When High Performers Make Good Leaders Feel Bad

Leaders need skills, tools, and courage to manage these in-demand — and often demanding — business-critical workers

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

For many high performers, the drive to achieve at work is similar to what animates marathoners and climbers of Everest. It just feels good to do hard things. Pushing the boundaries of their capabilities and contributing to the fullest of their capacity is their drug. Organizations ostensibly value productivity. But some organizations struggle to capitalize on a high performer’s capacity and intrinsic drive.

Counterintuitive though it may seem, high performers are some of the most difficult individuals to lead. For example, keeping ahead of a high performer’s craving for challenge and achievement requires planning. Planning requires time. For leaders managing a portfolio of projects, programs, and people, managing a high performer can be exhausting. These individuals often finish projects faster, setting the pace for others, and can be standing at the finish line for leaders and teammates to catch up. While they wait, they get bored. High performers hate being bored or unproductive. Thus, leaders must respond to the high performer’s pace, and be ready with new work to keep the engine of productivity running smoothly. Unlike steady performers, whose consistent pace and expectations are less taxing on a leader’s time, high performers are high maintenance.

In my experience, as both a high performer and a leader, successfully leading and retaining high performers requires understanding each individual’s unique why.

Understanding the why of high performance

In the short term, the motivations of a high performer may not seem important. After all, the nature of a high performer is to get the job done and achieve the desired results. But no leader in any organization should expect a high performer to continue achieving if their need for recognition, status, increased responsibility, and/or more absorbing and challenging opportunities for contribution aren’t met.

Discovering if a high performer is primarily intrinsically or extrinsically motivated helps determine the mix of fuel needed to support their…