The cardinal sin of liking your coworker? It clouds your judgement.
The employee everyone loves gets another pass. The capable colleague with an annoying habit gets sent to coaching. And the candidate you click with feels like the right hire…before you’ve defined what success in the job requires.
This week on Management Muse, Cindi Baldi and Geoffrey Tumlin unpack three “sins of liking” that distort hiring decisions and performance evaluations. Through consulting stories and a narrowly avoided $11,000 photograph, they show how easily likability becomes evidence of competence, familiarity passes for fit, and “Can they do the job?” becomes “Do I like them?”
They also examine why hiring someone “just like” your last star can backfire, and how sparing a favorite honest feedback can cost them the chance to improve. Before your next hire, promotion, or performance review, consider: Would the same evidence convince you if you liked the person less?
What you’ll learn about likability bias, hiring decisions, and fair performance feedback:
- The halo effect and feedback paralysis: Why managers struggle to give honest feedback to people they like, often carrying underperformers at the cost of team morale.
- When it’s tricky, we default to question substitution: How our brains inadvertently swap difficult evaluations for easier questions.
- Hiring people you click with? Watch what your team starts missing. How similarity bias can concentrate familiar strengths while leaving other capabilities uncovered.
- The last person was great. Their replacement may need to be different. How changing conditions and supporting teams complicate the search for another star.
- Your team watches who gets a pass. How extra slack for favored employees can undermine trust and raise questions about everyone else’s standards.
- One great interview can be a great performance. Why Cindi and Geoff recommend looking beyond a single meeting before deciding someone is the right hire.
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Want to Go Deeper? Check Out Our Recommended Reading:
- Rivera, Lauren A. “Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms,” American Sociological Review, vol. 77, no. 6, Dec. 2012, pp. 999–1022, https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122412463213
- Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 2011, https://link.amazon/B03UINqCm
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Questions Answered About The Sins of Likability at Work:
What is the halo effect in employee evaluation?
The halo effect occurs when a favorable overall impression influences judgments about someone’s specific abilities or behavior. Cindi Baldi and Geoffrey Tumlin discuss how liking an employee can become an assumption that the employee is also good at their job. They also describe a related management problem: recognizing a performance gap but withholding useful feedback because the person is well liked.
How does similarity bias affect hiring and team composition?
Similarity bias can lead evaluators to favor candidates who remind them of themselves or other people they value. In the episode, similarity includes shared interests and ways of thinking as well as visible characteristics or backgrounds. Cindi and Geoff caution that repeatedly choosing familiar people can leave a team with similar strengths and unaddressed needs; similarity itself does not establish suitability for the work.
What is question substitution in a hiring decision?
Question substitution means answering an easier question in place of the harder question you actually need to resolve. Geoff illustrates this with hiring: “Who is likely to succeed in this particular job?” can become “Who do I like?” The hosts connect this process to Daniel Kahneman’s work and argue that unclear selection criteria make the easier question especially tempting.
Should a replacement resemble the person who previously succeeded in the role?
Only where the relevant qualities still match the job’s needs. Cindi explains that copying a successful predecessor can overlook changes in customers, responsibilities, or the wider environment. Geoff also describes the opposite mistake: reacting to a predecessor’s weakness by choosing someone at the other extreme, without adequately considering the rest of the role.