That’s great when what they want to do is aligned with what the organization needs. It’s essentially not-managing.
The issue is, many times high performers just aren’t aligned with what needs doing, and by not-managing them, inexperienced managers create a world where you have tons of “high performance” arriving absolutely nowhere. You see this at every bloated organization (in particular at big tech).
I’ve got a high performer on my team and I do think (okay, wouldn’t I ;) that in managing speed vs quality and explicit attention to the learning curve of others I’ve managed to create a few more golden nuggets. No high performer (perhaps: nobody, ever) has all professional skills in the same measure.
What did they want me to do?
Get stuff out of their way, so they could move as fast as they were capable of moving.
I was happy to do that, and we had a great relationship.