The Quiet Exit: How High Performers Decide They’re Done
When the best employees leave, it rarely happens overnight. It may seem sudden—no notice, no warning, just gone—but the truth is, the process begins months before the resignation email is sent. It starts with the gradual erosion of trust, with boundaries being tested, voices being dismissed, and a system subtly signaling that excellence is expected but never safeguarded. Some may call it crashing out: when high performers reach a breaking point. Not because they’ve found something better, but because they can’t bear to stay one more day.
The Moment It Clicks
For me, it happened over a conference room.
A colleague had occupied a reserved space without communicating her intentions. I waited ten minutes outside the room, making my presence known, as I had booked it for my own meeting before she finally emerged. Calmly, I said, “In the future, please just let me know if you need to take over the room so that I can find an alternate space. I have several people waiting.”
That’s all it was—a request, a boundary in fact.
In my next 1:1, my boss mentioned that this colleague had sent her a private message with feedback, saying I’d been “unfriendly.” My boss warned me, almost apologetically, that she has “a tendency to spin stories.” But that’s when it hit me: it wasn’t about the room. It was about the culture. This scenario was one of many passive-aggressive stunts I had experienced over the year, and at that moment, I decided that I couldn’t give this 110% of my energy anymore. I was done.
The Real Reason Good People Leave
The best employees don’t leave because they can’t handle the work. They leave because they can no longer cope with the environment that refuses to manage itself. They leave when bias gets rebranded as “feedback.” When honesty is punished more than the behavior that caused it, when speaking up makes you the problem instead of the person trying to solve one. When chaos is ignored, and leadership isn’t there to block and tackle. For people of color, this pattern runs deeper. We are often asked to overperform, overexplain, and overaccommodate—until we’re underprotected. And when you realize your psychological safety isn’t a priority, the only logical choice left is self-preservation.
When high performers walk out, it’s not because they stopped caring—it’s because they cared too long in an environment that didn’t care back. The question isn’t, “How do we retain talent?” It’s, “What are we doing that makes talented people desperate to escape?” Because the best employees don’t leave on a whim. They leave when the cost of staying becomes too high to bear.
The Exit Strategy Mindset
Planning your exit isn’t an act of defeat; it’s an act of discipline. It’s saying, “I won’t let this place decide who I become.”
Start quietly:
Take inventory. Identify what’s draining your energy and what still fuels it.
Document everything. Protect your narrative before someone else rewrites it.
Rebuild your network. Reconnect with mentors, peers, and allies who remind you of your worth.
Redirect your focus. Pour energy into your next move, not your current dysfunction.
Seek professional support. Take a leave of absence, hire a therapist, or seek advice from your professional board of directors.
You don’t owe anyone your burnout. You owe yourself a plan. It’s all about choosing yourself before the system breaks you.