Comment 8 – Are people good, bad, or is it more that leaders don't know how our staff works? (Part 4)

Now it's time to talk about our outstanding staff. Reviewing a bit, when we measure the performance of our staff, it commonly falls within a Gaussian distribution or normal curve. We've already talked about the staff that is below our acceptable range, and now we're going to look at the staff that is above our acceptable range.

We need to remember that we're talking about people, and although many things happen as predicted, it's not an exact science.

So, with outstanding staff, we usually want to keep them, but we have to go back to the fact that they are most likely poorly placed, and not just within our company, but often our company can't provide what that person needs to have adequate motivation and productivity. This outstanding staff, poorly placed, results in them not being challenged or motivated properly, and yet they don't get demotivated and remain outstanding.

This raises many questions, for example: How do I keep this person? What do I give them to do?

Many times, the most obvious answer is the wrong one. For example, putting your best welder as a supervisor of a team or your best salesperson as a sales manager sounds good, but most of the time it fails, and now we have the same person in another place that is even more poorly placed. When we make these types of staff movements to compensate them for their great work, we don't realize that the profile of the position they already have is completely different from the profile we want to promote them to, and it's very likely that the person doesn't have the skills to achieve it.

So, if the most obvious thing can be a mistake, what do I do? A good idea is to start practically with a selection process for this person, I mean psychometric tests, interviews, and what we normally do. With this, we can get closer to a real possibility of growth for the person and, if appropriate, promote them. Even though we've already done this, remember that things change over time.

Having a bit more information and, obviously, a position available, we need to talk to the person first. They will be surprised, but many people are very comfortable where they are and with what they do, and it's not advisable to move them, at least for now, remember that needs change as much for the person and their family as for our company.

Sometimes it's best to leave them in the same position, but with higher incentives or salary or bonuses, whatever we come up with. You can end up with a salesperson who earns a lot but also sells a lot, and that's not bad, even though it seems.

It turns out that it's not a situation as simple as we imagined, and in the best case, the person doesn't move from where we have them, and there's the risk that another company will come and offer them something we can't offer. Such is life.

Manuel Gonalez