5 Signs Your Top Performers Are About to Burnout
Every business Leader wants a Top Performer on their team. It’s your job as a Leader to find, manage, and develop the next leaders. If your team looks good, you look good.
When you have a Top Performer on your team it can be a huge relief. It’s one person on the team you can count on, not need to micromanage, and delegate without fear of poor reflection on you.
All that seems great, but if there is a lack of support and guidance, a Top Performer can be headed quickly into burnout. And the signs are not always obvious.
Having someone on your team that takes direction well, is a natural leader, self-starter and an overall go-getter makes life as their manager easier.
So what’s the problem?
How is any of this a bad thing?
When Too Much of a Good Thing is Bad
There are specific qualities that make someone a Top Performer including being driven, high-achieving, and accountable.
Those are all fantastic qualities when work is going well and the workload is manageable.
When a work environment isn’t conducive to creating work-life balance, a high-achiever could silently be heading towards burnout.
High-achievers are masterful at pushing forward even when feeling overwhelmed. Being driven to succeed can lead to discounting one’s own need to be less than super human and show any sign of perceived lack in ability to keep all the “balls in the air”.
Don’t let a smile on their face and a “All is good” response keep you from checking in.
Those coveted super-star qualities all have a darker side when someone feels overwhelmed, unappreciated, under-supported, overlooked, or in career jeopardy.
Driven can become overly competitive with oneself or others.
High-achieving can turn to over-achieving when the person feels their job is in jeopardy or perceived as being reviewed negatively.
Accountable leads to overcommitting to projects and people-pleasing.
You (and your business) have invested a lot of time and money on your team. Not only should you be checking in on your team as a caring human, it’s smart business to take care of your investments.
If someone this valuable is left to become overwhelmed, overworked, and overly stressed they may quit or need to leave for health reasons.
Here are five signs a High-Achiever may be heading towards burnout:
They stop communicating project updates to you.
If the workload begins to feel unmanageable, a high-achiever is uncomfortable communicating they are not on top of a project.
It feels like a failure so they may work even harder to try to “fix” all the problems on their own and lose sight that it is ok to get support.
Communication on updates may take on a more general overview or become less frequent.
2. They are first one into work and last one to leave.
To overcome an unmanageable workload, they will work even more hours to try to get “caught up” on projects. Skipping lunch, social interactions and meetings may also be key indicators they are overwhelmed.
You may consistently hear “I’ve got too much to do.” or “I’m just too busy.”
3. They are not sharing any personal information.
It’s not uncommon that someone may be private with their life outside of work, but considering most people spend more time with their work “family” than they do with their own, it is unusual to not know anything about your team’s personal interactions outside of work.
If there’s suddenly less being shared than normal, it could be that their work life is far overreaching into time with friends & family.
4. They are more tense, focused, and critical of themselves or others.
It’s natural that when a high-achiever feels they are not meeting all their goals they can get very serious and hyper-focused. A people-pleaser can become apologetic for things outside of their control. If someone with highly competitive tendencies feels like their reputation is being negatively impacted, they may start to uncharacteristically criticize other departments for causing the issues instead of trying to create resolutions.
5. They begin to seem distant or disengaged.
When a high-achiever is overwhelmed and under-supported they may go into survival-mode by avoiding additional workload or conversations that may lead them to feel they are letting themselves and their leadership down.
If they also feel overlooked and under-appreciated, there’s a good chance they are looking to leave. When someone that has the innate need to achieve and be recognized for those achievements, it eventually causes the thought that it may be time to find a new job with Leaders that match their values.
How to Avoid Losing Your Top Performers
So what can you do to support your Top Performer?
How do you avoid your best people leaving you?
Schedule consistent communication
Everyone is busy, but making time for your Top Performers is a good investment.
You don’t need to schedule a long meeting, but having a regularly scheduled chat (in-person or virtual) to see facial expressions, hear the tone of voice, and get a pulse on a person’s overall well-being allows you to get the whole picture of what’s going on and quickly identify when something is off.
Prove this is important by being reliable and consistent. Do not reschedule unless it’s business-critical.
2. Lead by Example with Time Management
High-achievers look to their Leaders for setting the example of time-management expectations. If you are consistently working longer hours than anyone else, they will assume you expect that of your team.
If you believe that working long hours is required long-term, that should be clearly communicated upon hiring your team.
I challenge this belief though. There are many studies showing that working long hours does not create better results, higher productivity and most definitely doesn’t create a healthier mental or physical work environment.
Encouraging your Top Performers to take breaks to recharge is just as important as motivating them to succeed.
3. Create a Safe & Welcoming Open Door Communication Plan
Along with having consistently scheduled chats with your team, it’s important to provide a way for your team to reach out for work & personal matters without feeling it will negatively impact their reputation.
This transparency is a two-way street. High-achievers like to be “in-the-know” as much as possible so they can determine how best to use their unique skillset to help their leadership succeed.
Sharing (appropriately & professionally) your own challenges and wins exemplifies what you consider important in your own career and sets the tone for your team to reciprocate.
4. Say “NO” to Non-essential Business Requests
Not only does saying “no” protect your team from an unmanageable workload, it again demonstrates strong time-management values.
As mentioned before, when a high-achiever is overloaded and overwhelmed they may continue to say “yes” to requests so others don’t see it as a sign of weakness or lack of team mentality.
Owning your schedule is a critical skill to teach your team and it begins with doing this yourself.
5. Be the Example of Healthy Work-Life Balance
It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of work. The urgent “fire drills” that pop-up and throw a work day into disarray.
A true Leader that is living a healthy balance between work and life outside of the daily grind can roll with those challenges. It’s important to set the example and also ensure your team understands this is the expectation for them as well.
Encourage “no contact” time-off.
Celebrate the small daily victories as well as the big wins.
Show appreciation for daily consistent reliable performance as well as Service Excellence.
Support mental-health days & breaks after a big project completion.
Understand that High-Achievers, though very self-sufficient, do need encouragement, guidance, and consistent leadership.
It’s easy to forget to spend time with your High-Achievers because they can be so efficient and autonomous. It’s what makes them so sought after in the hiring and promoting processes.
As much as you may not want to lose one of these Top Performers, sponsoring their career growth is necessary.
Asking them where they want to go in their career allows for clear direction and understanding for their career path and creates a symbiotic relationship.
Losing a great employee to a promotion may feel like a temporary setback, but it sets you apart as a Leader that develops people, not loses them to the competition.
Taking the time to communicate openly and clearly, invest in your people, and be the example of what a healthy, powerfully caring Leader looks like will keep your team productive, effective, and more personally and professionally successful than you even imagined.
I’m Lisa Pirinelli, a Career + Life Coach for high-achieving women determined to unapologetically live their best life.
Being driven to succeed professionally is an asset only when it aligns with your personal goals and successfully impacts your life.
Being the best only matters when you’re the best version of YOU.
Your goals. Your vision. Your life. Defined by you.
Coaching highly-driven women to successfully simplify their lives by clearing their minds of self-doubt, overwhelm, guilt, and fear allowing them to overcome obstacles so they achieve the goals that truly align with their vision for their life.
Be you. Authentically and Confidently.
