Why Treating Everyone The Same Hurts Performance

“Treat everyone the same” sounds like good leadership advice until you watch it drain the life out of a team. We kick things off with a quick, funny peanut butter detour, then turn it into a serious management lesson: when leaders smear praise, raises, and feedback evenly across everyone, they create the peanut butter effect. It looks fair on paper, but it quietly punishes effort, blurs standards, and teaches people that results don’t matter.

Tammy shares a story from waitressing that makes the point instantly: keeping your own tips rewards service and hustle, while tip pooling protects slackers and frustrates the people carrying the shift. From there, we dig into what fairness at work should actually mean in performance management, including when (and when not) factors like seniority should matter. Scott adds a key caveat: accountability only works when what you measure is fair and reasonable, and when you look at performance over a real time window, not just a last-minute burst before review season.

We also bring in the “energy vampire” idea and the assessment from our book, Chief Optimization Officer, to ask a tough question: are you breathing life into the organization or sucking it out? The big takeaway is simple and sharp: equal treatment can disable performance. Differentiated recognition, consistent feedback, and transparent metrics help you keep your achievers, develop your steady contributors, and stop rewarding outcomes that never arrived. If this hits home, subscribe, share it with a manager you care about, and leave a review. What’s the worst “peanut butter” policy you’ve seen at work?

To learn more about the energy vampire assessment, click here. 

To learn more about out book Chief Optimization Officer, click here.

Transcript

Karman 0:00

Good morning, Scott and Tammy. Good morning, Karman.

Scott 0:06

Yo.

Karman 0:06

Karman. So my first question for you this morning is I just want a rating of one to five. One being I do not even want to know that this exists. Like I do, I hate it. And five is I would have this every day if I could. So

Peanut Butter Ratings And A Setup

Karman 0:30

my question is, how do you feel about peanut butter?

Scott 0:33

Oh, you got it. Tell me the ratings again.

Karman 0:36

One, no. Five favorite food.

Scott 0:42

Uh three, yeah. Peanut butter three.

Karman 0:44

Yeah. So it has its uses. Yes.

Scott 0:49

For cooking, yes, that's it.

Speaker 1 0:52

And to go with chocolate.

Karman 0:53

But you don't like chocolate, Tammy. Is that how you make chocolate more acceptable?

Speaker 1 0:57

That's how I make chocolate acceptable. Peanut butter and chocolate. I eat chocolate. Two great tastes that taste great together. Absolutely. Taste great together.

Scott 1:08

That's why they're changing, they gotta change the formula back. Something can go search that one. It's a fascinating story.

Karman 1:15

It is. Well, my my question today relates to when managers spread things equally around on their team, like peanut butter. It's like the peanut butter effect for giving feedback. Every you know, everybody gets kind of the same level or raises. I've got this amount and I'm just gonna spread it evenly

The Peanut Butter Effect Explained

Karman 1:46

over everybody. What happens when managers treat everybody the same?

Tammy 1:53

Tammy Rogers doesn't work for them.

Karman 1:57

And that readers is the end of this episode. I hate it.

Scott 2:02

It's a cool question because it's it's unfortunately what we're taught sometimes. Right? We have to be fair, we have to treat everyone the same. It's bullshit. And and it's total bullshit.

Tammy 2:19

So when I was first a waitress, years and years, I was a teenager and I waited tables. And the first place that I waited tables, I got to keep my own tips. And I routinely made more money than everybody else. We would all have six tables, but I would routinely make more money, right? And I loved it because I would get tipped based upon my effort. And then, like two restaurants later, they

Tip Pooling And Why It Fails

Tammy 2:49

shared tips, and it really ticked me off because what happened is we had slackers and then we had really hardworking people, but at the end of the night, we just took the tips and divided it equally among all the servers. And I worked there for less than a month, and I was like, this is absolute like this is not okay. I am working harder, they are slacking off, and I don't want to share that. I want to get what I have earned. And guys, I was probably 16, maybe 17 back when I had that lesson. And ever since then, I have always looked at that and said, I would like to earn the way that I am treated. Okay. I don't want you to just give it to me. I am more than willing to earn it. And as long as you at that point recognize the gifts and the contributions that I'm making, I am perfectly happy and content. But if you actually diminish my contributions so that everybody's the same, I'm not going to be happy. And if you're also not going to give me feedback to help me get better, right? So, well, I'm she's like everybody else, that's fine, right? No, I still have this desire to achieve more. I have always hated that treat everybody the same. And the research actually supports the fact that it doesn't work, right? And Karman, you are one of the kindest, nicest, want to take care of everybody else. You are not competitive like I am in all of that space. But did you want to be treated like everybody else? Because you were not like everybody else either, even though you're nicer than I am.

Karman 4:39

No, I want I want what's coming to me in the best possible way. And I want to win. I don't always want you to lose, but I do want to win.

Tammy 4:48

So I think most people want to be seen and heard for themselves, right? Do you really just want to blend into the crowd? Do you really want to not be seen as an individual to just be a number? I don't really want to.

Karman 5:05

I don't want to ride anybody's coattails unless it's yours and Scott's.

Tammy 5:11

Well, Scott, I was it was a question to the two of you, but also rhetorically to others. How do you see it, Scott?

Scott 5:17

I want to be rewarded for my performance. Okay. Are you willing to accountable appropriately for my performance?

Tammy 5:24

I was gonna say, so you're willing for us to also kick your butt if you don't keep in the shape.

