the underlying mechanics. Our brains constantly scan for social threats and rewards. Five drivers decide whether someone leans into an idea, a leader, or an organisation, or starts quietly working against it.

Driver	The question the brain is asking	What it looks like in sales
Status	How do I compare to others here?	Pay, title, recognition, who gets consulted, who gets the big accounts.
Certainty	Do I know what to expect tomorrow?	Constant commission changes, shifting performance messages, unstable career paths.
Autonomy	Can I make the calls in my own patch?	Sudden micromanagement, activity-tracking that feels punitive, controls without context.
Relatedness	Am I in or out of the group?	Time on the road, “the rest of the business doesn’t get my world”, feeling like an island.
Fairness	Am I being treated fairly?	Account allocation, workload, who gets the inbound leads, how colleagues are treated.

When those things are supported, people engage, contribute and cooperate. When they’re threatened, people become defensive, resistant, or disengaged. Often without consciously realising why.

Seven practical things sales leaders do to keep good people

The framework is the diagnosis. These are the things to do about it.

1. Monthly 1:1s about the human, not the pipeline

Tommy is firm on this one. The right kind of monthly 1:1 is not a pipeline review. It’s a separate conversation about the person.

“On a scale of one to 10, how much have you been enjoying your work lately? Whatever number they give you, explore it. What are the good things that make it up to a seven? What’s holding it back from being a 10?”

Resignations look sudden to the leader. They almost never are. Salespeople have usually been checking out mentally for months. Monthly 1:1s catch the signals before they harden into a decision.

2. Recognition, done specifically

Recognition is free, relatively unlimited, and most leaders don’t use it. The trick is specificity.

Tommy describes a moment where a salesperson landed a significant deal after months of work and brought it to the leadership team. The response was “good work”. Nothing else.

Recognition isn’t about making people feel good. It’s about reinforcing the behaviour you want to see again. Notice the behaviour, name the impact, choose the right setting. Make it proportionate. Match it to their self-identity. And work alongside them on the big deals so you actually have something to recognise.

3. Get incentives right

Incentives are a double-edged sword. They can support retention if they’re attractive compared to the market. They can destroy fairness if one person gets easy accounts and big commissions while another grinds for half of it.

Three rules:

• Keep it clear, fair and stable. Too many changes create uncertainty that becomes untenable.
• Don’t forget base salary. Commission is the upside. Base is where people interpret what the organisation thinks they’re worth.
• Use status rewards. Trips, exclusive training, industry events. If everyone gets it, it’s a perk. If only top performers get it, it’s a status signal.

4. Build a real sales career path

The two common mistakes:

1. Promoting your best salesperson into people management when they’re not built for it.
2. Putting your head in the sand and offering no career growth at all.

The better path: define multiple levels of salesperson with real, tangible differences. Different job titles. Different salary bands. Senior meetings. Mentor roles. Internal and external industry expert positioning. Mentors are different from managers. Mentors share knowledge and guide others without owning that person’s performance. That’s a much smaller leap for a senior salesperson than full people leadership.

“Build them up so that everybody wants to poach them, then treat them so well that they never want to leave.”

5. Give them the tools to be successful

None of the above works if the salesperson is trying to operate inside a system that’s fundamentally broken. The leads aren’t there. The CRM is messy. Marketing collateral is outdated. The sales process is unclear.

Tommy lays out an eight-point audit. Your answers should be “no” to all eight:

1. When they joined, did you talk about a strong pipeline or referral partnerships that hasn’t matched the reality?
2. Are they working with outdated or non-existent marketing collateral?
3. Is the CRM underdeveloped, poorly implemented, or effectively non-existent?
4. Is the sales process clunky or unclear?
5. Are salespeople mostly left to work out the sales strategy for themselves?
6. Are they expected to know the products without proper training and figure out the target market alone?
7. Is there no clear example of what good selling looks like in your business?
8. Is there a lack of operational, customer service or admin support, so they spend too much time doing work that takes them away from selling?

Every “yes” is the business quietly showing the salesperson the exit.

6. Build a sense of belonging

Tommy calls this the “doctor in the small town” phenomenon. A doctor who moves to a small country town isn’t just another person. They become the doctor. Trusted. Visible. Not interchangeable.

Compare that to a doctor working in a huge hospital system, one of hundreds. Same work, very different psychology.

Sales teams feel exactly the same difference. When accounts get reassigned frequently, when commission keeps changing, when leadership only talks targets, when the company takes credit for wins and the salesperson takes the blame for losses, people start thinking, “this place will keep going whether I’m here or not.” Once that thought lands, leaving becomes very easy to justify.

The fix: treat every salesperson like the small-town doctor with their clients. Real ownership of accounts. Regular consultation on what they see in the market. Wins felt across the business. Internal teams treating the salesperson like an internal client.

7. Protect psychological safety

This is the one that can undo everything else. Backstabbing within the team. Public humiliation in meetings. Dressing someone down in front of others. Assigning blame when a deal falls over. Leadership making crazy promises in the market and pushing the pressure onto the salesperson.

It doesn’t need to be a repeated pattern. Sometimes one moment is enough.

“It’s like an injury to their brain. It’s like being punched in the face emotionally. They still show up physically, but psychologically they’re gone.”

Protecting psychological safety isn’t about being nice. It’s about protecting the environment that allows high performers to stay and do their best work.

Key takeaways

Mentioned in this episode

• 9 Rules for Good Commission Schemes
• Raise Your Floor to Become a Better Leader

About Lead to Grow

Lead to Grow explores the people principles behind high-performing businesses. Hosted by Tommy Sim, Managing Director of Inject HR, the podcast focuses on leadership, performance, culture and decision-making, with practical insights leaders can apply immediately. New episodes are released regularly. Follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or subscribe on YouTube.

Connect with Tommy Sim on LinkedIn. Follow Inject on LinkedIn and Instagram.