Some of the most capable people in an organization are also the ones most likely to have their development delayed. It is not because they are unprepared or lack potential. It is because they are too useful where they are.
A course becomes available. A developmental assignment opens. An opportunity emerges that could move their career forward. Then something urgent happens inside the organization.
The team is under pressure. A deadline is approaching. A critical project needs to be completed. The leader looks around and realizes that this person possesses the knowledge, experience, or relationships needed to get it done.
So the opportunity is taken away.
The person is told that the organization needs them. They are reminded of how important they are to the team and promised another opportunity next time.
Then next time arrives, the organization is under pressure again, and the same conversation repeats itself.
Eventually, the very competence that should have opened doors starts keeping them closed.
The Decision in Front of Me
I once had a team member scheduled to attend a career course specific to their military occupation. It was an important step in their professional development, and the course was offered only once a year.
At the same time, our organization was directed to conduct a fundamental review of our mandate. The timelines were tight, and the results would influence how we conducted future operations.
This member was crucial to that review. They were the only person from their occupation on the team, which meant they were the only one who could properly assess part of our mandate from that professional perspective.
From a purely operational standpoint, keeping them with us made sense.
I also received pressure from my superiors to have them pulled from the course. The argument was understandable. The review mattered, the deadline was not moving, and we needed their expertise.
But pulling them would have meant asking one person to absorb a full year of career delay so the organization could avoid several difficult weeks.
That did not sit right with me.
The lack of redundancy was an organizational risk, regardless of why it existed. It should not automatically become a career penalty paid by the individual.
I let them attend the course.
That did not make the mandate review any less important, nor did it make the work disappear. We divided the responsibilities, accepted that the process would be harder, and worked together to close the gap.
The member knew there had been pressure to pull them. They were grateful that I protected the opportunity, and they offered to help with the review “in the margins” whenever the course allowed. Their continued involvement was not the hidden price of being permitted to attend. They contributed because they wanted to support the team while continuing to prioritize the course.
We completed the work, and the member continued progressing professionally.
It was not the easiest option. It was the right one.
When Excellence Becomes a Liability
No leader sets out to punish someone for being good at their job. Usually, the opposite is true. We depend on our strongest people because they have repeatedly demonstrated that they can be trusted.
They understand the systems. They hold critical relationships. They know the history behind previous decisions. When the pressure rises, they are the people we instinctively turn toward.
Every individual decision can appear reasonable.
We need them for this project. We cannot release them during this busy period. Nobody else understands the issue well enough. The client only trusts them. We will make it up to them next time.
The danger is that “next time” is not a plan. It is a promise dependent upon the organization suddenly becoming less busy, less uncertain, and less reliant on the same person.
That moment rarely arrives on its own.
The stronger someone performs, the more responsibility flows toward them. The more responsibility they carry, the harder they become to replace. The harder they are to replace, the easier it becomes to justify withholding the very opportunities that would allow them to grow.
Eventually, being highly capable stops opening doors and starts closing them.
Your Immediate Problem Is Not Their Career Debt
Leaders face legitimate operational requirements. Deadlines matter. Clients have expectations. Missions must be completed. Sometimes there genuinely is no obvious replacement for the person preparing to leave for a course, posting, promotion, or developmental assignment.
That does not make the tradeoff disappear. It means the leader must decide who will carry its consequences.
Pulling someone from an opportunity transfers the operational risk away from the organization and places the long-term cost on the individual. The organization gets immediate relief. The person receives a promise.
But the consequences are not equal.
A team may experience several difficult weeks while it redistributes work and develops a solution. An individual who misses a course offered once a year may lose twelve months of career progression. Depending on the timing, that delay may affect future postings, qualifications, promotions, and opportunities that have not even appeared yet.
Leaders often measure the visible cost in front of them while discounting the invisible cost being pushed into someone else’s future.
Sometimes the team needs to absorb the disruption. Sometimes others need to step beyond their normal responsibilities. Sometimes the leader needs to carry more of the burden.
That is part of leadership. We should not continually protect the organization from discomfort by making our strongest people pay for it.
More Work Is Not Development
I once had a superior who regularly said:
“Good work gets rewarded with more work.”
