Keyword: superstars

Once in a while, as a manager, you will be fortunate enough to have a team member who is a superstar.  These people are not just above average, they are vastly better.  They are smarter, more driven, highly focused, and they get far more work done than the rest.  It often seems like they are just coasting through it, but miraculously they achieve well beyond the others.

If you are fortunate enough to have a superstar working for you, it usually comes with both benefits and curses.  Certainly it can be a joy to have someone you can count on to excel every time you give them as task.  As a manager, you dream about having the kind of team members who will just take what you give them, and exceed your wildest dreams every time.  Get more than one of these people and you think you’ve died and gone to manager’s heaven.

That is, until it comes time to work as a team.  There’s something about superstars that makes them innately incapable of “playing well with the other children”.  Perhaps it’s their low tolerance for busywork, structure, and stupidity.  It may be that they know they are superior.  Maybe it’s their habit of picking and eating their ear wax…  Whatever it is, it certainly is common for superstars to be a royal pain when you try to get them to work in a group.

I’ve seen dozens of superstars.  Microsoft seemed to attract, select for, groom, and coddle them.  I worked with some of the brightest minds in the world at Microsoft, and many people who I would consider well worth the title of superstar.  I have managed more than my fair share of them.  And I have the battle scars to prove it.

I made the mistake at one point of promoting one of the brightest minds at the company to be a team leader for me.  One of the few pure geniuses I’ve ever encountered, his Ivy League degrees, Rhodes scholarship, and meteoric rise at the company couldn’t rescue his team from his short temper, low tolerance for mistakes, and his blatant misogyny.

On his watch, a team I’d carefully recruited and nurtured for months was disintegrating before my eyes.  After numerous angry departures, threats of legal action, and failed attempts to counsel him and get the team back on track I removed him from a leadership position.  And since I believe strongly in helping my fellow managers, I added “this person should never be allowed to manage people” to his performance review.  He was recently mentioned in a prominent business publication as a likely future CEO of the company…

But, I digress.  In this case, clearly the pain of a superstar wasn’t worth it.  It was really my fault, I should have far more carefully considered his management skills before I promoted him out to a role that he wasn’t suited for.  The larger question is: is it ever worth it to have superstars on the team?

The short answer is, yes, superstars are worth the pain.  But only if they are in a role that suits them, and only if you can find a way to control their impact on the rest of the team.

The issues with the rest of the team are many.  Very often people resent working with superstars.  Even if the manager is careful to not show favoritism, people often perceive a bias in the superstar’s direction.  How, after all, could they be doing so well, getting so much done, and attracting so much attention?  They can’t stand watching someone else finish the task in half the time, and I don’t blame them.

But more often than not, superstars do get recognition and attention from management.  And that just rubs some people the wrong way.  Especially when it seems like their gift is not learned or earned, just that — a gift.

And if you put superstars in charge, more often than not they get frustrated, with the less competent members of the team, with the progress of the project, and especially with the bureaucracy — the processes and procedures inherent to management.  It ends up being a nightmare for everyone, the team, you the manager, and even the superstar themselves.

So how do you take advantage of the seemingly infinite resource that a superstar can provide?  Simple: put them in their sweet spot, their area of excellence, and do whatever it takes to make them successful.  Usually that means giving them what they need and staying out of their way.  And regular and earnest praise helps as well.

Superstars are worth the effort.  But you have to recognize what they are good at, and let them wow you at it.  Don’t mistake excellence in on thing as excellence in everything.  This helps to avoid the Peter Principle and saves everyone’s sanity.

It’s a common management situation: someone walks into your office, and says “I think I’m leaving.”  The next move is yours, and it stumps a lot of managers.  Should you:

• Try to talk them out of leaving
• Beg and plead for them to stay
• Wish them the best of luck in their new job
• Advise them to be careful of the door on their way out

Of course, your answer is highly dependent on the situation, the person, and the timing.  If this is a crucial position, and you’re within weeks of a crucial deadline, you will respond differently than if it is a loser who you’ve been trying to figure out how to handle for months.  So I can’t give a single, pat answer for every situation.  But I can tell you how to approach the decision.

Are they special?

First, you need to ask yourself honestly how important this person is to your organization.  And here, it is important to differentiate the person from the position.  Right now, it’s all about the person. (We’ll assume for the moment that this is a position the organization really needs.)

If this individual is quite special, someone you can see in almost any position in your organization, then they are worth saving.  If they are good, even if they have years of experience, but not truly special, you should probably just let them go.

This is the crucial choice, the one that deserves the most attention.  And you need to be very self-critical on this.  Are they honestly unique?  Or can you imagine finding someone as good within weeks?  This is the crux of the decision, but if you are honest with yourself, it’s not that hard to make.

Why are they leaving?

Assuming they are worth saving, you should place yourself in the other person’s head, for just a minute.  Ask yourself how hard this decision was to make, and how difficult you think it was for them to tell you.  If you think this was a very big decision for them, that they anguished over it for weeks, and they have been dreading coming to tell you, you need to take that into account.  In such a situation, trying to talk them out of it will only make them feel worse, solidify their decision, and make you look desperate.