Scott 5:29

Now, I will I will also say that in my experience, the differentiation line is are you personally accountable or not? Those who are not personally accountable want it to be fair and want it to be spread. And uh, and well, why are they getting more? They get all the good stuff, they

Accountability Versus Complaints About Fairness

Scott 5:47

get all the time off, they get all the uh or right in my experience when there are policies that can also influence that. Like, so you think about seniority. Oh, I should get the best time off because I'm the most senior. I hate that too, right? And I think we need to be respectful of seniority. That is one consideration. Now, am I going to give just because someone worked there five more years than someone else? You know what? I would look at it and say, if performance is the same, then I probably am going to allow that person with more tenure because they've added more value over time to the organization. Well, here's a place that may be a deciding factor. So when I look at this, it's like there are probably some deciding factors here. But at the end of the day, for me, it's are you personally accountable or not? And people who are not are usually the individuals who will know we should share.

Tammy 6:48

And honestly, when we make some of these policy changes, those are the people who scream and yell and get mad, right? What do you mean you're gonna track my performance and put it up on the thermometer? What do you mean that you're gonna, you know, track how many widgets that I make compared to so and so, right? I mean, that they they get mad. And what's interesting to me is if I really look at the people that most of my career that I've hung out with, most of my career that I have hired, the individuals who said, go ahead and track my performance. And in fact, I want you to track my performance. Go ahead and see what it is that I'm doing and measure it, and then show me what my difference is from week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter. Those individuals are the individuals that traditionally have been the achievers. And those individuals traditionally are the people that I have actually preferred hanging out with, right? In that particular spot.

Scott 7:49

And I'm I may I think it's we should also just say we need to put a little kind of foundational statement in here.

Tammy 7:58

Okay.

Scott 7:59

I'm building on the assumption, which is dangerous, or the foundation that what we're measuring is fair and reasonable.

Tammy 8:08

Yes.

Scott 8:09

Like some measurement systems are like it really doesn't care. Doesn't really matter how well you perform, you're screwed. Okay. No, like all bets are off in those scenarios. But can we look at it and say, hey, are you delivering? And then am I looking at a big enough time window? I don't want to know about your performance yesterday.

Measuring Performance The Right Way

Scott 8:29

I want to know about your performance over time. You can say, Oh, yeah, I I did all these great things yesterday because I know performance review is coming. Well, no, what have you been doing the month before that and the month before that, and the month before that? Are you consistent in delivering, knowing that we all trip and all like so? To me, it's that piece of yeah, honestly, I I keep thinking about the vampire assessment.

Karman 8:55

Right.

Scott 8:55

Do they like peanut butter? I think so. Only if it has garlic in it.

Karman 9:02

But that piece, what is the vampire assessment?

Tammy 9:06

Are we sucking the life out of the organization, our team, the people that we work with, or are we breathing life into it? So energy vampires suck the life out of us, and every single one of us

Energy Vampires And The Assessment

Tammy 9:24

has met and worked with energy vampires. You can feel it when you're interacting with them.

Scott 9:33

And we'll put the link, we'll put the link to the assessment in in the in the show notes. But it is uh there, it's in our book, Chief Optimization Officer. It talks about, you know, what is your current performance? What is your feet, you know, what's your future performance? What's your what's the impact of how you act, behave, think, you know, so are you taking credit for things you've done two years ago? Are you getting better? You know, do you do you take ownership when you trip and fall and make a mistake? Do you blame others? It's like questions like that. And you start to think about those are typically the individuals who say, I want accountability, but what they're really saying in my experience is I want accountability for everyone else.

Tammy 10:17

But me, right? And that is a really interesting place, okay? Because if we are afraid of tracking measurement, accountability, feedback conversations, okay. The fact of the matter is we are probably not people who are looking at achieving, okay? Now, again, we're gonna go back to what Scott just said, working for a solid organization with a good boss, right? Not a perfect boss, not a perfect organization, but they're solid, okay?

Keeping Superstars By Differentiating

Tammy 10:53

If you are the person who is achieving and trying and adding value and finding ways to expand and become more and willing to listen to tough messages and figure out how you can do things better in the future, all of that, right? All of that is saying I am not going to be average. I am actually trying to reach the next level of my competence and value. I am trying to continue to expand my potential and my contributions. And in that particular spot, that person, if you treat them like others who don't have that drive, who don't have those interests, those individuals are the ones who say, you're not recognizing what I can do and what I'm capable of doing and what I want to do in the future. And then another organization that will absolutely value that drive and that growth. And then what happens if that's not your organization, you get stuck with just kind of middle-of-the-road performers. Your superstars are leaving. And in the end, that has a huge impact on whether the organization is successful. Because I can tell you, superstars, they don't necessarily have to have the spotlight on them all the time. You're awesome. They don't need people necessarily patting them on the back and you know, like bringing them on stage and handing them, you know, big old bonus checks or something. What they really want traditionally is for them to be recognized as someone who's making a difference. And in the end, if you treat everybody the same and not everybody's making the difference, somebody's not telling the truth.

Scott 12:42

Well, you're you're wasting resources and you're holding the organization back.

Tammy 12:47

Yeah.

Scott 12:47

You're you're disabling performance when you treat everyone the same.

Tammy 12:52

Absolutely. So while I like peanut butter, okay, I want to know that my little bit of smear peanut butter on my bagel is a little thicker than others if I deserve it, and a little thinner than others if I deserve it. Give me what I have earned, not the same.