There was truth in it. When you demonstrate that you can be trusted, people give you more responsibility. The complicated files come your way. You are brought into struggling projects because you can steady them. When something important needs to be done properly, your name rises to the top of the list.
At first, that can feel like recognition. It signals that your leaders trust your judgment and believe in your ability to deliver.
But there is also a danger hidden inside that saying.
If good work is rewarded only with more work, competence eventually becomes a tax. The high performer receives more tasks, more pressure, and more responsibility for protecting the organization, but none of the experiences that prepare them to move beyond their current role.
There is a significant difference between more work and a bigger opportunity.
More work increases volume. Bigger opportunities increase capability, authority, exposure, and scope.
One adds pressure to the job the person already has. The other prepares them for a job they have not yet held.
Leaders should ask a simple question when assigning work to a strong performer:
If this experience appeared on their resume, would it meaningfully prepare them for something bigger?
If the answer is no, we may be increasing their workload without advancing their development.
High performers will often accept this for a while. They care about the team and take pride in being dependable. They may even appreciate being the person everyone turns to.
But reliability should not become a sentence they are required to serve indefinitely. Good work should earn trust, but that trust must eventually create opportunities to grow.
“Indispensable” Is a Warning
Leaders sometimes describe a team member as indispensable with a sense of pride.
I hear something different.
If one person attending a course, taking leave, accepting a promotion, or departing the organization would create a crisis, the organization has a vulnerability. That vulnerability may exist because knowledge was never transferred, authority was never delegated, or another person was never given the opportunity to learn. It may also exist because staffing, qualifications, or organizational structures make redundancy difficult.
Whatever the cause, keeping the expert in place may hide the vulnerability, but it does not resolve it.
In fact, it can make the problem worse. Every time the organization relies on the same individual to rescue the situation, more knowledge and responsibility accumulate around them. The dependency grows, and releasing them becomes even more difficult.
The answer is not to reduce their importance. It is to spread as much of their capability as the organization reasonably can.
That means giving others exposure to critical files, relationships, and decisions. It means documenting not only processes, but also the judgment behind them. It means developing people who can assume meaningful responsibilities instead of waiting until a departure forces an emergency handover.
You may not be able to replace every qualification or replicate years of professional expertise. You can still ensure that the organization is not entirely dependent on one person to keep the work moving.
If you cannot release your strongest person because nobody can cover any part of what they do, the solution is not to block their movement. The solution is to start building capability around them.
Trust the Team to Close the Gap
Allowing a critical person to pursue an opportunity will sometimes result in a temporary decline in performance. Work may take longer. Someone less experienced may make a mistake. The leader may need to become more involved for a period.
That discomfort does not mean the decision was wrong.
In my case, releasing the member for their course forced us to look beyond the easiest answer. We had to divide the work differently, use the expertise available across the team, and accept the member’s voluntary contributions when they had time rather than expecting them to remain fully responsible.
The gap did not disappear. We closed it together.
That experience also reminded the team that our success could not depend entirely on one person. Had I pulled the member from the course, we might have completed the review with less disruption, but we would have preserved the underlying weakness. The next time we needed that occupational perspective, we would have faced exactly the same dependency.
Leaders sometimes underestimate what the rest of the team can do because the strongest performer has always been the safest option. When we stop defaulting to that person, support those stepping forward, and accept that the work may not initially be completed in exactly the same way, capability begins to spread.
The decision also strengthened the member’s commitment to the team. They knew I had been pressured to remove them from the course, and they knew I had chosen to protect their opportunity. Their willingness to continue helping came from that trust.
There is an important difference between commitment that is demanded and commitment that is earned.
If we had removed them from the course, we might have secured all of their working hours. We also would have sent a clear message that their future mattered only when it was convenient for the organization.
Instead, they saw that the team was willing to absorb some pressure to support their development. They chose to support the team in return.
Leaders spend considerable time looking for ways to increase engagement and discretionary effort. Sometimes the answer is much simpler than another initiative or program.
Show people that their ambitions matter to you, especially when supporting those ambitions creates a problem for you.
The Promise of “Next Time”
I have seen and heard about this pattern throughout my career.
Someone is removed from training or denied an opportunity because they are considered too important to the immediate situation. They are assured that their turn will come again.
