What are the signs of favouritism in the workplace?

Favouritism rarely arrives as a headline scandal. It tends to seep into a workplace through small exceptions that accumulate until a parallel rulebook takes shape. Many teams claim a merit culture, yet the proof lives in what happens when the clock is running and stakes are high. In those moments, leaders lean on trust more than data. Trust itself is not the problem. Unexamined trust is. When a manager assigns more faith to a chosen few, they often begin to ration information and access in ways that tilt outcomes long before performance can speak for itself. Some employees receive richer context, faster feedback, and better aligned projects, while others deliver solid results with less support and more friction. The difference compounds over quarters and can shape entire careers.

You can usually spot the pattern at handoff moments. Watch who gets the hard assignments that stretch skills and build reputation. Observe how success criteria are written and whether they stay fixed when the favourite runs into trouble. Policies seldom announce bias explicitly. Instead it appears in calendar invitations that only reach certain people, in quiet side chats that rewrite the brief, and in success measures that shift after the fact. A product manager who shipped late may receive praise for vision and another shot at scope, while an equally capable peer is framed as unreliable for a similar miss. The story becomes self reinforcing and none of it looks like an official policy. It looks like leadership judgement, which makes it harder to challenge.

False positives do much of the heavy lifting. Vanity signals such as airtime in leadership meetings, a growing list of cross functional threads, or tags on high visibility initiatives are taken as proof that the favourite is indispensable. The logic sounds neat. If a person is in every important room, they must be the glue. In reality the causality often runs the other way. They are in every room because someone with power nominated them as the safest pair of hands, and access itself becomes the advantage. Meanwhile, strong builders spend time on unglamorous work that removes risk and unlocks delivery. Their contribution can be quieter, so their influence is undervalued even when their impact is larger.

If you want to know whether favouritism is present, begin with pipelines rather than opinions. Track how stretch roles are nominated and which criteria actually determine eligibility. Note who previews a board deck or a strategy memo before the official review and how that inner circle came to exist. Study the flow of performance feedback. Some people receive early and gentle guidance that lets them adjust while the cost is low. Others learn of concerns only when reviews are final and consequences are immediate. Unequal timing rigs the game clock. A few get the chance to pivot in the first quarter. The rest receive the score at the buzzer.

Inconsistency in enforcement provides another clear signal. One employee misses a deadline and receives a supportive coaching plan. Another misses the same kind of deadline and gets a reputation for unreliability. One team runs a small off roadmap experiment and is celebrated for initiative. A different team takes a similar risk and is reprimanded for misalignment. When rules bend for some and snap for others, the culture converts from performance to patronage. People learn quickly which rules are real and which are theatre. The best performers can sense when the next two cycles of recognition are already earmarked for a select few, and they begin to plan their exit. Leadership often frames those departures as culture fit issues. More often they are capital allocation issues, where capital means attention, scope, and trust.

Forecasting behaviour exposes the same dynamic. If a favoured owner can reset targets without consequence, then numbers turn into a brand statement rather than a contract with the business. Slippage from the favourite is described as market volatility or dependency risk. Slippage from others is framed as execution weakness. That narrative difference shifts budget, headcount, and influence before anyone notices. Over time the organisation ceases to run on a single standard, and the favourite’s outlook hardens into conventional wisdom that no one is rewarded for challenging.

Compensation and title decisions reveal a more tangible layer. Two people can hold the same scope while carrying different titles, or they can deliver similar impact while receiving very different equity refreshes. Explanations often cite negotiated entry packages or discretion within a band. In plain language that means the system amplified the leverage of those who already had leverage. Discretion has value, but it needs to be auditable. If the business can point to clear impact evidence for differentials, trust grows. If not, discretion becomes another name for proximity bias.

Escalation paths amplify the pattern. Certain people can route around process because their issues land directly in rooms where decisions are made. Others must queue and watch their work stall. Leaders may draw the wrong conclusion and ascribe superior judgment to the person whose escalations always get airtime. In truth that person may simply have superior access. Access begets influence, influence begets resources, resources beget wins, and the wins are then used to justify the initial access. A neat flywheel emerges that has little to do with open competition of ideas.

Hiring brings these effects to scale. Referral heavy funnels feel efficient and often appear to correlate with quality. They also replicate the networks of whoever the favourites are, which can narrow the team’s perspective and reduce its resemblance to the user base. The sign to watch is the short list that keeps converging on alumni of the same companies or members of the same social circle. Diverse sourcing takes more time and energy, yet it protects the organisation from monoculture debt that will later slow product discovery and weaken decision quality.

It is important to acknowledge that the favourite is not necessarily the villain in this story. Often the person in the fast lane is competent, hardworking, and an effective communicator. In a tight window they may be the right choice for the toughest work. The problem begins when a temporary solution becomes a default answer. The same person starts to absorb too many critical paths, which raises single point of failure risk and suppresses the growth of the broader bench. In other words, unbalanced allocation can slow the organisation even when the favourite is strong.

Repair work must be operational rather than symbolic. Announcing that merit matters changes little. The playing field improves when success criteria are frozen at the start and any changes are timestamped and shared with stakeholders. Preview rights should belong to roles rather than individuals. If early feedback on a plan or on performance is valuable, it should be formalised as a rule that applies to anyone in that role. When a person receives a high leverage project, leaders can write a short rationale that explains the decision and the expected development outcome. If the rationale cannot survive a paragraph, the allocation is probably a rationalisation of proximity rather than a bet on evidence.

Measurement also needs to shift from one time wins to repeat value creation. Track how often a person produces useful outcomes per quarter, and account for the complexity of dependencies required to deliver those outcomes. Favourites often sit near high visibility efforts with many contributors. Untangling the true share of ownership requires calm accounting of who made which decisions and who moved which constraints. A cleaner nomination process helps too. Stretch roles should be awarded through written nominations that reference clear impact evidence rather than quiet taps on the shoulder. Calibration should function as a real challenge to line manager rankings. If calibration ends with the exact same list that came in, it is a rubber stamp, not a safety valve.

The most difficult shift is personal. Senior leaders like to believe their read on people is sharper than any process. Sometimes that is true. It is also biased by convenience and by the relief one feels when a familiar operator makes life easier. Strong leaders design systems that can argue with their instincts. They want to be right, and they also want to be corrected when their pattern of allocation becomes self referential. If nothing in the organisation can challenge how scope, context, and trust are distributed, then leadership has created a club, not a company.

Finally, pay attention to the conversation in group settings. When debate drops away after a favoured voice speaks, the team’s innovation velocity begins to trail its storytelling velocity. The difference does not show up next quarter. It appears when the roadmap turns into a museum of untested assumptions. By then the problem is not only cultural. It is a product problem that arrived through the side door of culture. People stop bringing brave ideas because the outcome looks pre decided. That is how talent drains quietly into places where the rules feel real.

The path out is firm and boring. Make trust testable. Keep discretion, but leave a paper trail that connects decisions to evidence. Stabilise the definition of success and change it only in public. Grant access by role, not by friendship. Reward repeat value creation more than presentation gravity. Apply rules when it is inconvenient, not only when it confirms the easy narrative. In doing so, leaders protect the culture they believe they have and give the best people a reason to stay long enough to build something lasting.