What does the term top performer mean to you?
A conversation I had years ago with a newly promoted executive stayed with me, popping up at moments often unexpected.
Meaningful but wildly undramatic, the reason I found myself returning to this story is because it captures a common and supremely challenging transition that high-performing leaders face.
An executive was hired as a senior individual contributor and rapidly promoted into a leadership role overseeing a globally distributed team. Their career was a case study of superior performance, achievements, and results.
They genuinely cared about helping people succeed. In our conversations, they shared that they enjoyed coaching, sponsoring talent, and creating opportunities for others.
However, leading a team was a new challenge and they were frustrated.
Their team seemed hesitant to approach them directly, and requests for recognition or incentives were relayed through an intermediary manager. They had little interaction with individual team members and didn’t understand why.
As their story unfolded, I began to get an inkling as to the reason.
Since they stepped into the role, their team’s overall work quality and output had increased significantly, and yet still fell well below their own output as an individual contributor.
They shared that they’d been told they had “exceptionally” high expectations, but they didn’t see the point in rewarding people for effort that didn’t rise to their own level of performance.
My response was this:
“If someone on your team was able to consistently perform at your level, they would be in your role and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
It’s easy for new people leaders to get hung up on the “top performer” mentality – especially those who’ve been labeled as superstars throughout their career.
The trap leaders fall into is assuming exceptional should become the baseline. Top talent, by its nature, represents an extremely small percentage of the workforce.
If everyone is a top performer, then no one is.
Even on high-performing teams, some stars shine brighter. People naturally contribute at different levels and leadership isn’t about expecting everyone to perform identically.
We talked about calibrating expectations without compromising standards. It’s not about lowering the bar, but about helping each person raise it by recognizing individual contributions and empowering growth.
Later, the executive and I reconnected. They shared that our conversation had shifted their perspective on performance and recognition. They still believed recognition should be meaningful and earned, but they began measuring success more equitably, in ways that continued to challenge the team while recognizing accomplishment and growth.
In their words, the result wasn’t an overnight transformation but a quiet shift.
Team members began stopping by throughout the day. They reached out individually instead of going through intermediaries. Conversations became more frequent and relationships began to develop.
I think about this story often because it so clearly demonstrates that disengagement rarely happens without context. Before assuming a team is disconnected, reserved, or unmotivated, leaders should ask whether they’ve created an environment people want to contribute to.
Exceptional performers often become exceptional leaders, but only when they stop trying to build copies of themselves and instead build trust and empowerment.