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   Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 1:31 AM
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Mon 7/6 — Your best performer and your biggest flight risk (often the same person)

Your highest performer and your biggest retention risk are often the same person. Most organizations never connect the two. The leader who absorbs every shock, never drops anything, and stays composed while a difficult dynamic plays out around them looks exactly like the person you want to promote. So you do. And the pattern that was already quietly costing them gets handed more scope and higher stakes. This is how an adaptation becomes an organization's leadership standard without anyone choosing it. Each promotion rewards the behavior. The people watching learn what gets you ahead here. A few cycles later, an entire senior bench is running on a survival pattern no one has named, and the most capable people are the closest to empty. The fix is not to stop promoting these leaders. It is to recognize what you are actually promoting, and to make sure the people carrying the most have what they need to keep carrying it well. For the executives and boards reading this: who on your senior team is quietly holding the organization together, and when did anyone last check what it is costing them?