IT star performers burnout often begins quietly, long before anyone notices there’s a problem.
It is 9 p.m. on a Friday, and Sarah, your most capable service desk analyst, is still online.
She is working through a backlog that could easily be put off until Monday.
There’s no emergency. No major incident. She’s simply doing what she always does: stepping in, sorting things out, and making sure nothing slips through the cracks.
You’ve come to rely on it. The team has come to rely on her. And that, increasingly, is the problem.
Many IT managers assume their strongest performers are also their most resilient ones. These are the people who volunteer for difficult projects, stay calm during incidents, and seem to thrive under pressure. From the outside, this looks like commitment and capability. Beneath the surface, however, a different pattern often emerges.
One that leads to quiet disengagement, unexpected departures, or burnout, catching everyone by surprise.
The Hidden Cost of Over-Reliance
Star performers, those unofficial leaders who carry more responsibility than their role suggests, are often the most under-protected members of IT teams. They absorb pressure when deadlines tighten, mentor newer staff without being asked, and are the first people managers turn to when critical needs arise. They also rarely say no.
Over time, this creates a silent imbalance. The team becomes structured around individual capacity rather than the group’s collective capability.
What Effective Leadership Actually Looks Like
Effective leadership with star performers is not about restricting their contributions or diminishing their influence. It’s about creating boundaries that sustain performance over time.
That can mean asking capable people to step back from an initiative, not as punishment, but as protection. It can mean distributing high-visibility work more evenly, even when it’s tempting to give it to the person you know will deliver. It also means recognising that the absence of complaints does not indicate the absence of strain.
One practical place to start is by mapping where responsibility actually sits within your team over the course of a month. Not where it should sit according to organisational charts, but where it genuinely lands. If the same names appear repeatedly across incidents, escalations, mentoring, and project work, you’ve likely created an unsustainable dependency.
The real question then becomes: what happens when that person is unavailable?
The Broader Pattern
Star performers represent just one part of a wider leadership challenge. Across most service teams, you’ll find three distinct types of contributors, each operating at different levels of confidence, capability, and aspiration.
Each type requires a different leadership approach, and each plays a specific role in team effectiveness. Treating them all the same, or trying to turn everyone into a star, undermines both individual development and overall team performance.
Understanding how to identify and lead these different contributors, and how to build a team structure that doesn’t rely on heroics from a few individuals, is becoming increasingly important. This is particularly true as organisations face ongoing retention pressures, the introduction of AI-assisted service management, and the need to deliver more with constrained resources.
What’s Next In my session at Spark 2026, we’ll explore a complete framework for identifying and leading all three types of contributors found in IT teams. The focus will be on shifting from reactive management to intentional leadership, leadership that creates resilience rather than simply responding to problems after they emerge.
For now, consider this.
Who are the star performers on your team?
What would happen if they weren’t there tomorrow?
And what can you do this week to begin shifting those dependencies?
The strength of a team is not measured by its strongest performer, but by how well it functions when that person isn’t carrying it.
You can meet NJ at the SDI Conference this March 19 & 20, 2026. We look forward to seeing you there!
