There’s a predictable pattern I see in almost every cohort of managers I work with: High-performing individual contributors (ICs) who transition into leadership have a greater tendency to burnout as Managers. This is because the very traits that made them successful before can actually contribute to declining wellbeing and, ironically, limit career progression.
The strategies that earn you recognition as an IC (i.e. being the fastest to respond, delivering exceptional work yourself, going above and beyond on every task) don’t scale when you’re responsible for outcomes through others. Yet most high performers try to manage the same way they used to execute. The result? Exhaustion, diminishing returns, and a growing sense that something has to give.
Research by MIT Sloan’s Elsbeth Johnson suggests that high-performing ICs struggle most with delegation because they’ve built their identity around personal execution excellence. When you’ve spent years being rewarded for your individual output, it’s psychologically difficult to accept that your new job is to create the conditions for others to be excellent.
This creates three compounding problems.
Problem 1: The Quality Control Spiral You don’t trust your team to deliver at “your standard,” so you review everything in detail, redo work that’s “good enough,” and become a bottleneck. Your team learns to wait for your input rather than develop their own judgment.
Problem 2: The Availability Trap You pride yourself on being responsive, so you answer every Slack message within minutes, attend every meeting you’re invited to, and remain available nights and weekends. This signals to your team that this is the expected standard, creating a culture of constant availability that you can never step away from.
Problem 3: The Impact Illusion You measure your value by how much you personally accomplish, so you keep taking on IC work alongside your management responsibilities. You tell yourself you’re “leading by example,” but you’re actually modelling unsustainable behaviour and depriving your team of growth opportunities.
The pattern is well-documented: the habits that make someone a high-performing IC - perfectionism, personal execution, direct ownership - become liabilities in management. The tragic irony is that this behaviour (working harder, maintaining impossible standards, staying constantly available) actually signals to senior leaders that you’re not ready for the next level.
Executives need Managers who can scale impact through systems and people, not through personal heroics. When you’re visibly overwhelmed, working all hours, and personally involved in everything, you demonstrate that you’ve hit your capacity ceiling - but you can breaking the cycle with these four strategic shifts:
Shift 1: Redefine Excellence as “Team Output” Not “My Output”
Start measuring your success by your team’s collective results, not your personal contributions. This isn’t just a mindset shift, it requires actively tracking different metrics.
Instead of “I delivered three major projects this quarter”, shift the focus to your team’s achievements. It should sound more like: “My team delivered three major projects this quarter, and two team members are now capable of leading similar initiatives independently”
The second version shows you’re building capability, not just getting things done. This is what gets you promoted.
Shift 2: Practice “Good Enough” Leadership
The evidence on perfectionist leadership is consistent: the insistence on 100% correlates with worse team outcomes, not better ones, due to damaged relationships, higher anxiety, and decision-making bottlenecks. Leaders who can discern and tolerate ‘good enough’ side-step these issues and free up cognitive resources for truly strategic work instead.
One way to make this shift is by applying a simple decision framework:
Strategic decisions (hiring, budget, org design): Your full attention required
Important but reversible (project approaches, meeting formats): Give clear direction, then trust
Routine operations (status updates, standard processes): Delegate completely
Your job is to know the difference and act accordingly.
Shift 3: Model Sustainable Performance
If you want your team to have boundaries, you need to demonstrate them first. This isn’t about working less, but rather working visibly within reasonable boundaries.
Practical actions you can take to model sustainable performance include:
Setting your Slack status to “Do Not Disturb” after hours
Scheduling emails to send during business hours (even if you draft them at night)
Explicitly saying in meetings: “I won’t be checking messages this weekend, but I’ll be back online Monday morning”
Blocking “focus time” on your calendar and actually protecting it
Your team takes their cues from you. If you’re always available, they’ll feel pressure to be always available. If you protect your time, you give them permission to protect theirs.
Shift 4: Delegate Development, Not Just Tasks
The biggest unlock for high-performer managers is learning to delegate for development, not just to offload work. This means intentionally giving people assignments that are slightly beyond their current capability—and accepting that the work won’t be done exactly as you would do it.
A useful rule of thumb from leadership practice: if someone can do a task 70% as well as you can, that’s enough to delegate it. Waiting for them to be 100% ready means they never develop, and you never free up capacity.
Here’s what breaking the cycle actually looks like in practice:
Week 1-2: Audit where your time actually goes. Many Managers are shocked to discover they’re spending a significant proportion of their time on IC work or low-value activities.
Week 3-4: Identify three tasks you can delegate this month. Start with things you’re good at but don’t need to do personally. Brief the person clearly on the outcome you need, not the process to get there.
Week 5-6: Establish one clear boundary. Pick the change that would most improve your wellbeing. Whether it’s no meetings before 9am, no email after 7pm or something else, the key is holding it consistently.
Week 7-8: Review your team’s development. Is their capability growing? If not, you’re probably still doing too much yourself.
The benefits are clear: Managers who make these shifts don’t just avoid burnout, they also position themselves for promotion, by demonstrating the scalable leadership that senior roles require.
If this helped, fuel my next idea with a coffee ☕️
Identify one task you’re currently doing that someone on your team could do at 70% of your quality. Delegate it this week with clear success criteria, then resist the urge to jump in and “fix” it unless it’s truly going off the rails.
Notice what it feels like to let go. That discomfort is what growth feels like for high performers becoming sustainable leaders.
Welcome to The Curated Career. Advancing with intention, not intensity.
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What’s the hardest thing about delegating for you? Hit reply or comment to share your experience—I’ll be reading and responding to every one!
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