Don’t take your eye off your Superstars

Beth had worked in her current team for 3 years and in the eyes of many, she was the office superstar. Beth always seemed to effortlessly exceed her targets. Her attitude was spot on, she was positive, always appeared to be up for a challenge and she took change in her stride. Her manager, Mark, knew that Beth was a real asset to the business and her team.

Mark assumed that Beth was firing on all cylinders but what he didn’t realise was that Beth had become bored. She enjoyed where she worked, but over the last few months Beth had become disillusioned with her lack of career progress and the work she was doing had become a little bit monotonous. There was only one thing on Beth’s mind and that was moving on to pastures new.

The PU View

Managing stars can be just as tricky as managing your under-performers. Depending on their character and personality stars can appear trustworthy, reliable and dependable. For most stars, they are also ambitious and want to progress up the career ladder. Granted, some are not like this. They may just have a high work ethic and don’t really want all the trappings that come with being a star. The battle for managers is to try to understand what it is your stars want/need and work with them to help them achieve their potential.

Mark appeared to have taken Beth for granted and it would seem he has taken his eye off the ball. He was probably focusing all his time on the other team members and simply assumed that because Beth was cracking on with things as usual, that she was completely content.

So what could Mark have done in the previous 12 months to help prevent Beth’s current state of mind? He could have…

• Found out what she wanted to achieve, what her career ambitions/aspirations were and what her personal drivers and desires were
• Put a personal career plan in place with Beth, to help her focus on meeting those ambitions & goals
• Asked her to job shadow him when carrying out certain tasks e.g. attending Board meetings so that she got a taste of what life was like further up the ladder
• Installed her as the Team Coach or Mentor. Beth would be ideal at sharing her knowledge with new members to the team and also helping the under-performers raise their game
• Delegated tasks to her such as producing/analysing the monthly reports to give her more challenging and varied tasks

It’s all about being proactive. Ignore your stars, as Mark did, and they will inevitably leave you for a more rewarding challenge.

Who are your stars? Are you proactively managing them?

Book Recommendation 

5 Conversations, How to Transform Trust, Engagement and Performance at Work by Nick Cowley & Nigel Purse is a great book that will help you to learn more about how to engage your team.