Some eventually receive the opportunity and continue moving forward. Others receive it so late that the delay has already caused lasting damage to their careers. Then there are those who stop believing the promises. They give up on advancing within the organization or leave to pursue growth somewhere else.
Leaders may be surprised by the final outcome. From the individual’s perspective, however, the departure often began several missed opportunities earlier.
A delayed opportunity does not always remain available. Even when it does, providing it years later does not necessarily repair the damage. Promotion windows close. Career timelines shift. Motivation fades. Trust erodes.
By the time the opportunity finally arrives, the person may no longer interpret it as an investment in their future. They may see it as an obligation the organization should have honoured years earlier.
“Next time” must come with a credible plan. Otherwise, it is simply a more comfortable way to say no.
Free Your Best People to Grow
Protecting the development of a high performer does not mean ignoring operational reality. It means preparing the organization so that one person’s growth does not threaten its ability to function.
Start by identifying where the real dependency sits. What knowledge, relationships, qualifications, or decision-making authority exist with only one person?
Then build depth before an opportunity appears. Let someone else shadow the work. Transfer relationships deliberately. Give deputies real decisions to make. Create room for your strongest people to teach others rather than continually asking them to carry more themselves.
Most importantly, discuss development before frustration turns into resignation. Ask your people what they want to learn, which experiences they are missing, and what opportunities would prepare them for greater responsibility.
You cannot promise every promotion or course. You can ensure that your decisions are not consistently shaped by what is most convenient for you.
This is also where the strength of the entire team is revealed.
A high-performing team is not one that functions perfectly because its best person is always present. It is one that can absorb the temporary or permanent loss of a key member and continue moving forward.
People retire. They take leave. They become ill. They accept promotions. They quit. Sometimes circumstances remove someone without warning, and the team does not get the luxury of preparing for the timing.
Strong teams can fill the void because capability has been deliberately spread across the organization. People understand one another’s responsibilities. They know how to execute the essential tasks, pick up the pieces, and keep the work moving while the team adjusts.
That does not mean every person is interchangeable or that specialized expertise can be immediately replaced. It means the organization is resilient enough to continue operating while it works through the loss.
If your organization cannot function without one person, keeping them trapped in place does not make the team strong. It merely postpones the moment when that weakness is exposed.
Your strongest people should be free to pursue opportunities because the team has been built to continue without them. That is good for their development, but it is also the clearest evidence that you have created a genuinely high-performing team.
Who Is Paying for Your Convenience?
There will never be a perfect time to release a critical person.
There will always be another deadline, another staffing shortage, another project, or another reason to keep them exactly where they are. Leadership requires deciding whether the organization will absorb the inconvenience or transfer the consequences to the individual.
Sometimes you must protect the opportunity and trust the team to find another way.
The team’s immediate challenge belongs to the leader. It should not automatically become a career debt paid by the person capable enough to solve it.
Think about the people you rely upon most.
Are you giving them bigger opportunities, or simply more work?
Have you delayed their development because replacing them would be difficult?
Have you promised them “next time” more than once?
If someone comes to mind, start with a conversation. Ask them which opportunity they believe they have been waiting for. Then ask yourself what capability you need to build around them so they are free to pursue it.
If your organization has become dependent on a few exceptional people and you need help determining where to begin, you can explore a Leadership Clarity Call here: https://leaddontboss.com/clarity
Your people should not have to sacrifice their future because their competence makes your present easier.
Do not let competence become a cage.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott McCarthy is a senior Canadian Army officer, leadership coach, and founder of Moving Forward Leadership. He currently serves as a senior logistics officer operating at the strategic level within the Canadian Army. Throughout his military career, Scott has led organizations responsible for complex operations, national supply-chain capabilities, and billions of dollars in assets.
He is the author of You Don’t Know Sh*t About Leadership: And Neither Do I and host of the Peak Performance Leadership podcast. Scott’s work centres on the 3 Domains of Leadership: Leading Yourself, Leading Your Team, and Leading Your Organization. He helps leaders replace ego-driven reactions with disciplined, accountable action.
When he’s not serving in uniform or coaching executives, he’s refining systems, training hard, and continuing the same work he asks of others: getting better, one decision at a time.