Over the past few weeks, I have found myself wrestling with a leadership question that sounds remarkably simple:

When you are trying to build a high-performing organization, do you choose talent or culture?

For the past month, I've been back on the soccer field helping rebuild a university soccer program with aspirations of competing again at the national level.

We've started well. We've won games. We've brought some of our successful alumni back to inspire our players. Our university president and senior leaders have addressed the team. We've worked through our mission, vision, values, purpose and goals.

We've done all the things you're supposed to do. I'd love to tell you that means everything is now smooth sailing.

It isn't.

Building—or rebuilding—a high-performance culture is hard.

One of the hardest parts is deciding how much you are willing to tolerate from talented people who aren't quite aligned with the culture you're trying to create.

The Seduction of Talent

Every leadership book tells us to choose culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Hire for character. Protect the locker room. Get the right people on the bus. I believe all of that, but here's the uncomfortable part:

When you're rebuilding an underperforming organization, you also need talent.

You need people who can score goals.

You need people who can close deals.

You need people who can solve difficult problems.

You need people who can deliver when the deadline is Friday.

That's when leadership gets complicated because sometimes the most talented person you can lure to your team when it hasn’t been performing well isn't the best culture fit.

We've all seen it.

• The salesperson who brings in enormous business but leaves bodies in their wake.
• The brilliant executive who gets results but makes everyone afraid to speak in meetings.
• The star athlete who can change the game but somehow always seems to make the team a little less of a team.

Organizations, especially those who have been struggling, tolerate them for one reason:

They bring home the cabbage.

I've been guilty of it, too. I start negotiating with myself, “He's not that bad.” “She'll come around.” “Once we start winning, they'll buy in.” “The team understands how important this person is.”

There's a cost to that bargain.

The Hidden Cost of a Culture Killer

Michael Housman and Dylan Minor studied more than 50,000 employees across 11 firms and examined the organizational impact of what they called ‘toxic workers.’ One of their conclusions should get every leader's attention: avoiding a toxic employee created substantially more value for an organization than adding another superstar performer. Their cost-benefit analysis estimated the benefit of avoiding a toxic worker at roughly $12,500, compared with about $5,300 from adding a Top 1% performer.

I have invested a lot of time over the past year searching for a blue-chip recruit (or two or three). I’ve stretched the limits of our budget to acquire. I’ve made accommodations to seal the deals.

Sound familiar?

Now, only six weeks into the season, I’m looking in the mirror and reminding myself that we should spend more time protecting the organization from people whose performance comes at everybody else's expense.

Culture has to Become Behaviour

Here's another lesson I've been reminded of this fall:

You can't hold people accountable to culture if you haven't defined what culture looks like.

Words aren't enough to post on your website or locker room wall.   

Integrity. Excellence. Teamwork. Respect.  

The real question is what do those words look like at 6:15am on a Tuesday morning?

For our soccer program, we're trying to make culture behavioural.

• First there. Last to leave.
• Pick up the water bottles even when they aren't yours.
• When somebody needs help, don't wait to be asked.
• When your teammate gets selected ahead of you, genuinely support them.
• When you come out of the game, don't make your disappointment become a visible tantrum.
• When the equipment needs carrying, the best player carries it, too.

The All Blacks famously call this idea “Sweeping the Sheds.”

No job is beneath you.

Captains and senior leaders swept the locker room, picked up trash did the little things that needed to be done.

I don't want an elitist culture. I want our most talented people doing some of the hardest and least glamorous jobs, and none of this is unique to sports.

What does culture look like in your organization?

• Do you volunteer when something needs doing?
• Do you help a colleague who is struggling?
• Do you share credit?
• Can you disagree without becoming disagreeable?
• When someone else gets promoted, do you celebrate them—or secretly hope they fail?

Culture isn't the values written on the wall. Culture is the behavior we repeatedly reward, reinforce, accept or tolerate.

Stay tuned for part two next week.