One of the best things you can do in leadership is hire people who are already on fire—people who show up hungry, passionate, and ready to make something great happen. But because they are such highly motivated self-starters, we often forget that every fire needs fuel. It's not enough to hire passionate people and expect them to stay lit forever. If you don't give them purpose, support, and space to grow, you can almost always expect their fire to burn out - or, at the very least, dim significantly.

I've made this mistake. I've hired amazing people with vision and drive and just assumed they'd figure it out because they had that fire in their belly already - that "show me what to do and let me at it" attitude. However, passion without direction can turn into frustration, and drive without clarity can lead to burnout. And I lost some good people because I forgot that. These people didn't need micromanagement. They didn't need babysitting. (And if you have people on your team who DO need those things, it's time for some reevaluation.) But what they did need from me was connection and clarity. They needed to understand how their work aligned with the mission and why it mattered.

Even highly motivated, passionate people need to feel like their fire means something. Otherwise, the inevitable will eventually happen - tasks won't seem as urgent, days will be filled with clock-watching, and an "it doesn't really matter anyway" attitude will creep in.

Although it's easy to blame diminishing performance solely on the employee, I believe that mindset will lead to a revolving door of once-passionate high performers looking for another place where they can soar and feel alive again. We'd be wise to recognize that our leadership has a great deal to do with how fast that door spins.

High performers need high expectations—and high support. If you want to keep your best people fired up, you have to do more than just stay out of their way. You have to fuel them. And there are a variety of ways to fill that tank:

- Be generous with honest, consistent feedback
- Give them REAL responsibility and ownership
- Regularly emphasize and clearly communicate the vision and mission
- Give them opportunities to grow, stretch, and contribute - TRUST them
- Notice and recognize their efforts, not just their results

It's not hard to do. But it's dangerously easy to forget—especially when someone seems "low maintenance." Don't confuse silence with satisfaction. Sometimes, your most passionate people are quietly burning out because no one's throwing logs on the fire.

The people you've been praying for—the high performers, the culture builders, the ones who make the team better—don't just want a job. They want to matter.

If you're lucky enough to have someone on your team who's already burning, don't ignore that fire! Feed it, protect it, and give it space to grow. Because the biggest leadership failure isn't hiring the wrong person; it's hiring the right person and slowly snuffing out everything that made them great.

Look around your teams. Be present and notice; who's burning bright—and who's fading? And remember - leadership isn't just about sparking passion; it's about sustaining it. The best leaders never forget to add fuel to the fires they're blessed to lead.