Greg Stevenson identifies three problems high performers face: they won't delegate because they need to control outcomes, ambiguity makes them decide too fast or freeze, and they don't see how others actually experience them. For senior leaders trying to scale.
The 3 sticking points. In my experience, the performing trap shows up in 3 specific ways. The first is difficulty delegating genuinely. High performers often delegate the task but hold on to the outcome so tightly that the person they've delegated to can't actually develop. They check in too often, They course correct too quickly. They take it back when it's not going the way they would do it. The result is a team that is dependent, not capable, and a leader who is doing more than they should be and being assessed as someone who can't scale. The second sticking point is discomfort with ambiguity. High performers like clarity. They like to know what success looks like. Work towards it efficiently, and deliver it on time. But the higher you go, the less clarity there is. The problems are more complex, the answers are less obvious, and the pace of resolution is slower. The high performer who hasn't developed comfort with ambiguity tends to move too fast, making decisions before they're ready in order to resolve the discomfort of not knowing. Or they freeze, overwhelmed by the complexity. Either way, it shows. The 3rd sticking point is the hardest one to name, and the most common. It's a gap between how you think you're landing with the people around you, and how you're actually landing. High performers tend to be confident. That confidence is well-founded, and they have the results to back it up. But the same confidence can create a blind spot. A tendency to assume that the way they see things is the way things are. A difficulty hearing feedback that doesn't match their self-image. And at senior levels, that blind spot is visible to everyone above them, even when they can't see it themselves.
