Why Your Star Employee Just Quit: The Hidden Values Disconnect Leaders Miss
Taken For Granted
I worked with an incredible person early in my career. We'll call her Amy. Though we worked in different departments, we bonded over our shared approach to leadership and commitment to growth. Amy consistently delivered top results and was both loved and respected by her team. She always went the extra mile, taking on additional responsibilities to support our small, rapidly growing startup while living the values our company claimed to embrace.
As team lead, she balanced individual contributor work with management responsibilities, including: interviewing candidates, running team meetings, training new employees, and creating documented processes that actually worked. Over time, more management work piled onto her plate. She accepted and executed it with grace, but she was clear about what she wanted: to shift into a full-time manager role that aligned with both her abilities and her career goals.
She expressed this clearly to her boss and her boss's boss. Their response? "You aren't ready."
This was a potentially fair point, as moving into a manager position is different than being a team lead. The problem was that they couldn't articulate where she needed to grow or provide any constructive feedback whatsoever. No roadmap. No milestones. Just a vague "not yet."
Amy remained patient. She continued executing at a high level, took on even more projects outside her scope, and repeatedly asked for specific feedback about becoming a manager. Each time, she received the same empty answer.
Ten months later, Amy walked into my office with news that shouldn't have surprised anyone paying attention: she'd submitted her resignation. She'd found a management position at another company in our industry, and it came with a significant pay increase.
"I wanted to stay," she told me. "I love our culture, the people, the impact we're making. But I don't feel recognized or supported in my growth."
Her boss was shocked. Amy went on to become a C-level executive within eight years, while our organization struggled for months to fill the gap she left behind.
This story plays out in companies everywhere. Organizations lose their top performers for preventable reasons, then scramble to recover from self-inflicted wounds. As a leader, encouraging employees to stay and grow is essential. No business succeeds without people doing the work.
Why Top Performers Leave
Toxic or Misaligned Workplace Culture
High performers seek environments that match their values and standards. They're the first to notice, and the least likely to tolerate, cultures that:
Accept mediocrity as the norm
Lack genuine inclusivity despite claiming otherwise
Operate without clear definitions of success
Hide behind corporate speak instead of transparent communication
Reward politics over performance
When the culture they experience daily doesn't match the values on the company website, star employees start looking elsewhere.
Poor Manager Relationships
You’ve heard the saying "employees don't quit jobs, they quit bosses.” It sounds cliche, but research shows over 50% of employees leave specifically because of their manager. Top performers won't stick around for:
Unfair practices like favoritism or nepotism
Managers who create fear instead of psychological safety
Leaders who take credit for their team's work
Bosses who provide neither recognition nor constructive feedback
Micromanagement that stifles their expertise and judgment
Compensation That Doesn't Match Contribution
Even employees who genuinely love your company have financial responsibilities and goals. When top performers see their exceptional contributions rewarded with minimal or nonexistent raises, they recognize their value isn't appreciated, and seek out a place where it will be.
Burnout From Overwork and Chronic Stress
Top employees often put themselves under increased pressure, taking on additional responsibilities because they care about outcomes. While they're typically more resilient than average performers, everyone has a breaking point.
The warning signs are subtle at first: longer hours, no vacations, less engagement and decreased enthusiasm. When leaders fail to notice or address these signals, they're essentially watching their best people burn out in slow motion, and it will harm the company, and worse, the employee.
Blocked Growth Paths
As Amy's story illustrates, talented people need to see a future for themselves in your organization. Growth doesn't always mean promotion. It can mean:
Leading high-visibility projects
Having input on strategic decisions
Taking on creative challenges that stretch their skills
Learning new competencies that advance their career
Gaining exposure to senior leadership or clients
But sometimes it does mean that title change and the recognition that comes with it. If growth conversations become empty promises, your stars will find organizations that actually invest in their development.
