--- title: What Your Most Reliable Employees Might Be Hiding | Mindshift Moments description: Your most reliable employees might be masking deeper organizational problems. Discover how high performers compensate for broken systems and what leaders can do about it. image: https://info.thought-design.com/hubfs/mindshift%20moments%2026-1.png --- [![thought design logo](https://info.thought-design.com/hubfs/Thought%20Design%20Images/Thought-Design-Logo-Color.png)](https://thought-design.com/) - [Build Effective Teams](https://thought-design.com/learning/) - [For Leaders](https://thought-design.com/learning/) - [For HR](https://thought-design.com/learning/) - [For Educators](https://thought-design.com/for-educators/) - [Hire a Speaker](https://thought-design.com/speakers/) - [Lunch & Learns](https://thought-design.com/lunch-and-learns/) - [Blog](https://info.thought-design.com/blog) - Strengthen My Practice - [Fearless Organization Scan](https://thought-design.com/the-fearless-organization-scan/) - [The Psychological Safety Practitioners Program](https://thought-design.com/psychological-safety-practitioner-program/) - [Empowered Leader](https://thought-design.com/leadership-training-coaching/) - [Our Venue](https://thought-design.com/rentals/) - [Meeting Space](https://thought-design.com/rentals/) - [Culinary Team-Building](https://thought-design.com/culinary/#about) - [Public Cooking Classes](https://thought-design.com/public-classes/) - [Private Cooking Parties](https://thought-design.com/private-parties/) - [About](https://thought-design.com/about/) # What Your Most Reliable Employees Might Be Hiding | Mindshift Moments ![](https://info.thought-design.com/hubfs/mindshift%20moments%2026-1.png) ## The Moment: Something almost went wrong this week. A big project was falling behind because people misunderstood what they owned in it. But thankfully, one of your best people caught it. She noticed what everyone else missed, pulled in the right people, stayed late, figured out a workaround, and got everything back on track. By the time you heard about it, the crisis was mostly over. You thanked her, telling her how much you appreciate that she always sees what needs to happen and just takes care of it. You made a mental note, once again, of just how lucky you are to have her.   ## The Mindshift: Thank goodness for those one or two people on your team, right? They have saved me (and my career) many times. And…there is a shadow side to them as well: your best people might be making your organization look healthier than it actually is. We tend to look at these save-the-project moments and see evidence of a strong team. Someone took ownership. They went above and beyond. They made sure the work got done. And those things may all be true. The problem is that really capable people can become shock absorbers for really unhealthy systems. They compensate. They remember the thing the process doesn't remind anyone to do. They make the phone call when ownership is unclear. They catch the mistake before the customer sees it. They work late when the timeline was unrealistic from the beginning. They quietly handle something themselves because getting three other people aligned would take too long. And because they're good at it, the impact of the problem never travels very far: - Leadership doesn't feel it. - The customer doesn't see it. - The deadline doesn't move. - The numbers still look good. Which means the organization gets some pretty inaccurate information: This is working well the way it is. Meanwhile, your strongest people may be using their own time, energy, judgment, relationships, and sheer force of will to close the gap between what the system can actually support and what everyone expects it to produce. Then we do something that makes perfect sense: We praise them for it. We celebrate the person who saved the account. Stayed late. Caught the mistake. Took on the extra work. Made the impossible deadline possible. Without realizing it, we can end up rewarding the very behavior that keeps the underlying problem invisible. And eventually, the person who knows how to compensate becomes so important that we can't imagine operating without her. We call that person indispensable. Sometimes indispensable people are evidence of extraordinary talent. Sometimes they're evidence of a system that, over time, has reorganized itself around someone's willingness to absorb its problems. And that's worth knowing before she burns out, gets promoted, or leaves.   ## The Strategies: ### 1. Celebrate the save, then study it. The next time someone catches something important, absolutely recognize what they did. Then don't move on. Try asking: - What compensations did you have to make for that to work? - What almost broke down here? - Is this the first time you've had to do this? - What would have happened if you hadn't stepped in? You may discover that what looked like an isolated save is something one of your people has been managing behind the scenes for months.   ### 2. Ask your most reliable person a different question. Think of the person on your team you trust when something absolutely has to get done. Instead of asking what she's working on, ask: What are you regularly doing around here that probably shouldn't require your brain or your time? Then listen. You might hear about workarounds, unclear roles, missing processes, decisions that take six steps when they should take two, or responsibilities she's accumulated simply because she was the person who noticed they needed to be done. Your most reliable people may know more about where your system is breaking than any KPI ever will.   ### 3. Stop using the successful outcome as your only evidence. Choose one thing that went well recently, especially something that required a big push at the end. Ask your team: What did it actually take for us to produce that outcome? Listen for the invisible costs (extra hours, other priorities delayed, someone stepping outside their role, a relationship used to get around a broken process, a person who caught something at the last possible second, so on). A successful outcome tells you what happened, not always whether the way you produced it is healthy enough to repeat. Here’s the tricky part about having extraordinarily capable people on your team: the better they are at compensating for what isn’t working, the easier it is to believe that everything is. So the next time someone saves the day, don’t just ask what they did right. Ask what you would have finally been forced to see if they hadn’t.       [Leadership Training](https://info.thought-design.com/blog/tag/leadership-training), [Mindshift Moments](https://info.thought-design.com/blog/tag/mindshift-moments) [![Logo-Footer](https://info.thought-design.com/hubfs/Thought%20Design%20Images/Logo-Footer.png)](https://thought-design.com/) - [About](https://thought-design.com/about/) - [Courses](https://thought-design.com/leadership-training-coaching/) - [Coaching](https://thought-design.com/leadership-training-coaching/) - [Workshops](https://thought-design.com/workshops/) - [Strategic Planning](https://thought-design.com/strategic-planning/) - [Culinary](https://thought-design.com/culinary/) - [Rentals](https://thought-design.com/rentals/) - [Events](https://thought-design.com/events/) - [Blog](https://info.thought-design.com/blog) - [Contact](https://thought-design.com/contact/) #### Address: 10 East Bridge St NE, Rockford, MI 49341 #### Phone: [(616) 951-1336](tel:(616)%20951-1336) #### SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER © 2026 Thought Design. All rights reserved. [Disclaimer & Privacy Policy](https://thought-design.com/legal/) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Tara Colvin", "url" : "https://info.thought-design.com/blog/author/tara-colvin" }, "dateModified" : "2026-11-10T15:47:53.336Z", "datePublished" : "2026-11-10T15:47:53.000Z", "headline" : "What Your Most Reliable Employees Might Be Hiding | Mindshift Moments", "image" : [ "https://info.thought-design.com/hubfs/mindshift%20moments%2026-1.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://info.thought-design.com/blog/what-your-most-reliable-employees-might-be-hiding-mindshift-moments", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://info.thought-design.com/hubfs/TD-logo-2018-inline.png" } } } ```