High Performers Are Hard To Lead
Who are your high performers? I’m going to ask you that same question in a few minutes’ time, and see if you get the same answer!
It’s surprisingly difficult to identify your high performers. Let me explain this with an example.
I once had a client say to me, “Marty, I’ve got this high performer who’s just awesome. She’s really good most of the time, but she doesn’t accept feedback from me, even when it’s something pretty obvious, and I can’t get her to focus on the things that are most valuable to the team.”
I had to gently walk this client through to the conclusion that this person probably wasn’t a high performer. She just happened to be highly competent in one aspect of her work…
… But someone who doesn’t listen, and can’t focus on work, simply can’t be classified as a high performer.
We categorize people in our heads as high performers for any number of reasons:
Often, we over-rate certain aspects of their performance… e.g. you might have a great salesperson, or a highly skilled engineer who delivers their functional duties well, but if you were to consider their behaviors, and their effect on the team dynamic, it may change your opinion of their real value.
Sometimes, it’s just halo effect… because they’re expert in one area, we assume that they’re competent in other areas too – even when they’re not.
Sometimes, it’s because they’re nice people, who get on well with others in the team, and know how to communicate well
And, quite often, we look at the people who are most like us and say, “Now there’s a high performer!”
So, assuming you can actually work out – really work out – who your high performers are, how do you get the most out of them?
In LBT, the tools for stretching your people apply equally to high performers, as they do to anyone else… The “Challenge / Coach/ Confront”… setting the tone, the pace, and the standard for your team…
Most often, we tend to ignore the high performers who are really good at what they do, because they just deliver… reliably… consistently… with very little guidance from us…
… we save our energy for the people who aren’t doing their jobs, and we try to drag them kicking and screaming to an acceptable level of performance.
Research from elite consulting firm, McKinsey, found that your highest performers will deliver up to 800% more value than your average performers.
If you believe that number is even half true, that says to me that I should do one really important thing, above all else:
Make sure they don’t leave! Lock them in financially, and give them a career advancement path that keeps them excited and challenged
Work out how to stretch them – they love being stretched… otherwise, they’ll be tempted to cruise along at 40% of their capacity, because they’ll still outperform everyone else…
But you want them performing at their peak, and harvesting that 800% productivity upside
And, whatever you do, make sure you’re serious about setting a minimum acceptable standard of performance…
The thing high performers hate, more than anything, is being part of a team or company that allows poor performance to fester. It’s one of the main reasons they leave.
“My reward for delivering extraordinary performance is that I get the work of the underperformers to do as well. Why should I work my butt off, while I watch them cruise?”
Strong leaders lift the performance to meet the standard… weak leaders lower the standard to meet the performance!
So, who are your high performers… really?!