How to Lead Your High Performers to Excellence
Tags: Programming, Management, Leadership, Work, Growth

7 Proactive Steps to Manage High Performers

1. Scratch below the surface

Understanding the high performers on your team beyond their wants and needs down to what makes them unique is the first most important step. Get behind those closed doors, take a peek inside, and try to see the world as they see it.

They won’t let you in at the first instance, but with a genuine curiosity to be a part of their journey, you can get access to their personal map.

What are their principles and values?

What keeps them up at night?

What do they really care about?

What kind of challenges do they seek in their work?

How do they like to be recognised?

What are their expectations from you as a manager and others on the team?

How do they like to receive feedback?

What’s unacceptable and a deal-breaker for them?

How do they like to communicate?

You are not expected to please them, give in to all their demands, or adjust your ways to their ways of doing things, but having access to this information provides a strong foundation for future conversations to align on mutually acceptable ways of working together as a team.

2. Connect the dots to learning and growth

Top performers don’t just like to stay busy. They want to do impactful work, derive a sense of accomplishment from solving tough problems, and constantly seek to push the boundaries of their own limits.

They strongly align with what Daniel Pink said in his book Drive: “Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.” Their passion for their work and confidence in pulling off challenging projects keeps them hungry and desperate for more.

Don’t just assign work, show them where they are headed.

Spend dedicated time in visualising their growth path, identify the opportunities they will need along the way, and ensure their work is aligned with the challenges they need to learn and grow. Don’t hesitate to look beyond the boundaries of your team to other areas that might be better suited for their growth.

Remember, charting out this path is not the end of your responsibility, it’s the beginning of one. Companies evolve and so do the people in them. Keep an eye out for a change in market conditions, their own personal preferences, or anything else that may require you to revisit this plan.

Miss a few dots along the way, and you are sure to lose your high performer.

3. Let them steer their own ship

High performers don’t just appreciate good work, they find pleasure in carving out their own path. Facing the ups and downs, tackling challenges along the way, dealing with failures and setbacks, and finding ways to get past them is what inspires them.

Show them the destination, but don’t try to be their navigator. Challenge them to steer their own ship and inspire them to deal with the storms along the way. Let them experiment, try different ideas, and put new strategies in place to get the outcomes you both desire.

By providing them with a sense of autonomy and clarity of purpose and by putting trust in their abilities, you will empower them to make the right decisions along the way. Even if they make mistakes, know that they will pour all their energy into setting things right.

Focus on your destination, but know there’s no single path to reach it. Consider working with a high performer as an excellent opportunity to break mental barriers and embrace new ways of doing things. There’s so much to learn if only we keep our ego aside and approach them with an open mindset.

4. Seek psychological investment

Intellectual stimulation isn’t enough. High performers need an emotional connection to ideas. If they don’t buy into an idea, they won’t pour all their energy into making it successful.

It’s not about seeking consensus on every strategy and all tactics but rather about aligning on a shared purpose. Involve them in the strategic planning phase, seek their ideas, do not avoid confrontation, and indulge in healthy disagreements.

By being part of the context and rationale that goes into decision-making, they will learn to focus on the right things. Instead of only worrying about efficiency that deals with what and how, they will think about the value in being effective first, which will require them to question why.

This will also help them broaden their sense of right vs. wrong and shift from me vs. them to doing work that’s in the larger interest of the organisation. They will learn to say no to requests that do not align with their goals, communicate effectively with clarity of purpose, and build other essential skills required to grow in their role.

Being the creator of their own path will make them psychologically invest and commit to excellence.

5. Extend visibility beyond team boundaries

Confining high performers to team boundaries is sure to limit their potential. Others cannot utilise their expertise and knowledge if they don’t even know of their existence.

Help them grow their network in the organisation and connect to people from different teams and functions by creating opportunities to share knowledge with others. Ask them to lead discussions with other teams, present ideas to leadership, participate in talks, and conduct learning sessions.

An important element before creating visibility is to take their personality into account. Some introverts are not comfortable speaking to large groups but do great with small groups of people. They may also need preparation time to speak about their ideas in a meeting. Instead of relying on spontaneity, give them up a heads-up that you will be asking about their opinion in a meeting. Small adaptations like these go a long way in putting their strengths to use and building the comfort level required to communicate effectively with others.

“Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping extroverts; ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in writing, they can be packaged into highly produced lectures, they can be advanced by allies. The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms.”— Susan Cain in Quiet

Discuss the importance of visibility, take their personal preferences into account, help in removing the communication hurdles, and design the right kind of environment to get them the right kind of visibility. Don’t make them hate it by pushing them into doing it your way. These negative emotions will be sufficient to drive them away from the organisation.

6. Don’t make them your fallback option

High performers love to contribute. But there’s a difference between doing work that adds value and simply doing work.

High performers tend to become the default option for every crisis in the team — an urgent issue that needs to be resolved, tasks on a project that’s running behind schedule, picking up the slack from a non-performing team member.

Instead of getting quiet time to do focussed work, they are constantly distracted by meetings, other team members who demand their attention, and work that does not align with their goals. By spending a large amount of their time solving other people’s problems, they have less time left to do their own work. This makes them stretch and work long hours to get their own work done.

Sooner or later, frustration creeps in. Long working hours impact their health and wellbeing and can even be a source of their burnout. Instead of creating impact through their ability to produce high-quality work, they stop adding value.

Helping your high performers manage their time well will be the most important investment of your own time.

Ensure fair distribution of work, set up expectations on work allocation and responsibilities, motivate others to step up in their role, and stop using your high performer as your fallback option.

7. Establish healthy work boundaries

“For an individual to be deemed excellent she can’t just be amazing at the game; she has to be selfless and put the team before her own ego. She has to know when to pass the ball, how to help her teammates thrive, and recognize that the only way to win is for the team to win together.”— Reed Hastings

Taking care of your high performer doesn’t translate into protecting them from bad behaviour, making exceptions, or giving in to their unjust demands. That would be irresponsible behaviour. Yes, they could be paid exceptionally high compared to others, based on the value they produce for the organisation. In no way, though, does it give them the license to mistreat others or expect blind obedience to their way of doing things.

Establish healthy boundaries with the high performers in your team. Reinforce good behaviour and confront bad, discuss ideas on how to achieve excellence as a team and not just individual goals, and coach them to respect others' ideas and opinions without necessarily agreeing to their viewpoint. Most importantly, define what good communication looks like.