Written by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ a top-rated leadership development and employee survey firm. Leadership IQ's clients include the Harvard Business School, Merck, MasterCard, Volkswagen, and Microsoft, and our survey research has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek and more. Mark Murphy is the author of the international management bestseller "Hundred Percenters."

Every single person is going to mess up at some point. And when they do, your role as their leader obligates you to say something. But what you say is going to vary significantly depending on whether the employee is a high, middle or low performer. And in this brief article, I’m going to talk to you about what you say when your high performers (aka stars or Hundred Percenters) mess up.

Unlike a lot of folks, high performers are pretty aware when they make a mistake. Watch an elite athlete, musician, programmer, clinician, etc. and they know before the rest of us when they’ve made a mistake (they may not admit it to the press, but that’s an entirely different issue). Watch Peyton Manning’s face when he throws a bad pass, and you can see that he knows it’s bad the millisecond it leaves his fingers. Most people never heard the late tenor Luciano Pavarotti miss a note. But he heard tiny flaws in every performance (and those imperceptible-to-the-layman flaws eventually led to his retirement).

High performers are driven by a burning desire to succeed. So when it’s their blunder that’s hindering achievement, they’re acutely aware of their role in the situation. High performers have this thing called “critical self awareness” and it’s basically the ability to reflect on themselves and their performance in a pretty objective and honest way, such that they can identify both strengths and weaknesses. It’s what gives them ability to constantly improve, strive for perfection, etc.

In most cases, high performers want to move forward from an error and redeem themselves; to turn the experience into one of learning and self betterment. Unlike a lot of other people, they typically don’t get sidetracked by things like blame, denial or excuses (moping around blaming others just wastes time they could spend making sure that mistake never happens again).

Instead, high performers make the jump directly to accountability (taking full ownership for the cause and resolution of the mistake). And they usually make that leap without any outside help in getting there.

If we were talking about middle or low performers, the leadership focus would likely be on delivering corrective feedback that explores what went wrong and why. (After all, if you don’t know why a mistake happened, it’s going to be pretty hard to fix it in the future). But that light bulb has already gone on for high performers. They know they erred, why it happened and that it needs to be fixed (we call this “making a corrective leap”). In fact, they probably also feel bad about it. So there’s basically zero benefit to harping on what was. Instead, this is the time to move onto making sure this particular mistake never happens again.

Now, while high performers will sometimes make the complete leap from “mistake” to “developing a really good solution” all by themselves, other times they’re going to need some help developing that really good solution. In one of our recent studies, 51% of employees (many of them high performers) told us they get too little constructive feedback from the boss. And, 65% said that when the boss does provide feedback, it typically fails to include any information to help address and correct mistakes.

In most cases, you need only open a conversation and act as a guide while your high performer self-assesses the situation and figures out how to fix it. This can be as simple as saying, “You’re clearly not happy about what happened. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

First, you might hear a recap of accountability and remorse. This usually sounds something like, “I knew I screwed up as soon as I emailed the report/spoke at the meeting /made the call, etc.” At this point, a question as simple as, “What do you think we can do to make things better going forward?” is often all it takes to help your high performer shift his or her focus off the mistake and onto finding a solution.

You may also get an initial response that indicates some level of anxiety. This happens when the high performer accepts 100 % accountability for the mistake, but is a bit freaked out about his or her ability to set things right. Anxiety usually addresses worry or fear and sounds something like, “I know I really messed up…but I don’t think I have the skills to fix this.” When anxiety is present, your high performer isn’t thinking at his or her best. The anxiety must be removed before good solutions can be found.

Return the focus to problem solving by breaking down whatever is causing the anxiety into smaller, more workable pieces. You might say, “OK, let’s just relax and take this step-by-step and see what we can do.” Once the problem appears less complex, clear solutions will begin to emerge. Logic and control will replace the anxiety and high-performer brainstorming will begin. If the anxiety reappears, simply go back and break things down into even smaller pieces.

Here’s the bottom line: High performers (aka Hundred Percenters or stars) know when they’ve messed up. (Sometimes they know it so intensely it just eats them up inside). So when they make a mistake, don’t treat them like the average employee that might not be aware of their mistake, or might not understand why it happened. High performers “get it.” Your job isn’t to pile on, but rather to help them problem solve solutions to elevate their performance and avoid this mistake in the future. It’s a very different kind of feedback, but if you’re willing to situationally adjust your feedback style, you’re going to have some seriously motivated superstars.