Don't Reward Top Performers With More Work

We know that some of our team members can be relied on to do things really well.

The problem is, other people in the office probably know it, too. Top performers tend to be popular go-to folks for getting things done. But we risk burning them out if we overload them.

Ask your people about their workload before giving them more work, especially if you are not the only person who can assign stuff to them. If they already have a full week, either give the task to someone else or discuss what can be pushed back or delegated to others from their existing workload.

Grow your other team members! You can coach and mentor them, but you can also grow that top performer’s influence by asking THEM to teach a few other people in the office how to do things up to their high standard. Make sure you help them free up the time to do this, by the way—don’t just pile on this “one more thing.”

If you have someone on your team who can’t be trusted to do tasks well, you need to get that person training immediately—don’t make the top performers carry that deadweight. If they are not able to improve with training, then they do not belong on your team. Being short-staffed after they leave might even improve productivity, since the other team members don’t have to redo that person’s work products.

(image source: https://instoremag.com/bad-manager-memes/?slide=16)