You Think You’re Being Understanding. Your Team Calls it Favouritism.

Issue 08

By Debbie Lawrence

Read Time: 7 minutes

The conversation she didn’t see coming

It was a Tuesday afternoon when Yolanda’s husband pulled her aside.

He waited until the last technician had grabbed his work order and headed out. Until the phones had gone quiet and the office was just the two of them. Then he closed the door.

“We need to talk about what’s happening in the office.”

Yolanda set down her coffee. Her husband was also her business partner in the plumbing and heating company they ran together. He saw everything. When he used that tone, she listened.

“Yolanda, the four of them — Alex, Garth, and the others — I don’t know how many of them feel it, but there’s a real sense that the rules aren’t the same for everyone. They think you’re playing favourites.”

She stared at him.

“How? I’m harder on Alex than anyone.”

He nodded. “Exactly. Alex feels like she’s held to impossible standards. Garth has no idea his work isn’t acceptable because you’ve never told him. And the other two are watching both of them, trying to figure out what the actual standard is. They can’t because they’re getting different signals from the same role.”

That landed hard.

Alex and Garth did the same job. Accounting and administration, keeping the back office running while the plumbers and technicians handled everything in the field. Out there, the standards were unmistakable. The pipe was sealed or it wasn’t. The system was up to code or it wasn’t. Nobody in the field wondered what “good enough” meant.

In the office, Yolanda had been running on a completely different system. It was an invisible one that existed only in her head.

She was harder on Alex because Alex was strong and could take it. She was easier on Garth because Garth was still building his skills and she didn’t want to discourage him.

I’m meeting people where they are. That’s what good leaders do.

Except the other two people in that office were watching both of them and drawing their own conclusions. And what they saw looked exactly like favouritism.

A clarity problem wearing a fairness mask

Yolanda didn’t have a favouritism problem. She had a clarity problem.

The standards only lived inside her head, which meant no one else could see them. And when people can’t see the standard, they watch each other to reverse-engineer the rules. What they saw in that office was Alex getting pushed hard, Garth getting a pass, and no obvious reason for the difference except the people themselves.

So they filed it under favouritism. Because what else would you call it?

Why leaders do this (with good intentions)

Yolanda’s pattern is one I see constantly. A leader has a strong performer and a struggling one in the same role. She holds the strong one to a high bar because she trusts them and wants to challenge them. She softens the bar for the struggling one because it feels kind. She’s managing personalities instead of leading to a standard, but she doesn’t see it that way.

It usually comes from one of three places.

“She can handle it.” You hold your strongest people to higher expectations because you know they’ll deliver. It feels like respect. What it does is load extra weight onto the people already carrying the most. They notice. They start asking, quietly, why they keep reaching when the person beside them doesn’t have to.

“He’s trying.” You lower the bar for someone who’s visibly working hard because demanding more feels unkind. What that person hears is that your best is good enough. They never find out it isn’t, not until you’ve run out of patience and the feedback lands like an ambush, after months of silence.

“Just this once.” You make an exception for someone going through something difficult. Then another exception for a different reason. Then a third. The standard stops being a standard. It becomes a negotiation instead and your whole team is watching every single one of those negotiations, drawing their own map of what the rules actually are.

All three responses come from a good place. All three also lead to the same outcome: a team that doesn’t know what’s expected, can’t trust that standards mean anything, and quietly concludes that who you are matters more than what you produce.

The thing many leaders get backwards

Here’s what Yolanda had to untangle.

Fairness is applying the same standards consistently, and then individualizing the support you offer to help people meet them. Those are two different things. Conflating them is where everything breaks down.

The standard is what the role requires. It doesn’t change based on who’s in the role, how long they’ve been there, or what they’re going through.

The support is what you offer to help someone meet that standard. This is where you get to be human. You can redistribute their workload, offer more check-ins, or adjust the scope of their work temporarily.

For Yolanda, the office standard wasn’t complicated. Invoices go out accurately and on time. Client records stay current. Calls get returned the same day. That applied to Alex and it applied to Garth, because they held the same role. What could change was how much support Garth got while he was building his skills.

Firm on standards. Flexible on support.

When you flip that, when you go easy on the standard and rigid on what kind of support you’re willing to give, you don’t create kindness. You create a team that can’t trust you, can’t trust each other, and can’t trust that their effort means anything.

Who actually pays for unclear standards

Let’s be specific about who was paying the price in Yolanda’s office.

Alex was being held to a higher bar than anyone beside her. She didn’t feel respected for it. She felt used. At some point, people in that position stop calculating whether the extra effort is worth it. They just start looking for somewhere else to take it. Remember, your best people always have options.

Garth was being protected from feedback that would actually help him grow. He thought he was doing fine. He wasn’t. The longer that goes unaddressed, the worse the conversation becomes when it finally happens. And it always eventually happens.

The other two people in that office had a front-row seat to all of it. They’d done the math. They could see that accountability seemed to follow the person, not the work. That’s the definition of favouritism, regardless of the intention behind it.

Best people leave. Lowest performers stay. Everyone else operates in a low-grade haze of confusion, and you spend your energy managing the fallout, wondering why the team feels so fragile.

What clarity looks like

After working through this with Yolanda, she called a meeting with her office team. With all four of them present, she said something like:

“I want to get clear with all of you about what I need from this role. I realize I’ve been inconsistent, and that’s not fair to any of you. Here’s what the standard is for everyone doing this work…”

She named it. She was specific. She said it out loud. For the entire office.

Garth was surprised. He genuinely hadn’t known. Alex exhaled in a way that said she’d been waiting for that conversation for a very long time. The others finally had something to aim at besides guesswork.

That’s what clarity does. It gives people a real target. One they can see. One that doesn’t move depending on who’s shooting.

Clear is kind. We’ve established that. The harder part to sit with is how unclear is unkind. Letting people work hard toward a standard they can’t see, protecting them from feedback they need, and then being surprised when everything falls apart. That’s not compassion. That’s avoidance with good intentions.

You’re allowed to have standards. Clear ones. Consistent ones. Ones that apply to everyone doing the same work.

That’s finally being fair.

Your turn

This week, ask yourself one question about every person doing the same job:

If I asked each of them what “excellent” looks like in their role, would they all give me the same answer?

If the answer is no, or if you genuinely don’t know, that’s your work.

Pick one standard that currently lives only in your head. Say it out loud, specifically, to the people it applies to. Say it to all of them and do so at the same time if you can.

“Here’s what I need this to look like. For everyone.”

Then hold it. For everyone.

Comment below and tell me: what’s one standard you’ve been keeping to yourself?

I read and reply to every response. And I love hearing from you.

P.S. If you would prefer to listen, check out The Compassionate Leader School Podcast where each week on Wednesday an episode drops where I read and expand upon that week’s issue of The Permission Slip. You can listen here.