Creating an Environment Where Stars Thrive
Start With Radical Clarity
Ambiguity kills high performance. Your best people need to understand:
What exceptional performance looks like in their role
How their work connects to larger organizational goals
What growth opportunities exist and what's required to reach them
Where they stand in terms of performance and potential
Clarity empowers autonomy, which drives both engagement and innovation. It anchors feedback conversations in shared expectations rather than subjective opinions. If everyone knows what success looks like, they can make the right decisions to achieve it.
Build Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is the belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation, and it’s the foundation of high performance. If team members trust that their contributions won't be ridiculed and their mistakes won't define them, they bring their full creative capacity to work.
Creating psychological safety requires:
Admitting your own mistakes and what you learned from them
Asking for help when you need it
Celebrating intelligent failures alongside successes
Responding to problems with curiosity instead of blame
Following through on commitments, especially small ones
When psychological safety exists, problems surface before they become crises, innovative ideas flow freely, and feedback becomes a tool for growth rather than a weapon for criticism.
(Learn more about building psychological safety as a leader.)
Master the Art of Feedback and Recognition
The best leaders maintain continuous dialogue about strengths, growth areas, and performance. But here's what most get wrong: feedback shouldn't just flow downward.
If Amy's managers had provided specific feedback about what "ready for management" looked like, she might have developed those skills to everyone's benefit. Instead, vague responses pushed her toward the exit.
Effective feedback:
Happens regularly, not just at annual reviews
Includes specific examples and clear expectations
Balances affirmation of strengths with growth opportunities
Flows in all directions
Connects individual contributions to team and company success
Learn more about building an effective feedback culture.
Align Compensation With Contribution
Review market rates regularly and ensure your compensation matches both the role and the individual's impact. But remember: competitive compensation keeps people from leaving, but it rarely makes them stay. Fair pay is a pillar to employee retention, not an answer in and of itself.
Connect Work to Values and Purpose
Creating shared values and expectations gives teams purpose during challenging or ambiguous times. When people understand not just what to do but why it matters, they find meaning in their work.
Ask your top performers:
What aspects of their work energize them most?
What impact do they want to make?
What legacy do they want to leave?
How does their role align with their personal values?
Then find ways to strengthen those connections. The employee passionate about mentoring might lead your internship program. The one who values innovation could head up your continuous improvement initiatives. When work aligns with personal values, retention takes care of itself.
The Cost of Losing Your Stars
Your business runs on the talent and dedication of its people. Losing a star employee can set your organization back months or even years. The institutional knowledge walks out the door, team morale suffers, other high performers start questioning their own future, and clients notice the difference.
Some positions can be filled quickly. But that rare combination of skill, cultural fit, and deep organizational knowledge is something you might never find again.
The tragedy is that most departures are preventable. Amy didn't leave for a massive pay increase or a revolutionary opportunity. She left because her growth was ignored, her potential dismissed with vague excuses, and her clear communication met with empty responses.
Take care of your people, and they will take care of your business. Create clarity around expectations and growth paths. Build genuine psychological safety. Provide feedback that actually helps people develop. Ensure compensation matches contribution. Connect individual work to a larger purpose.
These are fundamental leadership practices that somehow get lost in the daily chaos of running a business. But if you want to keep your stars, you need to make their growth and recognition as important as your quarterly targets.
Because by the time a star employee walks into your office with their resignation, it's already too late. The time to act is now. Before your Amy finds a company that will give her what you wouldn't.
About the Author
Terence Davy is an executive coach and founder of Proactivity.io, where he helps leaders build thriving, values-driven teams. With over a decade of experience leading teams through rapid growth and multiple acquisitions, Terence understands firsthand the challenges of retaining top talent while scaling organizations.
He specializes in helping leaders create psychological safety, master feedback conversations, and build cultures where high performers want to stay and grow. His approach combines practical frameworks with deep empathy for the human side of leadership.
Ready to become the leader your best people deserve? Learn more about working with Terence
