Before we get into how to retain top performers, let’s first break down what I mean by top performer.

We can tautologically say that our top performers get us our best, sustainable, and consistent results. Yeah, no shit.

That’s not a helpful way to identify top performers because it’s just circular. We want to know what kinds of people are likely to generate those results. And we’d like to have indicators of this beyond merely the results themselves for two reasons:

• So we can predict how a person will do with new challenges

• So we can avoid gaming the results

The Traits

First, your top performers are intelligent, but they’re not merely intelligent. There are plenty of people who know the correct answer, but fail to deliver.

Second, your top performers are industrious, but they’re not merely industrious. Someone can strive to deliver and produce results, but they may be out for themselves, not the team.

Third, your top performers are honest and humble, but they’re not merely honest and humble. They may be honest, but be gullible or naive. Alternatively, they take so long to build trust in others that they work fine alone, but can’t work in a group. They’re not capable of constructive conflict.

Fourth, your top performers are discerning, but they aren’t merely defined by this.

Instead, we must look for all four. Top performers tend to have these traits:

• Smart

• Driven

• Good

• Decisive

You may already have one of these folks (or a few) in your organization. But just because they exist, doesn’t mean you’d know about them. Real Top performers don’t go on publicity tours touting their results. That means you won’t always see a top performer leaving.

You may see some turnover, and then, magically, everything starts to get unglued. That’s your only sign that you’ve lost a top performer.

Why They Leave

Oh, this section is easy. Burnout. The answer is burnout.

Okay… so what am I supposed to do about it?

Corporate retreats, public kudos, work-life balance seminars—not a single one of these is going to help you prevent burnout in your top performers.

Why top performers burn out is due to two reasons:

1. Organizational dysfunction

2. Skill will mismatch

These are both required for top performers to leave. Let’s take these on in turn.

Organizational Dysfunction

Ultimately, smart, driven, good, decisive people want to work with other smart, driven, good, decisive people.

And because they are good people who assume the best in others, they routinely assume they are working with these people. They are not.

This causes the following phenomena to occur: good, driven people don’t like to see any responsibility dropped, or any standard lowered. And because these aren’t overly disagreeable people, their go-to strategy to prevent this is to do the work themselves.

They aren’t bitter about this. They assume that everyone is pulling with all their might, and that any responsibility that’s dropped is solely due to someone else being overwhelmed and unable to do it. So, of course, they help!

They’re good people, remember.

What happens over time is precisely what you’d expect. More and more responsibilities roll their way. They take on more and more. This is hidden for a while, because, as you remember, they’re smart and driven. They’re capable of taking on way more than you’d think!

Then boom, something snaps, they hit their limit, and they’re gone.

Skill Will Mismatch

“Hold on,” I hear you saying. Which is like… really crazy, right? That I can hear you? How do you do that? Is it telepathy?

“Hold on,” you continue, “if they’re so smart, how could there be a skills problem?”

There isn’t! It’s a will problem.

Burnout, and the Cure

We normies with our slightly above-average intelligence, our pretty reasonable work ethic, our “I’m trying to be a better person” values system, and our tendency to fight or fawn, we go through the skill-will curve in a very predictable, slow way.

We get a little discouraged, but then we try harder, pick up a little more skill, and get our sea legs under us. Over time, things that were difficult for us in the past are now doable, and in the meantime, since this can take months if not years, we get a steady supply of corrective feedback — both critical and positive.

We’re a 747, and if we have a long enough runway, we can get airborne.

Top performers are fucking rocket ships, dude.

They blow past all the skill problems so quickly that no one even thinks to help them with the will problem.

No one is giving positive feedback because they’re convinced the top performer knows how good they are. But how could they? They just picked up these skills last week!

And sure, they take on more and more. But usually without the fanfare a normie might get. Additional responsibility for normal people comes with a promotion, a clean discussion of new roles and responsibilities, and an understanding from management on how far you’ve come in career growth and where you’re headed.

None of that happens with top performers. They may start one day and, two weeks later, be responsible for twenty crucial items. The management system often isn’t prepared to move this fast.

Worse, due to tall poppy syndrome while managers may be to slow to realize how fast a top performer is knocking shit out, their rivals are not. A whole host of folks live like parasites within organizations and derive their sense of purpose solely from making sure talented people don’t outperform them.

So your top performer isn’t getting any positive feedback, but they certainly are getting plenty of backhanded remarks. Of course, they know they are new, too. They assume everyone picks things up as quickly as they do. So when they hear a backhanded remark, they believe it’s true. They think they’re a low performer.

In many cases, your top performers leave in shame, convinced they were failing at their jobs.

This is because you didn’t set up systems to sustain their confidence as quickly as their skills were growing, and because you tolerate the kind of person who looks at talent with jealousy rather than respect.

The Cure?

Well, it’s baked in there. My usual advice is not to suffer toxic people a second longer than it takes to discover them. These are the folks who spend every day managing to undermine every single honest person in your organization. Don’t put up with it.

If you manage to do that, and few do, the second step is to keep a better track of actual results, assign responsibility yourself — humble, hard-working people rarely will seek credit. You’ll have to discover what they did yourself. And both limit the amount of work that flows their way, while also accelerating the amount of positive feedback they get.

Do you have a top performer who left your organization? Email me, I’d love to hear about how you responded.