Surgical Strike : Toxic Abberant STAR Employees Managing the 'Star Out of Line' abberant genius in the team is a major leadership challenge. This is the classic 'cross- road stress test' that the leader has to pass ... one between his committment to performance on the one hand and his desire to have people reflect the desirable behaviours, on the other. Each one of us must have experienced abberant brand of Stars on teams that we may have worked on. On all such occasion, people would look upto the leader to kind of test his authentic belief either in performance of these STARS v/s actual reflection of desirable work behaviours. What should effective leaders in such situations indeed do ? I would say try serious feedback and Coaching in the first instance. Lucky if it works. Ideally, such Stars should be tolerated & even protected for the value of their potential & unique contributions to the team. But if the arrogance of such Stars totally becomes disruptive, unethical or abusive of the system and its negative impact far outweighs the benefits (Schmidt) , then let the alarm bell for surgical action ring. When Stars with clear 'Out of Line' behaviours become toxic they need to be extricted thru a surgical strike before it becomes too late for the business to cope with.