11 Actions for High Performers
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
"The number one driver of profit growth is people growth.”
– Mike Goldman
Leaders often over-invest in low performers and under-invest in high performers.
High performers have the greatest potential for growth.
Investing in high performers is crucial for retaining them and driving organizational success.
Challenges with Performance Reviews
Annual performance reviews are often ineffective, especially for high performers.
Leaders struggle to provide meaningful feedback to high performers.
11 Actions to Elevate High Performers
Challenge Them
Prevent boredom by encouraging new learning and responsibilities.
High performers seek environments where they can grow and be challenged.
Raise the Bar
Set higher expectations and goals.
Increase targets to motivate high performers to achieve more.
Increase Responsibility
Delegate more significant tasks and projects.
Allow high performers to test and expand their capabilities.
Invest in Them
Provide time, money, and resources for personal and professional development.
Examples include coaching, conferences, and certifications.
Promote Them
Offer promotions to recognize their achievements.
Promotions can be in title, responsibility, and sometimes compensation.
Reward Them
Use both monetary and non-monetary rewards.
Rewards should be significant and meaningful.
Recognize Them
Publicly or privately acknowledge their contributions.
Tailor recognition to the individual’s preferences.
Remove Barriers
Identify and eliminate obstacles hindering their performance.
Examples include poor processes or micromanagement.
Give More Exposure
Provide opportunities to interact with senior leaders, clients, or within the industry.
Exposure helps in professional growth and recognition.
Career Planning
Regularly discuss career aspirations and development plans.
Help them map out a clear career path within the organization.
Re-Recruit Them
Conduct stay interviews to understand their needs and prevent turnover.
Ask what it would take for them to stay and address those needs proactively.
Conclusion: Develop a 90-Day Plan
Create a 90-day action plan for each high performer.
Focus on specific actions over 30, 60, and 90 days.
Investing in high performers leads to increased performance and reduced stress for leaders.
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Most leaders over invest in low performers and under invest in high performers. They under invest in those people that I have seen actually have the biggest potential for growth. Now I know that sounds counterintuitive. If someone is a low performer, don't they have a lot of room to grow?
Well, hypothetically they do, logically they do, but in the real world
The low performers typically have a ceiling on their performance within your organization.
They may be able to be a high performer somewhere else. And I'm certainly not saying not to invest in your low performers. We need to invest in all of our people, but we need to invest more in our high performers and we tend to under invest in them.
Our high performers again are the ones with the biggest potential for growth.
Our high performers are those folks who we can and should be leveraging to be great. The high performers are the folks who attract other high performers. And I've seen more high performers leave out of boredom or, lack of growth. Then any other reason your high performers are also the ones on the phone right now talking to a recruiter offering them 50 percent more to go to work for your competition.
And yet we under invest in those folks and over invest in the low performers who I believe have lower potential cause us and our teams frustration and frankly cause us to. Keep people around who are not a good fit for our organization, who may be much better off somewhere else. we keep them around longer than we should.
Now let's talk a little bit about why that happens.
and, you know, I've seen that firsthand. You know, I can remember way back when I worked for big consulting firm Accenture and Deloitte and, you know, another company in between there. And, you know, I had. the responsibility to write annual performance reviews and don't get me started on annual performance reviews.
I think they're the worst invention in business. In fact, if you're interested in why I think that and what might be a replacement for that, I have a episode called let's dump the annual performance review. But that aside, I was asked to create annual performance reviews and I would have the most difficult time doing that for my best people.
I would dread creating them for my best people for my low performers. It was easy. All I had to do was prioritize the five or six or seven things. I wanted them to improve. I needed them to improve down to the most important two or three, but man, there was no lack of things to tell them to do. No lack of development opportunities and coaching opportunities.
That was easy. But what was I going to tell? My highest performers, how could I help those people that were meeting or beating their goals? How could I help those people that were smarter and better than me at what they were doing? What can I tell them? So I would under invest in them partially because I didn't know what to do.
