In my first people leader role, I had a great colleague in my team. Always working, no mistakes made, top notch processes and platforms understanding and unmatched speed of processing, even complex transactions. To make things even better, this person did not show any strong emotions. Even in the most tensed situations, she focused on the solution and on what needed to be done.
Never saying no, many times staying after hours to finish.

Until one day…when she made a critical mistake. She activated a very large telecom customer’s contract in a wrong way.

Negative impact on the customer was significant. Comms cut and wrong fees applied. Fixing the error was a back office nightmare. Handling the client’s dissatisfaction and churn intention were even a bigger nightmare.
We went together to visit the client. During the conversation she took full responsibility for the error. “If you need me to talk to each of your people I will do it”, she said. “I am the one who made this error and I would do anything to fix it”.
There she was, extremely vulnerable in a very tensed situation. The person I thought would at all times perform, no emotions, no issues, just productivity and experience.
It is then when I realized I was also responsible for this happening. I let het take all the difficult workload, relying on her apparent self control and very high productivity.

One of the common errors when you are at the beginning of a people manager role is to overburden your most senior and productive team members. Especially those who do not have “no” in their vocabulary. It is understandable why we are tempted to do this. It is easier, as we trust both their capabilities and their speed.

But what is the price for this?

The morale: be mindful of the high performers in your team and manage workload to make sure they do not get into burnout; balancing workload across all team members might save you from great staff leaving and/or damage control when errors occur due to overload.