In this talk, the speaker argues that the Great Resignation can be mitigated by stopping the systematic overuse of high‑performing employees, who are at high risk of burnout. Citing a study that 42% of companies have high performers less engaged than low performers, he illustrates how managers repeatedly dump urgent projects on their star workers, creating a cycle that makes the toughest jobs fall on the best talent. To break this, he proposes two simple questions before assigning work: (1) Could the task serve as a growth opportunity for a middle performer? and (2) Can the task be delayed without harming outcomes? He references another study where 65% of respondents said most of their work could be postponed. By delegating growth opportunities to middle performers and triaging tasks based on true urgency—much like emergency rooms prioritize patients—leaders can develop their teams, increase their own leadership effectiveness, and prevent the burnout of their most valuable employees.
Chapters
If you want to stop the Great Resignation, you've got to stop killing off your best employees. Now, that's an aggressive opening, but stick with me for a minute because I'm going to show you an incredibly simple technique to get started. Many of your best employees are at high risk of burnout if they're not there already. One of our famous studies found that in 42% of companies, high performers are less engaged than low performers. Huh. In other words, your most valuable people are often less inspired, less happy, less motivated than the employees who deliver the least amount of value. There are a lot of reasons for this, but there's a simple illustration. Imagine it's late Friday afternoon. Just as you're about to leave the office, your boss dumps a potentially career-making project in your lap due Monday morning at 9:00 AM. You won't get it done without help from one of your employees. So you and your employee are both in for a long weekend of work. Now, which of your employees are you going to ask for help? Your best high performer or one of your low performers? Not hard, right? Of course, you're gonna turn to your best high performer. Imagine a similar situation happens again the next week. Once again, we're going to call on our best high performer. What about the next time? And the next time, and the next time. Do this thought experiment enough times and you quickly realize that the person with the toughest job and maybe the worst job in your company or your department is likely your best high performer. Here's an insanely simple way to get started with preventing the burnout of your best people and stopping that scenario. When you're about to assign work to one of your best employees, your star employees, ask yourself two questions. First, if I assign this task to a middle performer instead of a high performer, would this be a good growth opportunity for that middle performer? If you think of every task you assign as a chance to grow your middle performers, you're going to be a lot more likely to delegate to people besides your star employees. And by the way, by growing others on the team, like middle performers, you'll be drastically increasing your own leadership effectiveness. And then the second question, being brutally honest with myself, could this task be delayed for a few hours or even days? In one of our recent studies, we asked people, what percent of your tasks could be delayed for a few hours and still be accomplished successfully? Huh? Here's a shocker. 65% of people said that the majority of their work could be delayed and still be accomplished successfully. So listen, let's stop treating every task like it's an urgent 4-alarm fire. Even emergency rooms triage patients based upon their severity. Broken ankles are not as urgent as myocardial infarctions. So let's get real about the intensity of the work we assign and think about both developing others on the team and not killing off our highest performers.
