How to not forget about those that "are doing just fine" on your team
Tips on how to not only focusing on supporting those that need support but also reward good performance.
Hey there,
This week’s Weekly Briefing is inspired by a question that @smilenteo asked on Twitter:
After a healthy discussion that is worth checking out where we discussed the term “best performers” and agreed that it’s necessarily the best term, because who even is a “best performer”? Most employees are not even sure whether they are doing a good job or not, according to this study of over 30,000 employees, and in many companies “performance” is a fuzzy concept which is difficult to measure due to ever changing targets and conditions. I dove into topic of how balancing time you spend with those that struggle vs. those that are doing well on your team, and here is what I found:
How to not forget about those that "are doing just fine" on your team
👉 3 Reasons Why High Performers Are Often Miserable by Mark Murphy
Top Take aways: Again I don’t necessarily agree with the term “high performers”, but it gives a pretty good overview of the dynamics at play that lead to the “culture” that Smilen above mentioned. Turns out, the key is not to ignore the feedback of those that are doing “great” or “just fine” on your team and basically be a good leader for them by spending time with them regularly and make improvements based on their feedback.
👉 You're Wasting Your Time by Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano
Top Take aways: This Gallup article is suggesting to take a page from the sport’s coaches book and focus on those that are pulling the team forward the most. This article gives an actionable suggestion on how much time to spend with which segment of employees: 50% with the stars, 30% with promising rookies and 10-15% with “utility players” and the rest on non-performers 🤷🏻♀️ Admittedly the article is from 2002, not sure how “up to date” that mental model still is.
👉 Keeping Top Performers Requires Extra Effort In Today's Market by Shelley Smith
Top Take aways: This article also mentions the bias of many managers to ignore those that are doing well and delivering results and focus on those that are not happy and are not delivering as much. At the very least you should spend as much time with them as you spend with those that require support to deliver results, but aside of that also give them other resources within and outside of your organization.
Bonus:
👉 The Situational Theory of Leadership by Kenda Cherry
Top Take aways: When figuring out how to support an employee and what they need in order to perform consider that every employee is going through a process to develop towards a “self-reliant achiever” and that your role is to help them get there. It’s a good article to understand better how to do that :) thank you Stephanie Leue for mentioning it.
My overall take away is: there is bias to look mostly into the corners of your team where things are not going as well, and that make sense, you want things to be better, right? However the risk with this is that you are giving those that are doing well too little attention. So be mindful of your time and don’t forget, just because someone is self-sufficient and autonomous, that does not mean that they don’t need your attention. On the topic of “top performers” and “low performers” my take is that everyone can be one or the other, depending on the challenge and the context. In order to perform different people need different things, as leaders we’re well advised to figure out what that is for each of our players and work hard to get them what we need to so we lift as many people as possible, as frequently as possible over the “top performance” benchmark.
From the Community
This week we’re featuring all the amazing job opportunities that are currently being shared in our community 👇
Product Manager at Diesel Laptops, USA/Remote
Senior Software Engineer at Twitter, USA - NYC/Remote
Project Manager (Finance) at Ableton, Germany - Berlin
Product Operations Lead at Solaris, Germany - Berlin
Various Marketing Positions at Tyk, EU/USA/Remote
Part-time assistant manager at Sarah von Dreele, USA- NYC/Remote
Tips from the Bunch AI Coach:
This week’s tip is inspired by Charles O’Reilly’s framework that showcases 6 cultural dimensions, along which you can develop and grow your culture. Check it out here to understand how to grow a high-performance culture in your team with the culture radar.
Have a fabulous start to your week, with lots of high performance!
Darja
PS: Download the AI coach to get 1% better in just 2 min a day