Our enterprise rainmaker crushes their sales numbers and easily passes GWC for the sales seat, but they constantly violate our core values and ignore internal systems. How do we handle a Right Seat, Wrong Person situation?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A Right Seat, Wrong Person scenario is one of the most toxic dynamics in a business. Because this individual performs well inside their functional seat, leadership often looks the other way while they trash company culture, mistreat colleagues, and ignore administrative standards.

In the EOS framework, keeping a Right Seat, Wrong Person will destroy your credibility as a leader. It sends an unmistakable signal to the rest of the company that your stated core values are purely decorative and that high revenue excuses bad behavior.

Use the People Analyzer to confront the problem objectively. This tool evaluates individuals against two distinct criteria: Core Values (Right Person) and GWC (Right Seat). Your rainmaker gets three Yeses on GWC, but fails the core values threshold. That means they are fundamentally the Wrong Person for the organization.

Schedule a dedicated one-on-one meeting outside the Level 10 Meeting. Present the People Analyzer results clearly. Give concrete examples of where their behavior violated core values, such as failing to document enterprise pipelines, treating delivery personnel poorly, or demanding special rules.

Give them thirty days to correct the behavior. Make it explicit that hitting revenue targets will not protect them if their behavior fails the core values bar. If they do not permanently align with the culture within that window, you must terminate them.

Every owner who finally parts ways with a toxic high performer discovers the same outcome: the rest of the team steps up, sales momentum recovers, and overall team performance increases immediately.