I just got a great performance review but I am a little confused. My boss gave me very high marks on focus, drive, and results but said he was concerned for me. He said that although I have great potential, a strong desire to achieve, and he’d like to promote me, I was in danger of burning out. He told me I needed to get balance in my life if I wanted to be considered for jobs where I’ll supervise people.

Here’s my confusion:  I’m not going to burn out, I have a huge reservoir of energy, so I don’t know what he’s talking about. Balance might be important to him (he has a family and takes time off) but it’s not important to me. I don’t want hobbies or kids because I don’t want them to distract me from what I love most:  my job. Do I threaten my boss? Does he think I’m after his job? I don’t know how to respond to what he’s telling me. Am I missing something here?

There’s always more to the story. Rather than assume your boss’s motivations and draw conclusions based upon those assumptions, ask him what you need to do differently to achieve in ways that will benefit you, your co-workers, and the company where you work.

Having said that, I’ve observed a few things  when working with people who share your strong drive and commitment:

Individuals who are totally focused on their jobs and have great capacity and energy for their work can demand a great deal of themselves and although they may not recognize it, expect a great deal from others.  They tend to take on more than most, have difficulty saying ‘no’, work long hours and push themselves to the limit in their full throttle dedication to get everything done.  For the most part it works, until they start managing people they expect to run as fast,  anticipate as much, and execute as quickly on what they are told and not told to do.

These high potentials don’t burn out. They  burn out the people who report to them and those people respond by  derailing their high achieving bosses’ careers by quitting on the job or leaving because they can no longer stand the pressure.

What many of the brightest learn over time is that they are only as good as the people who work for them. That the best ideas, visions, missions and strategies don’t materialize on their own. They are understood, designed, developed and delivered by people who grasp the meaning and consequence of the outcomes they produce.

Some people say that it takes balance to learn perspective. Said another way, it takes time away from work to balance what’s important against what just looks that way; to envision possibilities, to see what’s missing, to find it, and to integrate it in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.   It takes the best of not just one of us, but the best of what every one of us brings to the table.