Under-Empowerment and Under-Performance
I was conversing with a fellow friend recently about the last newsletter, and any topics he would like to see in the newsletter. The desired topic was “How to keep star performers progressing so they keep growing and stay engaged and motivated.” I had already planned on this part 2 to empowerment to explore under-empowerment and underperformance. I think the two topics in a Venn diagram overlap nearly completely.
If a star performer who has not reached their full potential does not face new challenges their growth stops or slows dramatically, leading to frustration followed by disengagement and demotivation. Both demotivation and disengagement can even have a high likelihood of becoming contagious.
What is the answer? Empower them!
Star performers are clearly capable of more than what they are currently doing. I can hear some of you saying, “but what if they aren’t that capable, but they think they are?”
Indeed!
This is why the virtue of humility is so important. The real star performer has enough self awareness to know when they are capable of more, and the emotional intelligence to communicate to their supervisor their needs and the perseverance to be patient.
What could this enhanced empowerment look like?
This is where career planning is so valuable. A well-done career planning process includes someone who is intimately familiar with the organization’s strategic priorities and needs. This may be the star performers mentor or it may need to be another third party. It is almost always possible to identify win-win opportunities where work is available that will be of enhanced interest for the development of the individual and also advance organizational strategic objectives.
These kinds of opportunities could include things like
Preparing and delivering training materials to deepen the performer’s expertise. I’ve always found that the act of preparing to teach something I know well forces me to get back to basics and figure out how to explain it to people new to the topic.
Starting a new service for customers. The performer may have developed competency in a particular area where services are not presently offered in a significant capacity, and there is a need for the business to grow into this adjacent area. Even if the performer is not ready to lead this effort, the absent skills can be identified and addressed to ready them to take on this kind of leadership role.
On another note, I always had a maxim that you may have read in Grounded Service:
“As many rules as necessary and as few as possible.”
My rationale on this is that in an engineering services business the staff is mostly composed of people who are creatives. Some people don’t think of engineers as creatives and while we may not make beautiful works of art, there is a large degree of creativity involved in the work we do (perhaps a topic for another newsletter). The point is that creatives do not like to be overly restricted by unnecessary rules that make a hard job harder. Excessive rules reduce the individual’s autonomy…excessive rules disempower the creative.
Here I am not talking about rules related to quality control and peer review. I’m talking more about rules that limit a person’s level of authority to the point that they lack the authority to do their jobs properly.
When the high performer is entrusted with higher levels of authority, it communicates trust. Being trusted, the performer feels more respected. This is true not only in my model of generative aligned action, but also in the Toyota production system. Mutual respect is foundational to unlocking performance, to encouraging discretionary effort. Mutual respect is a key component of reducing the risk of burnout. If the performer feels trusted and trusts you there will be open communication. Issues are addressed and not allowed to fester. Opportunities are identified and capitalized on.
While the last newsletter cautioned about ensuring that the people being empowered are adequately competent to the level of empowerment, here I am postulating that a level of empowerment is needed for the continuous maintenance and improvement of performance and competency, particularly of star performers.
Like many things in leadership and life it is a balancing act.
I wish you all balance as the summer is coming to a close and the busy fall season of return from vacations and back to school starts.
With gratitude for your readership,
Nik