How to Nurture Your Superstar Employees - Focus on these three traits to help your top performers flourish—and stick around. Most organizations have employees who are solid performers; fewer organizations are astute—or lucky—enough to have superstars. So how can you ensure that your organization gets the most out of those superstars? High-potential performers (or Hi-Pos) stand out due to their associative thinking skills—which help solve problems and drive innovation—their strong emotional awareness, and their incredible perseverance, according to Carter Cast, a clinical professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School and former CEO of Walmart.com.
When your team lands a superstar-in-the-making, nurturing these traits is critical if you want that superstar to flourish. And tailoring a career plan gives high-flyers challenge enough to stick around. “With high-potential high performers, it’s important to put your arm around them and say, ‘I think you have a lot of potential, and one of my key jobs is helping you reach your potential. Encourage Associative Thinking Grow Awareness Follow Through. Recognizing Employees Is the Simplest Way to Improve Morale. Recently I’ve been undergoing treatment for cancer, and have had access to a leading oncologist at a world-renowned medical center. At one point during a visit, we discussed how long she’s been practicing her specialty. She said she’s been at the same hospital for more than 40 years. Then I asked what her employers had given her to note that amazing milestone — four decades of saving lives! With a shrug of acceptance rather than indignation, she laughed and showed me a plastic key chain that had been mailed to her.
Clearly, that gift was a classic employer mistake — a trivial attempt at recognition that not only missed the mark but also disappointed rather than inspired. If even doctors who save hundreds of lives each year are getting plastic key chains, it’s no wonder most workplaces suffer from what I call a “recognition deficit.” We need to recognize the tremendous value people bring to their work, regardless of their role in the organization. The Five Conversations Framework - From MindTools.com. An Alternative Approach to Appraisals © iStockphotoRrrainbow Invigorate your performance reviews with good conversation.
Imagine it's time for your team members' annual performance reviews. You're keen to use these productively and effectively, and you look forward to building stronger relationships with your people through them. In your mind's eye, a member of your team is sitting across from you. Now let's get back to reality. In this article, we identify the shortcomings of traditional performance reviews, and we'll explore how you can use an approach called the "Five Conversations Framework" to promote dialogue, increase positivity, and build better relationships with your people. About the Tool Dr Tim Baker is a consultant and the managing director of Winners at Work Pty Ltd, a leadership development and change management company.
Baker says the standard performance review can be: Costly to implement. How the Five Conversations Framework Works Tip: them. What are the Five Conversations? A 5-Step Process For Delivering Tough News. Maybe an employee’s work has been subpar lately. Or your coworker is really botching a client interaction. It’s the dreaded moment when it’s time to tell someone a hard truth—and they’re not going to like it. Before you dive in, you’ve got to consider the situation, says CEO adviser Mindy Mackenzie, author of The Courage Solution: The Power of Truth Telling with Your Boss, Peers, and Team.
Telling someone a hard truth to help them get better means that you care enough about that person to do so. It may not always be your place to share something that might be painful or upsetting, but if you have a relationship in which you’re invested, then you owe it to the person to be honest, she says. "For example, it’s not an act of caring, as a leader, to allow your direct report to think they’re performing well when they are not. In fact, it’s disrespectful to them," she says. Step One: Choose The Right Time. Most tough conversations are best held in private, Mackenzie says.
Step Five: Follow Up. 7 Tips to Help Someone Else Change a Habit. How Good is Your Feedback? - Communication Skills From MindTools.com. Giving Clear Comments to Improve Performance © iStockphotomonkeybusinessimages As a manager, one of the most important things you do is give feedback. When you let people know how they're doing, you give them the chance to change unhelpful habits, and you reward and cement positive behavior. So, why do managers have so much difficulty giving feedback? Use this quiz to find out how well you give feedback, and to discover how you can give better feedback in the future.
How Good is Your Feedback? Instructions Evaluate each statement as you actually are, rather than as you think you should be. Your last quiz results are shown. You last completed this quiz on , at . Question 1 of 15 Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 still need to be answered! Total = 0 (Questions 3, 9, 11) Your score is 0 out of 0 Before you give feedback to one of your team members, make sure that you understand the situation fully. To see what comments have already been made. (Questions 8, 10, 12) right away. . Surprising Ways To Improve Those Dreaded Year-End Reviews. Welcome to Forbes. 3 Ways to Help Someone Who's Failing. Every once in a while, you'll assign a project to an employee or colleague and about halfway through, the person will start to fail.
