Many companies
build cultures that are focused on controlling the output of low performers,
rather than growing and unlocking everyone’s skills. This approach is low-ROI
and ultimately problematic for high-performance cultures. Leaders spend an
inordinate amount of time hand holding their least productive employee, instead
of helping their strongest contributors move faster and do more.
Meanwhile,
because these tactics are focused on pushing the work forward rather than
figuring out how to get better, they fail to turn low performers into better
performers. Ultimately, by failing to nurture skill or motivation, low
performance cultures stunt growth and repel top talent.
For example, think about your KPI management meetings, where you
review what KPIs are red (problematic), yellow, or green. Who is this meeting
for? Its purpose is typically to ensure that low performers get the bare
minimum done. But is it helping low performers improve? And is it the best use
of high performers’ time?
Or consider traditional annual performance reviews, which are
typically designed to strike fear in low performers rather than help high
performers excel (which comes instead from continuous developmental coaching).
Rigid goal setting and approval, mandatory training programs detailed
procedural guidelines — none of these processes accelerate your most valuable employees.
Companies need
to build cultures that are focused on keeping high performers and making new
ones. Here are three strategies to help you do it.
1. Reduce meetings down to the
minimum viable number
One of the biggest pain points in organizations today is too many
meetings. High performers are often hit the hardest, because they are
constantly dragged into conversations to help unblock their teammates or fix
their issues. If you want to keep your top talent, you must free them up to
spend more of their time on interesting, impactful work.
The first step is boiling meetings down to a minimum. Here’s a
suggested meeting cadence that has worked for many teams. You can adapt it your
situation.
First, establish a simple weekly team cadence that drives intensity,
not pressure. Every team should have just three weekly meetings: prioritization
on Monday; problem solving midweek; and “pencils down” (AKA stop working) on
Friday. Prioritization is about aligning on the team’s strategy for the week.
Problem solving is for discussing challenges that have been percolating between
meetings. And pencils down is to review completed work, share feedback, and
align on next steps.
Next, optimize your one-on-ones by using the best agenda, length and
frequency. (Check out the following blog post for tips on conducting 1:1s : Why one-on-one
meetings are vital for your direct report's success) You can
complement and elevate the impact of 1:1s by being coach-like in everyday
business conversations.
This approach means that coaching employees is no longer just “come
into my office or join me on a TEAMS call so I can coach you” way of leading someone.
Because coaching is an in-the-moment behavior of staying curious a little
longer, rushing to advice a little more slowly. It can be an everyday
experience of choosing to be coach-like in any interaction, any channel and any
moment.
To accomplish this, you need to learn how to use the different communication
channels where you can be more coach-like, and the advantages and disadvantages
of each.
Synchronous: In person, on video, and
over the phone.
You’re communicating with the person in
real time. Whenever you’re doing that, you can be more coach-like. You don’t
have to schedule a coaching call. You don’t have to summon them into the
special coaching room.
Video is a common channel these days,
particularly in this world of remote workers and dispersed teams. With Teams,
Zoom, Skype or FaceTime you can connect, be curious and ask good questions.
Coaching by phone gives you all the benefits of being present with the other
person without the distractions of being with them in person.
Asynchronous: Email, Teams DM, and text
Asynchronous channels such as email,
slack, Teams, and texting, where it doesn’t have to be live, immediate
exchange, tend to be overlooked as channels for being more coach-like. When
you’re not in the presence of the other person, you can easily forget that your
role is to help them discover the real problem and real solution, to get smarter and more self-sufficient,
and not necessarily be the provider of the solution all the time.
Finally, strip down goal planning to the bare minimum: one quarterly
“goal check” conversation. During a goal check, the team should align on its
strategy for the next three months. These are the priorities that will anchor
the weekly cadence of prioritization, problem solving, and pencils down.
Once you’ve taken extra meetings off the calendar, people’s time
will be cleared up for high-leverage work and problem solving. This improves
everybody’s work, but it has an especially high impact on top performers.
2. Measure your team’s motivation
When teams get stuck in vicious cycles and aren’t improving, high
performers get frustrated. In contrast, teams that measure motivation have a
blameless, action-oriented conversation about how to improve and where they’re
getting stalled out. This allows high performers to take ownership, facilitate
problem solving, and build a team culture that’s worth sticking around for.
You can measure motivation by using your own preferred survey tool
such as Survey Monkey. Whatever tool you use, you should be asking questions
like the following:
- · What are employees excited about working on in the
upcoming quarter?
-
What might be causing them anxiety or pressure?
-
What habits does the team want to improve?
-
What are some specific ideas to improve those habits?
-
What did we do really well last quarter that we should
maintain?
Like the goal check, teams should conduct a quarterly well-being
check where they answer questions like the above and craft an improvement
plan for the quarter.
3. Routinely mentor high performers
on concrete, high-leverage skills
Many high performers leave because they no longer feel they are
growing in their role. This is often a result of an extremely painful
performance review process, where the focus is on evaluation of past results
and assigning blame rather than providing helpful advice on development and
growth. The next time your team does performance reviews, anchor the
conversation around concrete skills that you believe will increase performance.
This shifts the mindset from evaluation of past actions to learning for the future.
In most cases, few leaders know which skills to prioritize teaching,
or even how to teach them. I’ve found the skill sets of problem solving,
organizing teams, and leadership to be the most critical — and yet the least
developed.
To make skill development easy, schedule a quarterly skill-check
meeting with each of your direct reports. During a one-hour conversation, help
your direct report reflect on their current skill goals and, if they don’t yet
have any or have hit them all, pick a new one.
Doing so will shift the culture changes from one where “squeaky
wheels” and underperformers get feedback, and instead, leaders have
forward-looking conversations to build up their high performers. High
performers will take skill-based advice and run with it, allowing them to grow
in place, instead of jumping to a new job. Loyalty and performance grow hand in
hand.
No matter the kind of business you run or the people on your team,
it is worth investing in a high-performance culture. When companies make the
switch, they’ll see significant improvements in sales, quality, and customer
satisfaction, all while improving employee retention and motivation.
If you can build a high-performer focused culture, not only will you
retain your top talent, you’ll also elevate every employee and make your company
a standout in your industry.
Check out a related post: How to Coach
High Performers to Go Even Higher (3 min read)
To your greater success and fulfillment,
Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
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