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I managed a person who was more senior than I was, and definitely a top performer.

What did they want me to do?

Get stuff out of their way, so they could move as fast as they were capable of moving.

I was happy to do that, and we had a great relationship.

That’s great when what they want to do is aligned with what the organization needs. It’s essentially not-managing.

The issue is, many times high performers just aren’t aligned with what needs doing, and by not-managing them, inexperienced managers create a world where you have tons of “high performance” arriving absolutely nowhere. You see this at every bloated organization (in particular at big tech).

I’ve got a high performer on my team and I do think (okay, wouldn’t I ;) that in managing speed vs quality and explicit attention to the learning curve of others I’ve managed to create a few more golden nuggets. No high performer (perhaps: nobody, ever) has all professional skills in the same measure.

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