When the Star Performer Becomes the Boss
Background
Putting a star performer in charge of a team or department seems a promising choice. Someone who excels at doing the work can take the lead on tasks and step in afterward to help with those the members leave undone. This paper examines theoretically how a star performer who becomes the boss and continues to take on much of the work can nevertheless reduce team output.
It looks at how the leader’s own work changes the members’ reasons to collaborate with one another.
Being a star performer does not necessarily mean being a good manager. A familiar explanation is that doing the work and managing others require different skills. This paper asks how ability as an individual contributor changes the way a team works, even when leaders have the same managerial ability.
For example, discussing tasks and agreeing on how to work together takes time and attention. If the leader takes on much of the work, members may conclude that there is little reason to make that effort: the leader will get things done anyway. A leader who works hard can weaken collaboration among the members.
What the paper does
The paper models a team with one leader and two members. Each receives a fixed share of the value the team produces. Effort is costly, and additional work has a smaller return when more has already been done. A leader with greater ability as an individual contributor can supply the same amount of work at a lower personal cost.
The members choose either to work independently, considering their own rewards and costs (noncollaboration), or to decide jointly how to divide the work, considering their combined rewards and costs (collaboration). Collaboration eliminates the free-riding problem between the two members, allowing them to coordinate their efforts efficiently and both work harder. However, sharing information and coordinating their work also take time and attention. The leader, too, bears a cost of supporting collaboration, for example by clarifying roles and mediating disagreements.
The analysis compares two ways of leading. One is taking the initiative through the leader’s own contribution, which the paper calls Leading by Contribution. The leader commits to an amount of work first, and the members respond afterward. The other is helping with the members’ work afterward, or Leading by Backup. The members act first, and the leader takes on some of the remaining work if available. The paper asks how greater ability as an individual contributor changes the leader’s involvement, peer collaboration, and team output under each arrangement.
What it finds
First, a leader may deliberately limit their own contribution to preserve collaboration among the members.
Under Leading by Contribution, doing more reduces the return to additional member effort. The gain from collaboration also shrinks. Beyond a certain leader contribution, that gain no longer covers the time and attention needed to coordinate, and the members stop collaborating.
Anticipating this response, under certain conditions the leader limits their contribution to the highest level compatible with collaboration. Within this range, greater ability as an individual contributor does not lead to more leader effort. Although the leader could do more, holding back is in their own interest. The paper calls this productive restraint.
Second, a leader who steps in afterward may preserve collaboration by limiting how reliably they are available to help.
If members know that the leader will do some of the work they leave undone, they work less from the outset. Coordinating their efforts also becomes less rewarding. A leader who is more productive as an individual contributor can take over more work, making this effect stronger.
Under Leading by Backup, the leader can therefore commit in advance to being unavailable with a positive probability. Knowing that they may need to get the work done themselves restores the members’ reason to collaborate. The paper calls this strategic absence. Among leaders who use this approach to preserve collaboration, those with greater ability as individual contributors must commit to a higher probability of being unavailable.
Third, further increases in ability as an individual contributor can lead the leader to abandon collaboration, causing team output to fall abruptly.
A leader who is sufficiently productive as an individual contributor prefers taking on more work to supporting peer collaboration. A leader practicing productive restraint increases their contribution; one practicing strategic absence returns to full availability. In both cases, peer collaboration is lost.
Crucially, this also saves the leader the cost of supporting collaboration. Those savings can make abandonment personally worthwhile even when the leader’s additional work fails to replace the lost member effort. A small increase in ability as an individual contributor can therefore produce greater leader involvement but lower team output.
Under either Leading by Contribution or Leading by Backup, deliberately limiting their own contribution or availability can allow leaders to encourage collaboration and improve team performance.
Why it matters
Evaluating a leader requires looking at both their own contribution and whether they sustain an environment in which members find it worthwhile to collaborate. Taking on more tasks or always being available to help does not necessarily benefit the team.
The same point matters when choosing the boss. Even when a candidate’s track record accurately reflects their ability to do the work themselves, selecting the stronger performer to lead the same members can reduce team output. A more productive candidate may prefer to take over more work, while a slightly less productive one steps back and preserves collaboration.
Organizations can consider keeping specified tasks with members or establishing times and conditions under which leaders do not take over. These limits can coexist with coaching, communication, and mediation. Payments contingent on sustaining collaboration can also compensate leaders for the burden of supporting it and strengthen their reason to continue. Protecting the work left to members and rewarding the leader’s support for collaboration serve different purposes.
This theoretical study identifies the conditions under which these mechanisms operate. Collaboration takes time and effort, so a fall in output does not by itself establish a loss for the organization. Nevertheless, organizational surplus can fall even after accounting for those costs. Where the leader’s work strongly increases the productivity of member effort, greater involvement may instead support collaboration. Deciding how much to do and how much to leave to others therefore requires considering the members’ reasons to work together.
This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24K04912.
About the paper
- Title: When Leaders Step Back: Productive Restraint, Strategic Absence, and Peer Collaboration
- Author: Keisuke Hattori
- Year: 2026
- Publication status: Working paper, available on EconStor
- Full paper: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/344080