So I thought, let me just leave them alone and let them just do a great job. And I can go focus on my problem children over there. Now that's not the way high performers. Want to be treated. That's not the way they should be treated. It's not in our best interest, their best interest, or a company's best interest.
So I want to help today by sharing 11 actions. And of course there are more than this, but 11 potential actions for your high performers. And I encourage you throughout this episode to. Not just think about this conceptually, think about your highest performer or your highest two or three performers and make a note of specific actions you're committed to take with them for them because if you don't have a plan over the next 30, 60, 90 days of the specific actions you'll be taking with and for your high performers, You've got a great chance at losing them.
You've got a great chance at under utilizing them. You've got a great chance of at some point them becoming mediocre performers because you're not challenging to challenging them to do more and be more. So let's talk about those 11 actions.
Number one, very simply is to challenge them. As I said, a few minutes ago, I have seen more high performers leave out of boredom.
Than anything else. Now, boredom, did you don't cure boredom by have them working, having them work 65 or 70 hours a week. That's not what I mean by challenging them. When I say challenge them, I mean, challenge them to do more, challenge them to learn something new, do something new be someone new, challenge them.
I could remember years ago, I had a job where I worked for a CFO. I was about 30 years old and I really enjoyed my work and got along with the CFO, but his annual performance review for me basically said, keep up the good work. It was at that moment that I realized I needed to look for something more because I wasn't going to be challenged.
I wasn't going to grow in that environment. So number one action is we need to challenge our high performers.
The number two action for high performers is to raise the bar. Raise the bar means raise the level of expectation you have for their measures of success. Challenge them to achieve more. If it's a salesperson set, raise the bar, set higher expectations for the number of new clients they're bringing in per month or the amount of new revenue if they're in marketing, raise the bar on the number of marketing qualified leads you expect from them.
So number one action is to challenge them. Number two is to raise the bar.
Number three is to increase their responsibility. So especially if you're in a situation as the leader where you feel like you're stretched too thin, there's, or there's more you would like to do, increase the responsibility of one of your high performers.
Not only is that going to help you being able to step back from working in the business to start doing more working on the business, but again, you're allowing them to grow. into a new role. See what they can do. Test them, let them test themselves. And that's exciting to them when they've got some new responsibility.
So that's number three. And again, these 11 that I'm taking you through, it's not meant to be do all of these for all of your high performers, but these should be thought starters. You should never be without ideas as to actions you can take with and for. These high performers. So we've been through three so far.
Number four, invest in them. Invest in them means invest time. in a lot of cases, it does mean invest money in them, invest money in a coach for them, invest money in sending them to a conference. Or, allowing them to, pay for some training or a certain level of certification. Invest in them. The number one driver of profit growth is people growth.
You're never going to get a greater ROI in time and money than investing in your best people. So number four is invest in them.
Number five is promote them. Is it time for a promotion? When's the last time you promoted them? Do you have a career path where promoting them makes sense? Sometimes a promotion comes with increased responsibility.
Sometimes it is just a title change that lets them know, what a great job they've been doing. Sometimes it comes with, increased compensation, sometimes not. But number five. is to promote them.
Number six is to reward them monetary or non monetary, but very often it is a monetary reward.
Number seven, recognize them. Now, recognition could be during a town hall saying, you know, Linda, stand up a minute. Let's all give Linda a, a hand for the great job she did implementing our new CRM, you know, this quarter. It could be a public forum. Recognition. Now, some people, if you do that kind of public recognition, we'll pull you aside and say, if you ever embarrass me like that again, I will kill you.
So know who you're recognizing. Sometimes recognition is public. Sometimes it's a very private pulling someone off to the side and saying, Hey, just want to thank you and let you know. What a great job you're doing. That's number seven.
Number eight is remove barriers. What barriers are in their way to even greater performance, greater productivity, greater growth.