If, on the other hand, you think they just got an offer and decided quickly to take a shot at it, perhaps you do have a chance to convince them otherwise.  How you approach this conversation is critical.  If you are flippant or ridicule the other opportunity, you are essentially telling them how stupid they are for considering it.  Not a good approach.

If you are calm, reasoned, and considerate, you may have a chance to convince them to stay.  You need to move into “trusted advisor” mode, and try to help them evaluate the choice.  This is your only chance to change their mind.  If you become someone they can trust, and rely on to be objective, maybe they will want to stay.  It’s a slim chance, but well worth a try.  And if it fails, you still have credibility — and perhaps they will return when the grass isn’t that much greener over there.

Is it a ploy?

Another possibility is that they are threatening to leave simply to gain concessions from you (more compensation, for example).  If this is the case, you need to call their bluff.  Quickly wish them well, and offer to help clean out their desk.  If it is a ploy, it speaks volume to their character, their dedication, and their relationship with your organization.  You don’t want/need them.

If they are willing to leave on those terms, what will happen when the going really gets tough?  And if you cave, what’s next?  Will you offer them your job to stay?  No, just let them go, and send a clear message to all in the organization that this behavior is not condoned.

Can you afford it?

Finally, if you find yourself needing to make some kind of committments to keep them (more money, fewer hours, new manager, etc.) you need to do so very carefully.

First, be sure you can actually deliver.  Nothing could be worse that for you to convince someone to turn down another offer, and then not follow through on your part.  They will never trust you again.

Second, be sure it is something you are willing to do for similarly placed individuals.  Word will get out, and you may well end up with a parade in your office looking for the same concession.  This is another reason to be sure the person is truly special before you make the decision to convince them to stay.  That way, you can differentiate when the others come marching in.

Summary

In summary, the important decision is the uniqueness of the individual.  If they are truly special and unique, try to save them.  Otherwise, simply let them go.  And if you want to save them, it’s vital you understand their motives, so you can best change their mind.  In general terms, I’m a “thanks for playing our game” kind of manager.  Special people just don’t come around that often.

I just got forwarded an amazing thing: a perfect performance review.  Actually, if you’re a manager or, especially a manager of managers, you’ve probably seen more than one of these in your career.  The performance review with nothing but the highest possible scores, and not a word of anything that even remotely sounds like criticism.  These reviews are a crime, a lie, and, most importantly, a missed opportunity.

The Mythical Perfect Employee

This perfect review is a crime, because top people are your most valuable resource.  As I said in my post on Microsoft’s recent performance review changes, you should spend at least as much time and effort on nurturing and aiding your top employees as you do in cleaning out the bottom ones.

It has been said many times that top employees aren’t simply better, or twice as good as your average employee, but as much as ten times more productive.  They deeply understand the mission, handle things without constant supervision, take on new parts of the challenge without being asked (or prodded), and they get it done more efficiently and with better work quality.

If you are lucky enough to have these people, they deserve all the love and kindness, and all the help to grow, that you can afford.  Giving them a perfect review, especially to people who know they are good, is likely to get a “yeah, great, fine, whatever…” response.  That is a crime of missed opportunity.

Here you sit, with a clear star of an employee, they are doing great work, all that you can throw at them, and they want more.  You have your semi-annual review and they come into your office for their feedback, knowing they’ve done well.  Yes, of course, you need to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that they did great work.  You need to clearly say (out loud, to their face, and even if you both already know it) what they’ve done, how wonderfully they’ve done it, and how much you appreciate that hard work.  They, and you, really need to make sure this gets said and that they very much feel appreciated.  It’s simply never said enough, and can’t be said too much.

And then you need to say “but…”.  Yes, you really have to say the “but…”.  You need to point out a couple of areas where they need to work a little harder or somewhat differently.  Perfection is impossible, and everyone has something they can do better.  Perhaps they need to play better with the other children, perhaps they need to spend less time in the break room, perhaps they need to go home every now and then, for gosh sakes.  Whatever it is, you need to give these superstars some place to go.  Everyone needs a goal, everyone needs something to shoot for.  Give a superstar nowhere to go in your organization, they will go elsewhere to find it.  And that’s the last thing you want.

When I’ve told people this before, they tell me: “but I have to give Fred a perfect review, or I can’t get them the [raise, promotion, bonus] they truly deserve.”  Horse-hockey.  Your senior managers are almost certainly not idiots and they realize that everyone has somewhere to go.  They will in fact look down on you for giving this review with such lame feedback.  And if your system doesn’t allow people to get a [raise, promotion, bonus] without a flawless review, the system is broken, and you, as a member of the management team, have an obligation to work toward its repair.  Start by giving an obvious superstar meaningful review feedback and also that [raise, promotion, bonus].

The perfect performance review is a crime, a crime of missed opportunity.  Those who commit it deserve to be punished, or at least to have their perfect employee promoted above them…