Why Your A-​​Players May Be The Weakest Link

A senior leader recently shared a challenge that I can’t stop thinking about. He had a top performer on his team; someone who always delivered, volunteered for stretch assignments, and had become the go-to person for “mission-critical” work.

On the surface, it looked like success. But as the role grew, no one revisited this performer’s scope. Deliverables kept piling up, expectations increased, and the support never scaled. He admitted: “I thought I was rewarding her by giving her more. But really, I was setting her up to fail.”

That’s the hidden danger: competence ≠ infinite capacity. Here’s how to make sure your top performers have the support they need to succeed.

The Performance Cliff

High performers rarely complain. They pride themselves on delivering. They don’t want to let their colleagues down. And they’re often the last to admit when their workload has become unsustainable.

That silence can be deceptive. I think of maxed out A-players like an iceberg—most of the strain is hidden beneath the surface. By the time the signals show up, like missed deadlines, irritability, disengagement, it may already be too late.

Diana, a senior marketing executive at a Fortune 50 company, had built her career on consistently delivering. For more than a decade, she’d been tapped for bigger roles again and again because senior leaders trusted her. On the surface, it looked like recognition but underneath was fatigue and self-doubt. Her scope had expanded without clear guardrails or added support, and what once felt like trust now felt like the crush of expectations she could never fully meet. This pattern mirrors what I shared in Harvard Business Review, where added scope without added resources quietly sets leaders up to fail.

Research backs this up. Harvard Business Review notes that once someone becomes the “go-to” performer, organizations often fall into a cycle of over-reliance that keeps piling on more. And in a study of 300 employees, researchers found that a small number of experts absorbed most collaboration requests, yet as their workload grew, performance declined.

Ask yourself: What am I doing to spot where expectations outpace resources?

Why Leaders Fall Into the Trap

Leaders don’t overload their best people because they don’t care, they do it because they trust them. Giving more responsibility can feel like recognition. “If anyone can handle it, they can.”

The real trap is that this becomes the default pattern. Once someone proves themselves, they become the automatic go-to. Over time, that trust morphs into dependency, and the consequences ripple throughout the team: bottlenecks in decision-making, gaps in execution, and frustration from colleagues who feel unclear about priorities.

Jerome, a newly promoted national sales leader, took on a large, multi-location team. He’d been chosen for his strong track record and ability to inspire people. On paper, it made sense. In practice, the role came without added support, clear prioritization, or resource adjustments. Within weeks, he was treading water: pulled into daily operations, constant travel, and back-to-back meetings, with little space left for strategic thinking. Instead of hitting his stride, Jerome stumbled out of the gate, weighed down by the strain of carrying too much, too soon

Recognizing the challenge, his company hired an external coach to help him ramp up—an approach I explored in Fast Company on how leaders can fast-track their impact in the first 90 days. Together, we focused on creating structure: mapping stakeholders, clarifying the must-do versus nice-to-do work, and empowering local leaders to carry more.

The shift was immediate. His team operated with greater alignment and less friction, and he regained the bandwidth to lead at the enterprise level.

Ask yourself: When I add responsibility, do I rebalance scope and resources—or unintentionally shift too much risk onto one person?

Re-Contracting Scope as Roles Evolve

As organizations change, leaders must re-contract scope, just as intentionally as they re-contract budgets or strategy. That means clarifying what’s core, what’s negotiable, and what needs to come off the plate entirely. It means naming the trade-offs out loud. And it means ensuring the right resources—people, tools, budget—are in place to support expanded responsibilities.

This isn’t about lowering expectations. It’s about creating the conditions where your best people can keep delivering at a high level—without hitting a breaking point. For Diana, that meant naming her scope explicitly and resetting boundaries. For Jerome, it meant sequencing priorities and empowering local leaders so he wasn’t the bottleneck.

Ask yourself: What needs to come off this person’s plate for them to succeed at their next level?

Closing Thought

Competence without capacity is a risk; not just for the individual, but for the business. When your strongest people are stretched too thin, the fallout shows up in missed priorities, cultural strain, and eventually attrition.

As Simon Sinek says, “Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.”