The barrier could be that you have them following a crappy process. So fix the process or better yet, give them responsibility to fix the process. The barrier could be your micromanaging them, get out of their way and let them do their thing. The barrier could be, you've got too many underperformers around that you're over investing in.
And you need to fix that. So those people get out of their way. So number eight is remove barriers.
Number nine is give them more exposure. Now that could be exposure to certain clients that could be exposure within the industries could be exposure on the team. So let's say you are a. VP of talent development.
And you've got someone on your team who's not typically in your weekly leadership team meetings, but you've got somebody on your team who's done a fabulous job. Imagine. Going to them and say, Hey, you know, that senior leadership team meeting I've got blocked off every Tuesday from 10 to 11, block it off, block off next Tuesday on your calendar, because I'd love to, have you in that meeting your implementation of our new.
one on one coaching process within the organization, I think is a model for how we ought to implement any new process. I would love for you to come into that senior leadership team meeting, explain how you did it. Because I think that whole senior leadership team, including me has something to learn from you.
So block that time off on your calendar. Now that leadership team meeting for you may not be the most exciting part of your week. But for them, what you've just asked them to do is something that they're going home and telling their Significant other about their kids about their mom and dad about their friends about there They get to go to the senior leadership team meeting How cool is that and you're getting in more exposure to that leadership team and maybe?
testing out whether They belong around that leadership table one of these days. So exposure is a great action to take with and for your high performers. And that was number nine.
Number 10 is career planning. When is the last time you sat down with one of your high performers found out where they wanted to go in their career and how you could help them get there?
now that may not only tell you something about how you could help them, but it also may tell you something about your career path within the organization. And maybe you're lacking a clear career path, or maybe you're not lacking a clear career path, but maybe there's something you can do to improve it or tweak it.
So that's number 10 and number 11.
Finally, number 11 is re recruit them.please do not wait for an exit interview to find out why one of your high performers left. Have a stay interview now to find out what it's going to take so they never leave. Sit down with them and find out what they like to do and maybe how you could help them do more of it.
What do they hate to do and how they can do less of it. I've had leaders actually ask what sounds like a really scary question, but say, look, I, you know, I love the work you're doing. I want you always on my team by my side, but I got to ask you, what would it take for you to leave? Now, most people wouldn't have the guts to ask that question, but isn't it better to find out now that if they got an opportunity to I don't know, do more strategic development of partnerships and is it better to find that out now before they leave for a better opportunity to do that somewhere else?
If what would cause them to leave is a significant increase in salary, aren't you better off finding that out now before they leave and go someplace else? Have a stay interview. You do not wait for an exit interview to find out why they left. So let me quickly review the 11 and wrap this up. So number one action for a high performer is to challenge them.
Number two, raise the bar. Number three, increase their responsibility. Number four, invest in them. Number five, promote them. Number six, reward them. Number seven, recognize them. Number eight, remove barriers. Number nine. More exposure, number 10, career planning, and number 11, re recruit them.
I want to encourage you, in the strongest way I can, for each of your high performers, develop a 90 day plan.
Now that doesn't mean wait 90 days, but a 90 day plan says what actions will you be committed to taking with them and for them over the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. I promise you, if you do that, if you invest more in your highest performers, not only Will your team's performance skyrocket your company's performance and culture skyrocket?
But you're going to find that you're a lot less stressed and frustrated because spending more time with your high performers is fun. It's interesting. It's exciting. It's motivating. It's creative time. Whereas spending more time with your lowest performers, Tends to be frustrated and stressful. Now I'm not saying leave those folks alone, but I promise you your largest return on investment is spending time with your best people.
So have that 90 day plan. And by the way, if you're wondering what to do with your low performers, there's another podcast episode on that called dealing with underperformers. Listen to that as well. So have a 90 day plan. I always say, if you want a great company. You need a great leadership team. I hope this episode helped you get there.
Go make it happen.