I am in the habit of identifying three types of people on your team. All are composites and generalizations with the intention to see a variance of both how they perform and how you need to interact with them. There is “Skippy” who is a challenge because while he is engaged and ‘happy’, he does not perform. There is “Todd” who is overall average in everything. And there is “Mary” who does everything right and is a great performer. I believe we all have these people and especially have them in varying degrees in varied circumstances. In other words, “Yep, I have them and it depends when I get them and how I need to treat ‘em.” It depends on the context, right?
How about this ‘What If’; what if you don’t have any Skippy’s or Mary’s? They are the extremes, right? How real is that? An absolute poor performer and great performer.
OK, no ‘Skippy’s’. Cool. That means by loose definition, no poor performer or performers. You do a bit of a happy dance with that realization. So now the “aha” may be what do I do to keep medium and great performers engaged? My response, you are making this way too complicated. I believe the best things we do as managers and leaders is to not over complicate our approach to anyone, regardless of performance. I have a caveat…in a moment. First, create systems of success for your team. This involves their learning and development. It involves measuring their success, recognition and celebrating often. It involves allowing their voice to enter into the design of goals and objectives. It involves letting them collaborate with both the implementation process and in the analysis of the outcome. Now two things come to mind as the caveat. One is everyone deserves a customized approach to giving feedback and instruction based on their needs. This is where you need to pay attention their triggers and biases. Two is COMPENSATION. One is about getting to know them and the other is about knowing what will drive, albeit an extrinsic motivator, a means to an end for them. So in some ways they are linked. Although, I will admit even putting compensation into this message will cause a great number of you to only have this resonate and nothing else will have a place in your consideration.
What if there are no “Mary’s”; just a bunch of “Skippy’s” and “Todd’s”. This implies that there are a bunch of average or just in the middle types of performers with some poor performers. The same applies from above with the exception of the huge beast called accountability. This is big because, this can be defined in a couple of ways. One is punitive in nature. “OK, Skippy, you must perform a certain way and to certain number or you are gone.” Can you see how this may be interpreted? It has a heavy hand with an absolutely negative connotation. The other is to establish accountability as a valued, equitable and necessary aspect of the overall sales culture of the organization. Well yeah, if you put it that way. Sorry. It is biased and loaded. I believe that is the way accountability needs to be established. Not a surprise and something nurtured with everyone in the organization. You see, I have viewed accountability by some as this mega-ton trump card shown only when it seems dark and someone is close to being gone. Why? To protect the company? To demonstrate what sales organizations need to do? “Skippy”, “Todd” and “Mary” need to know how accountability works, how it looks and what it means in every aspect of the business (both great and not so great). This must be the benchmark, so if you have to have a hard, very pointed conversation about performance, it does not seem so huge and daunting. It is just part of the culture.
So I have shared a very thin glimpse at both of these scenarios. Intentionally. I do not want to go too deep as the situations will dictate relative responses, so broader strokes are the best I can do in this forum. Also, I would like to expand this conversation and learning opportunity. Therefore, stay tuned and let’s see together what we can consider. People are our greatest asset and sometimes that baffles us a little.
Cool, huh? Cheers