Five Leadership Moves That Stop Burnout Among Top Performers

By Nathan Brooks

Every deadline is critical, every new request jumps the queue, and every obstacle escalates into crisis mode. That's how most organizations now operate, according to a new leadership playbook published by Entrepreneur — and it's a recipe for burning out the very people a business depends on most.

The article's central diagnosis is blunt: leaders have lost the middle ground between celebration and catastrophe. "Why is everything either a trophy or a trauma? We seem to have lost the middle," the author writes. Bring that mentality into a company going through constant change, and people simply can't sustain it.

The problem hits high performers hardest. They care deeply about winning, hold themselves accountable, and feel defeat more intensely because they're so invested. There's also a structural trap: because they always deliver, they keep getting handed the next critical project. "They're the sure bet, and their competence becomes the justification for piling on more," the article states.

The proposed fix is a five-part playbook: calm, clarify, choose, support and recognize.

What does each move actually change?

Calm — stop passing pressure down. Under stress, many leaders shift into command-and-control mode, repeating some version of "We have to get this done." That pressure then seeps down the chain: an executive pressures a leader, who pressures a manager, who pressures a team. The author's model is the air traffic controller — absorbing constant new information and adapting without reacting emotionally to every development. Not every setback deserves a five-alarm response.

Clarify — keep asking if the work still matters. A project launched with an excellent plan can be obsolete halfway through when technology shifts or a customer's needs change. Continuing down the same road because someone approved it six months ago wastes enormous energy. The discipline: keep asking, "Are we focused on the top priorities? Does this still matter?"

Choose — turn impossible demands into explicit tradeoffs. Here the article is at its most practical. If the business wants three major deliverables by a deadline and the team has capacity for two, insisting all three are critical solves nothing. It just pushes the unresolved decision onto the people doing the work. The leader's job is to take the decision back to the business and force the tradeoff: which two do you really need? High performers can handle difficult goals. Repeatedly putting them in situations where every option leads to failure wears them down.

Support — everybody needs backup. One of the biggest managerial mistakes, the article argues, is assuming A players need less help. Sometimes the right move is bringing in someone from another team with specific expertise, or an objective third party who can spot what insiders have missed. The author frames it plainly: "Sometimes you have to swap the goalie. That doesn't mean the original person failed." The goal is trust — people asking for help before it's too late.

Recognize — make extraordinary performance count. If one employee consistently delivers exceptional results and another contributes far less, and both see the same outcome, what message does that send? Compensation, bonuses and promotions matter, but recognition can go beyond money. Too many organizations run on the opposite signal — "If you don't get this done, something bad will happen" — an all-stick, no-carrot environment. Fear produces a burst of activity; it doesn't sustain investment.

What does this change for managers?

All five moves rest on one promise a leader can make, in the author's words: "I'll take the hit. I'll go to bat for you. I'll help you get what you need to win." That still leaves room for accountability — high performers expect high standards. But they also need to know that when they hit an obstacle, you'll remove it.

For practitioners, the takeaway is straightforward. Sustained urgency isn't going away. The organizations that keep their best people won't be the ones that celebrate loudest or panic hardest — they'll be the ones disciplined enough to stay steady in the middle.