Are your top performers overextending?

There is a quiet problem sitting underneath a lot of burnout conversations and it does not get nearly enough attention.

We are very good at telling employees what they are responsible for. We are far less good at telling them what they are not.

Most middle managers can clearly articulate goals, deliverables and expectations. Job descriptions, performance plans and project briefs all point in one direction. Do this. Deliver that. Be accountable here.

On paper, it looks clear. In practice, many employees are operating with an unspoken assumption they are responsible for far more than what is written down.

That gap is where exhaustion starts to build.

Spend a bit of time listening to high-performers and you will hear a pattern. They are not just doing their jobs; they are worrying about everything that touches their work.

They feel responsible for missed deadlines that were not theirs to own. They pick up slack for peers without being asked. They stay late to refine work that was already good enough because they anticipate criticism that may never come. They carry the emotional tone of the team. They try to fix problems that sit well outside their role.

None of this shows up in a job description, but it absolutely shows up in their stress levels.

Middle managers often see this and interpret it as engagement. This is the person who cares. This is the person you can count on. This is the person who goes above and beyond.

For a while, that is true. But, over time, that same behaviour becomes unsustainable. What started as commitment slowly turns into quiet overextension — and eventually into resentment and withdrawal.

The tricky part is no one explicitly asked for this.

The employee is not being told to take on everything. They are inferring it. They are reading the room, watching what gets rewarded and filling in the blanks. In the absence of clear boundaries, they assume the widest possible scope.

This is where middle managers have more influence than they might think. Retention is not only about adding supports or incentives. Sometimes, it is about subtracting pressure that should not have been there in the first place.

One of the simplest and most effective ways to do that is to tell people, clearly and directly, what they can let go of.

That can feel counterintuitive. Managers are used to assigning responsibility, not removing it. There can be a worry if you tell someone they are not responsible for something, standards will slip or accountability will get fuzzy.

In reality, the opposite tends to happen. When people know where their responsibility ends, they can focus more fully and perform more consistently within it.

Think about a common situation: a project is running behind because another department has not delivered its piece. The employee whose work depends on that piece starts chasing updates, apologizing to stakeholders and feeling the pressure of a delay they cannot control.

A manager might check in and say, “How is it going?” and get a strained but polite, “Good, just waiting on one thing.” What often goes unsaid is the internal pressure the employee is carrying.

A small shift in the manager’s response can change the entire experience: “I want to be clear that you are not responsible for that delay. Your job is to be ready when it comes in. I will handle the follow up.” That sentence does more than reassign a task, it relieves a layer of invisible accountability the employee had taken on without realizing it.

It also sends a signal. It says, I see where the pressure is landing and I am actively managing it.

When everything feels urgent, employees start to assume everything is theirs to carry. Without guidance, they will try to keep all the plates spinning at once. The result is not better performance, it is scattered effort and constant tension.

Managers can counter this by being explicit about tradeoffs. Not just what needs to be done, but what can wait or fall away. It can sound like, “Given the timeline change, this is what matters most this week. The rest can pause.” Or, “If you have to choose, focus here and let the other piece sit for now.”

These are small statements, but they give permission to stop holding everything at once.

There is also a cultural piece to this. In many workplaces, there is an unspoken belief good employees anticipate needs and fill gaps without being asked. That can be valuable, but it can also create a quiet competition of who can carry the most. Over time, it becomes harder for individuals to step back without feeling like they are letting the team down.

Middle managers sit in a unique position to reset that expectation. They can model and reinforce the idea that doing a job well does not require absorbing every problem in the vicinity. They can notice when someone is consistently stepping outside their role and have a conversation that reframes it. Not as a reprimand, but as protection: “I appreciate that you are jumping in, but I do not want you carrying things that are not yours. Let’s keep your focus here.”

Another overlooked aspect is the emotional responsibility employees take on. This shows up in teams where someone becomes the unofficial buffer, smoothing over tensions, supporting colleagues and keeping morale up. It is valuable work, but it is rarely acknowledged or bounded. Over time, it can be draining.

Again, a manager’s role is not to eliminate that instinct, but to name it and contain it. To recognize the contribution while also making it clear that the employee is not solely responsible for the team’s emotional climate. That is a shared responsibility and, ultimately, a leadership one.

What all of this comes down to is clarity. Not just about what success looks like, but about where the edges are. Without edges, work expands. Responsibility spreads. Pressure accumulates in ways that are hard to see and even harder to measure.

Employees do not always ask for this clarity because they may not realize what they have taken on. Or they worry asking will make them look less capable. That is why it needs to come from the manager.

The irony is by telling people what they are not responsible for, managers often get better results on what they are. Focus improves. Decision making speeds up. Stress levels come down. And perhaps most importantly, employees feel a sense of relief that is hard to describe, but easy to recognize.

It is the feeling of being able to do your job without carrying the entire organization on your shoulders.

In a time when retention is top of mind for many organizations, it is worth paying attention to these quieter dynamics. Not every solution requires a new program or policy. Sometimes, it is about noticing where pressure has quietly accumulated and taking deliberate steps to lift it.

For middle managers, that can start with a simple question. Not just, “What are you working on?” but, “What are you feeling responsible for right now?”

The answer may tell you more than any performance metric ever could.

Tory McNally, CPHR, BSc., vice-president,

professional services at TIPI Legacy HR+

(formerly Legacy Bowes), is a human resource consultant, relationship builder and problem solver.

She can be reached at tmcnally@tipipartners.com