September 2026
We all have our favorite songs we play over and over. There's that favorite sweater we reach for, the weeknight meal everyone in the house loves. Being your favorite is often a matter of preference, ease, familiarity, or some combination of the three. There is nothing wrong with any of that. Favorites make life feel like home.
At work, though, the stakes are different.
We have our favorite people too. They might be the super smart, efficient, confident, and likable ones (did I just give myself away?). Or they might be the loyal and compliant ones who agree with you even when you’re wrong (ring any bells?). The point is that favorites at work are rarely chosen on the basis of pure merit. They’re chosen on the basis of comfort, and comfort is not the same as merit. Predictability is not the same as performance.
I've noticed this in myself, and I've noticed it in many of the leaders and managers I've coached over the years. We unconsciously lean on our favorites because we like the predictable outcomes. The trouble is that this leaning comes at a cost, and the cost is paid by everyone else on the team.
The Hidden Cost of the Comfortable Choice
A former colleague of mine had recently stepped into a new leadership role. He inherited his team, which was its own kind of challenge, because none of these people had been chosen by him. There were those he liked and those who rubbed him the wrong way, and it was easy for him to point to the fact that he hadn’t picked any of them.
Two of his most senior direct reports represented the dichotomy clearly. The one he liked, and went to most often, was the one most like him in background and thought patterns. The other had the same tenure and a strong track record of results, but the interaction was less comfortable. He found himself avoiding her, going around her, slowly shifting visibility and opportunity toward the colleague he found easier to be around.
I pointed out that the strained relationship might be his doing, not hers. His sentiments were palpable even when he said nothing out loud. Strain between two people usually cuts both ways. That “ick” energy is felt by both parties.
Feedback Is Not Optional
Here is the conviction at the heart of this piece, and I want to be clear about it. Feedback is not optional, but rather it is an obligation a leader has to their people. It is an act of courage, care, and integrity, regardless of whether you like someone or not. The leaders and managers who only invest in their favorites are putting everyone else at a disadvantage. Sometimes that disadvantage is intentional, which is bias for all intents and purposes, and sometimes it is just habit. Either way, the cost is the same. People who could have grown didn’t, because no one told them what they needed to hear.
You Are Owed More Than Silence
If you’re reading this and you’re not the favorite on your team, I’m not telling you to wait for your manager to figure it out. I'm telling you to recognize when the silence around you isn't neutral. When the stretch assignments keep going to someone else. When the feedback you receive is thin or generic or absent. You're owed more than that, and you're within your rights to ask for it. Name what you need. Ask for the conversation, and don't mistake your manager's discomfort for your own deficiency.
Now back to my colleague. To his credit, when I held the mirror up, he was willing to look. He didn’t suddenly enjoy working with the second senior report, and I didn’t ask him to. What he did was stop withholding the feedback she had been waiting for and the visibility she should have had. The relationship between them didn’t become warm, but it became fair. And fair, in a leadership role, is the floor, not the ceiling.
Time to Look in the Mirror
So here is your audit - and take a moment with it.
Picture your favorites at work right now. Not the abstract idea of favorites; the actual faces. Who came up first? Who didn’t come up at all?
Now ask yourself a few questions, and answer them honestly.
Are your favorites the people most like you in mindset, background, interests, communication style, the way they move through the world?
What feedback have you withheld from someone who is not on the favorites list? What growth have you owed them and not delivered? What stretch assignment have you handed, again, to your favorite person?
And the harder question. Are you aware of what makes people gravitate toward you, respect you, want to work with you? Are you equally aware of what might cause others to avoid you, push back on you, or quietly disengage? Most of us know one side of that ledger and not the other.
The Work Starts Within
We all came into this work with innate temperaments, histories, the people we naturally click with and the people we have to work harder to understand. None of that is a moral failing. The failing is in refusing to look at it. The work is to expand the range of what is workable for you, so that the people on your team are developed based on what they’ve earned, not on whether you find them easy to be around.
A team where some people grow and others quietly stagnate is not an accident. Someone is choosing it, and if you are the leader, that someone is you.
The choice begins with what you’re willing to see, in others and in yourself. The work, as always, starts within.
Favoritism is one of the quieter ways politics operate at work. There are other ways, and most of them go unnamed, which is exactly what makes them so effective - at least for some. Later this month I am hosting a free webinar on navigating office politics without compromising who you are. If you have ever watched an opportunity go to someone else and could not name why, this one is for you.
Save your seat.
Sending love and light,
Ginny
