3 main de-motivators for high-performers

TLDR; It basically comes down to:

1. lack of trust
2. lack of endorsement
3. lack of leadership

Note, I am making an assumption that one really is a high-performing individual. If that is a true statement, only you can tell about yourself.

Lack of trust

It is easy to start something green field. It's either never been done before, so you get to try things to see if they work, and your intellectual brilliance and be applied in full force: here is what makes sense based on first principles, we're all learning, let's try this and see if it works, and if it doesn't, let's revise and get better; or it has been done before, in which case all you need to do is read how others did it, and apply the same or similar. If nothing else works, hire folks who've done it before.

Lack of trust really comes into play when you are inheriting something brownfield - or maybe even were part of the team that created the mess in the first place. How is it possible, you ask for a high-performing individual to create a situation that's this messy, or that convoluted, or generally so FUBAR that you might as well start over?

Several reasons come to mind: first, let's concede that a career and responsibilities are dynamic and evolve over time. For example, this may have been handed over in already a messy state to begin with and it's made a lot of progress to get to today, despite there still being a long way to go. Second, not everything is directly correlated with the performance of an individual. Could you have done something different? - Sure, you could always have done something different; that's not the point. The question really is, could you have predicted the current outcome and therefore failed to act to prevent it? The latter question is much more loaded. Ability to change circumstances is not always guaranteed.

One could call into question all of the issues and reasons why one thing or another happened, but the above isn't even the point. It really is this: without allowing an individual to start over, without affording someone a clean slate, no progress whatsoever can be made, as de-facto work will not get done. It will either be called into question sufficiently enough for the work not ending up being productive, or the individual will become de-motivated to stop working and throw up their hands in frustration.

Lack of endorsement

Publicly - and privately - endorsing a leader is important. But it is especially important in a hybrid world, where by necessity a lot of communication is both asynchronous and written. I think social media has really done us a disservice in this case. Live, in-person (or on-call) conversations almost always tend to be more polite and agreeable than written (electronic) communication. In a time where everything gets accelerated, and attention spans are short, each word needs to be that much more carefully selected. Unfortunately, we tend to not allow ourselves spending the time to think this through; this imposes that much more empathy, emotional sturdiness and resistance to stress on the receiver.

We should recognize that while each individual has a certain amount of ability to withstand this type of emotional imposition, not all of us do, and that is especially going to be true as this happens again and again over time. There is a breaking point for everyone and they will eventually react unfortunately to the subtext and tone of the message, not the actual message. Remaining empathetic, thoughtful in word choice, and methodical in the crafting of responses starts with conveying implicit endorsement of the individual. This does not mean having to be in agreement with the individual on the issue at hand; rather, it means the conscious choice of endorsing a communication style that does not condescend, diminish or undermine the position and role of the individual.

Lack of leadership

It is easier to tear down than to build up. As a leader, it is our responsibility to pull the emergency stop when something is not done right or not working. However, it is equally our responsibility to guide to the right path forward. A unilateral disengagement of a current path that is not working without providing guidance to the alternative path that is supposed to be taking, is to leave the team rudderless and with a feeling of "shooting in the dark". Leadership requires one to provide a vision and north star of what the goal is; it can rely on subordinate leaders to make strategy proposals but if the vision is unclear, it is quite unfair actually to expect methodical and thought-through strategies from high-performers, who will naturally tend to try themselves at this.

Closing thoughts

This post is intentionally focusing on the 'negative'. The reason for doing this is quite simple. I do not believe in sugar coating what's going on. One can only truly develop intrinsic motivation, trust and loyalty in teams by acknowledging the difficulty of the situation that they are in. Otherwise, motivational speeches by Olympic gold medallists remain shallow and meaningless. Worse, we risk alienating high performers on the team, who will almost assuredly develop a cynical attitude towards the team, mission, leadership and the company.