When Performance Hides a Retention Problem

I once had a key leader in my organization who was performing exceptionally well.

They were experienced, dependable, highly capable, and consistently delivered results. By every traditional measure I had available to me, things were going well.

There was no performance problem to solve.

What I didn't see was that they were performing, but they were no longer learning.

They had become very good at the job. Their experience and capability allowed them to continue delivering at a high level, even as the work stopped challenging them in the same way.

And because performance remained strong, I wasn't looking for a problem.

That's what I missed.

I was paying attention to what the person was producing, but not enough attention to what the person was experiencing.

Eventually, the lack of learning and growth mattered.

That experience has stayed with me because it exposed an important weakness in the way organizations often think about retention ....

High performance can actually hide retention risk.

A key employee doesn't necessarily begin performing poorly before becoming open to leaving. They may continue doing excellent work while something underneath that performance is changing.

Learning may have stalled.

Enjoyment may be declining.

Their sense of belonging may be weakening.

Or the work may no longer provide the same sense of purpose.

From the outside, everything can still look fine.

That's why I think we need to move beyond retention and toward what I call Effective Retention.

Effective Retention is the intentional effort to keep the people you most want to keep by understanding and strengthening the conditions that allow them to continue doing their best work.

Those conditions can be understood through five dimensions:

Performance — “I can do good work.”

Learning — “I’m becoming better.”

Enjoyment — “This work gives me energy.”

Belonging — “I matter here.”

Purpose — “This work matters.”

The lesson from my experience wasn't that I should have done more to retain that leader once I realized there was a problem.

It was that I should have understood their experience of work before there was a problem.

That requires a different kind of conversation.

Can you do good work?

Are you still becoming better?

Does the work give you energy?

Do you feel that you matter here?

Does the work still matter to you?

For your most important people, those may be some of the most valuable conversations a leader can have.

Because the earliest sign of retention risk may not be declining performance.

Sometimes your best people keep performing right up until they decide it's time to go.