Research from the Kellogg School of Management confirms what most people already feel instinctively: when it comes to performance, where you situate yourself matters.
Not just what you do.
Not just how hard you work.
But who you are surrounded by.
In a large technology firm, employees working within roughly 25 feet of a high performer lifted their own performance by around 15 percent. Same role. Same tools. Same hours. Different outcome. The proximity effect alone generated an estimated $1 million in additional annual profit.
Performance spreads.
But here’s the confronting part.
Low performers do more damage than top performers create upside. The data showed their negative impact can be twice as powerful as the positive effect of high performers. Not neutral. Not harmless. Actively destructive.
One low standard tolerated quietly erodes ten good ones.
Which reframes leadership entirely.
Leadership isn’t just about direction.
It isn’t just about motivation.
It’s about protection.
Protect the room.
Protect the standards.
Protect your people.
Because performance – good or bad – never happens in isolation. Attitudes transfer. Behaviours normalise. What you allow today becomes the culture tomorrow.
High performers raise the ceiling.
Low performers rot the floor.
And no amount of vision can compensate for a contaminated environment.
The best leaders understand this early. They don’t wait for numbers to dip or morale to collapse. They act before damage compounds. They curate proximity. They defend standards. They understand that culture isn’t what you say – it’s what people are exposed to every day.
If you want higher performance, start by asking a harder question:
What – and who – are you allowing your people to sit next to?
Because in the end, performance doesn’t just reflect individual effort.
It reflects the room you chose to protect – or didn’t.