Perhaps the project was above his or her capability. Or maybe the person lost interest in the project or was distracted. Regardless, the impact is major. You have to jump in before things crash. In my companies, I always try to give my employees room to fail safely. If a project does fall apart in the middle, I take the employee aside and have a heart-to-heart talk. Here are additional insights from my Inc. colleagues. Lead the employee through the tough part. This issue gets to the difference between great leaders and mere managers. Want to read more from Bill? Don't let people stretch too far. As a leader, when you delegate a task to an employee, it's important that you don't give that person something that he or she is incapable of doing well--or at all. Want to read more from Peter? Like this post?
3 Questions That Will Motivate Your Employees. We all want to be motivated -- and, as entrepreneurs, we love the idea of being able to motivate others. That’s great in theory, but it’s not always clear how to accomplish this within the day-to-day grind of a fast-moving business. What’s a busy entrepreneur to do? It’s a widespread problem: According to Gallup’s most recent engagement research, 71 percent of Americans are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work.
Those workers are less likely to be productive. The traditional methods -- higher pay, for example -- produce mixed results. So if the evidence is convincing, that higher pay doesn’t motivate, what does? The problem is that most people don’t know how to create intrinsic motivation for themselves, much less be able to ask for it from their bosses.
Motivation is a goal that ultimately falls into the hands of an individual -- there’s only so much you can do as a boss, after all -- but it’s important to create an environment where full motivation is possible. 1. 2. 3. Helping the Passive-Aggressive Executive - Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries. By Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries | 10:00 AM February 20, 2014 Robert wondered why he was always so stressed out when he was dealing with Lucas, the latest addition to his team. On the face of it, the new hire seemed very agreeable and supportive, but whatever interactions he had had with him left him wondering about his true intentions. Lucas made lots of promises but never really seemed to deliver on them. What troubled him especially was that Lucas didn’t respect deadlines.
Whenever he pointed this out, Lucas always had a good excuse: the instructions hadn’t been clear, perhaps, or he had misunderstood, or that he had been relying on someone else for some key task and that person hadn’t come through. Business schools prepare us to become better at strategizing, inspiring, mentoring, team building, delegating, and so on. Lucas’s behavior is passive-aggressive: continuously expressing negative feelings, resentment, and aggression in an unassertive, passive manner. When You Criticize Someone, You Make It Harder for that Person to Change - Daniel Goleman. By Daniel Goleman | 12:00 PM December 19, 2013 “If everything worked out perfectly in your life, what would you be doing in ten years?”
Such a question opens us up to fresh possibilities, to reflect on what matters most to us, and even what deep values might guide us through life. This approach gives managers a tool for coaching their teams to get better results. Contrast that mind-opening query with a conversation about what’s wrong with you, and what you need to do to fix yourself. That question about your perfect life in ten years comes from Richard Boyatzis, a professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western, and an old friend and colleague. As I quoted Boyatzis in my book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, “Talking about your positive goals and dreams activates brain centers that open you up to new possibilities. Of course a manager needs to help people face what’s not working. Managers and coaches can keep this in mind. How to Manage Biased People - Maurice Ewing.
By Maurice Ewing | 9:00 AM October 31, 2013 By now it’s generally accepted that if senior leaders suffer from cognitive biases their decisions can severely undermine company performance. Yet, leaders are not the only members of organizations that exercise poor judgment: Non-leaders are sometimes irrational too. Bearing this in mind, it is imperative that strategy-setters make explicit allowance for just how cognitively fragile their employees might be – or else they risk not fully understanding why their “perfectly rational” strategies don’t work. Take the recent case of JC Penney, which hired and abruptly fired its CEO, Ron Johnson, after the major changes he instituted took the company from bad to worse. His own cognitive biases aside, it’s unlikely that any of Johnson’s initiatives would have stuck at JC Penney without first making explicit allowance for the judgment lapses and biased mental dispositions of his new employees.
Assess the staff’s personal goals.