Inspire others to harness the superpower of top performers

 


Top performers can often be segmented from other workers. That leads to a vast difference in performance where some individuals perform at exceptional levels while others coast. Which does not effectively impact the culture and leaves top performers burned out and eventually disengaged.

 

Least successful achievers need to harness the superpower of top performers. So, how can organizations inspire it’s not so exceptional workers to improve their performance?

 

1.) Identify/define top performance

Identify who the top performers are within the organization, then identify their characteristics and skills. Ask yourself, what does success look like for top performers? With these answers, HR and leadership can create training opportunities and modify interview techniques. Then share those defined standards with everyone to communicate clear expectations for performance.

 

2.) Invite top performers to interviews

Place top performers on interview panels to offer insight about candidates. Invite your best and brightest to help with recruiting and interviewing potential candidates. This allows top performers to learn new skills while assisting in identifying top talent. This may even inspire others to improve their performance to access similar opportunities in the future.

 

3.) Create diverse project groups

Indeed, most management often calls on top performers to lead projects, but companies risk wearing out this group by going back time and time again. Instead of letting poor performers off the hook, push them with challenging opportunities to build up their skills. Establishing them as a lead on a project will take pressure off top performers and create accountability for those with coasting performance.

 

In some cases, how others feel about their work is directly influenced by the performance of those around us. Professor Christopher Stanton at Harvard Business School says, “when you are exposed to different ideas or a different way of working, it can change your own”.

 

It’s essential to actively manage performance because if not, management will unknowingly create performance gaps and create a division between high achievers and least successful achievers. Even worse, burnout of top talent.

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