Metrics Don’t Become Toxic by Accident
- Sarah Gruneisen
- Feb 10
- 5 min read
They become toxic when we forget who people are
I want to begin with a conviction of mine, not a framework, not a leadership trick, but a belief shaped by years of leading, coaching, and sitting with people in moments where judgment would have been easier than understanding.
I don’t believe in controlling people.
I believe in the light and potential that emerges when people are met with trust, context, and clear boundaries.
I don’t believe people need control.
I believe fear-based systems do, and they mistake control for safety.
This belief matters, because the way we design systems reveals what we believe about human nature.
And metrics are one of the clearest mirrors of that belief.
The quiet betrayal hidden inside “objectivity”
Metrics feel safe because they feel impersonal.
They promise neutrality.
They promise fairness.
They promise protection from favoritism.
Numbers don’t argue back.
Numbers don’t show vulnerability.
Numbers don’t ask you to look at yourself.
But as Igor articulated, and as I’ve seen repeatedly, metrics are never neutral. They are always interpreted inside a story.
And when context is stripped away, fear steps in as the narrator.
Not because leaders are malicious.
But because fear fills the vacuum when meaning is missing.
When measurement drifts from curiosity to judgment
Most leaders don’t intend to harm.
They are under pressure.
They are accountable for outcomes.
They want to understand what is happening in complex systems.
So they ask for visibility.
And this is where nuance matters.
Metrics are useful.
They help us see patterns.
They help us notice drift.
They help us ask better questions.
But only when they are held in the right frame.
Without noticing, a line is crossed.
Metrics stop being signals for learning
and start becoming verdicts on worth.
People feel watched instead of understood.
Teams feel evaluated instead of trusted.
Energy shifts from contribution to self-protection.
This isn’t a character flaw.
It’s a predictable human response to environments that replaced trust with suspicion.
Metrics as instruments, not instructions
One thing I deeply appreciated in this conversation is that metrics were never positioned as evil.
They were positioned as instruments.
An instrument does not tell you what to play.
It does not judge the musician.
It does not decide the outcome.
It gives you information.
Metrics, when used well:
💚 surface trends, not rankings
💚 invite inquiry, not defense
💚 support reflection, not punishment
💚 compare a team to its past self, not to others
In the right context, metrics help teams say:
“This is interesting. What do we make of this together?”
In the wrong context, they say:
“Explain yourself.”
Teams know immediately which one they’re hearing.
Why comparison is the most dangerous spell
One of the most destructive practices in complex systems is comparing teams.
On the surface, it looks fair.
In reality, it erases context.
Different teams exist for different reasons:
🔥 some stabilize
🔥 some experiment
🔥 some absorb complexity
🔥 some enable others to move fast
Different dragons guard different domains.
And yet leadership lines them up and asks which one breathes the most fire.
This isn’t rigor.
It’s false equivalence dressed up as objectivity.
And it’s how organizations accidentally dismantle their own nervous systems.
A dragon-world analogy (because this matters)
Imagine a kingdom protected by dragons.
🐲 One dragon guards the mountain pass, slow, steady, immovable.
🐉 Another patrols the skies, fast, alert, always scanning.
🦎 A third tends the villages, unseen until something goes wrong.
Now imagine the ruler announces:
“We will measure you all by how many enemies you burn per day.”
🐉 The sky dragon looks impressive.
🐲 The mountain dragon looks inefficient.
🦎 The village dragon looks useless.
So the village dragon is dismissed.
And the kingdom doesn’t fall to invasion.
It rots from within.
Because the dragon that prevented collapse
was never meant to be measured by spectacle.
This is what happens when we compare teams without context.
We don’t remove “low performers.”
We remove the dragons holding the system together.
The myth of the dangerous majority
Here is where I want to be very clear about my worldview.
In the general population, truly malicious intent, what psychology might call dark triad behavior, is rare.
Most people are not trying to manipulate, dominate, or deceive.
They are trying to belong, to contribute, to do meaningful work without being diminished.
Even those who carry darker dragons, 🖤 control, 🖤ego, 🖤 fear, behave very differently in non-intimate environments like work.
With:
❤️🔥 clear boundaries
❤️🔥 shared norms
❤️🔥 visible accountability
❤️🔥 and fair consequences
those dragons can be contained.
They do not need domination.
They need structure.
When we design systems as if everyone is dangerous, we don’t reduce harm.
We manufacture it.
Single-loop learning feeds the wrong dragon
Single-loop learning thrives on metrics.
It asks:
“How do we optimize this step?”
And the dragon of optimization nods approvingly.
More dashboards.
More KPIs.
More pressure on the last 20%.
This dragon is not evil.
It is afraid.
Afraid that if we zoom out, we’ll have to admit:
🔥 some things no longer make sense
🔥 some metrics have outlived their purpose
🔥 some decisions were right once, but wrong now
Double-loop learning does something braver.
It looks the dragon in the eye and asks:
“What are you protecting, and at what cost?”
That question feels threatening only to leaders who confuse control with safety.
Context is what allows potential to emerge
Visibility without context feels like surveillance.
Visibility with context becomes insight.
Context explains:
💚 why a metric exists
💚 what question it was meant to answer
💚 when it should be retired
💚 what invisible work sits beneath it
Context reminds us that people are not data points.
And when people feel understood, something remarkable happens:
They stop hiding.
They stop gaming.
They start owning.
Not because they were forced
but because the environment allowed their better nature to surface.
My conviction, stated plainly
I don’t believe in controlling people.
I believe in the light and potential that emerges when people are met with trust, context, and clear boundaries.
I don’t believe people need control.
I believe fear-based systems do, and they mistake control for safety.
Metrics can support that belief.
Or they can contradict it entirely.
The difference is not the tool.
It’s the story leadership tells about human nature.
🐉 Dragon Insight, The dark dragon of fear
Every organization has dark dragons.
The dragon of fear.
The dragon of control.
The dragon that whispers:
“If you loosen your grip, everything will fall apart.”
This dragon is not evil.
It is trying to protect.
But when leaders build systems to appease that dragon, they dim the light of the others.
Real leadership does not slay the dark dragon.
It tames it, with boundaries, wisdom, and trust in what people can become.
Because when leaders stop assuming the worst in humans,
they stop building cages.
And when cages disappear,
people don’t become dangerous.
They become capable.
That is the difference between a system ruled by fear
and a system protected by wisdom. 🐉
Comments