How to get the most out of your top performers

The term micromanager is one of the most dreaded words in the modern organization. I picture a Lumbergh style manager peering over someone’s shoulder, incessantly asking for updates and why you did things the way you did.

Rejecting micromanagement is great, but now many frontline and mid-level leaders are so worried about being classified as a micromanager that they leave their people alone, allowing them to “run their business” (as long as things are going smoothly). These types of managers are many times well liked as they are friendly and tend to not rock the boat. Affable and easygoing, they love to have you over to BBQ and share a beer. Is this a bad thing? Shouldn’t we all try to empower our people and make our people responsible for their business?

My answer is yes and yes! Yes, it is a bad thing to leave our people to their own devices 100% and assume they will raise their hand when they need something, and yes, you should empower people to be their own CEO. Many people assume top performers want to be left alone, when in reality most people crave structure and demand more than just money to keep them happy in their role. The key is balance, clear expectations, and creating a personalized development plan for each person to ensure that people are able to run their own business effectively, and that you have regular time committed to that person aside from pipeline meetings.

Balance

Which is easier? Monitoring key KPI’s and holding your people accountable, or letting your people sink or swim on their own? The answer is apparent but the modern manager often tends to favor the latter. The key isn’t one or the other; it’s the right mix of both. In order to have both, you must:

1. Meet with your people consistently – you don’t want meetings for meetings sake, but you do want to have consistent touch points with your people where the expectations of each meeting are clear. I am a big fan of agendas and each meeting being focused on 1 or 2 topics instead of multiple topics all pushed together.
2. If it can be done via email or phone, that’s ok. Don’t feel the need for every meeting to be face to face when many times you don’t need to have a meeting, just to check in on the progress of a project.
3. Ask! Ask your people how they prefer to meet and what frequency is best for them. It doesn’t mean you have to accommodate necessarily but having them bought into the meeting plan will be critical to making sure that meetings stick.

Clear Expectations

Do you ever have that feeling in the pit of your stomach because you’re anxious or even angry with one of your people? Welcome to expectation mismanagement- the main reason for conflict in an organization. You expect more from your team and leaders than to simply do their job and hit their numbers, and your people have expectations with you as well.

One of the most liberating exercises is to have your team write down their expectation of you and then have you do the same for each of your people. A great tool that keeps track of team communication and expectation management is 15five– it will get you and your team into the habit of regularly communicating expectations.

After getting your expectations down in writing, your 1-1s become much more useful since you can adjust accordingly. In most cases, there are at least 1-2 big areas that one of you expects from the other that is not happening today. Even if you think you are completely on the same page you will find small detail that helps you to better manage each other on a daily basis.

Without clear, explicit expectations from both sides, conflict will continue to arise and both parties will feel like they can’t win. Anytime conflict surfaces, I can almost always trace it back to mismanaged or miscommunicated expectations. When this happens you have to make sure you sit down with the other person, own your portion of the mismanaged communication, and work to find a resolution.

Personalized Development Plans

Since my days at CareerBuilder, I have practiced a philosophy of personal development first and pipeline conversations second. Over the years, I have been able to consistently learn and understand what motivates my individual leaders and team members. This has allowed me to focus on helping them to achieve their goals, whether at this company or elsewhere. I have two monthly 1-1s that are focused solely on personal goals and high-level account strategy; we do not allow pipeline or performance conversations.

The personal goals 1-1 is focused on understanding what motivates your people and how to better align work and personal time to accomplish key goals in and out of work. This is hugely important as your team members begin to understand that you care, and are invested in their future, and not just when/how they hit their number.

The account strategy meeting is focused on teaching sales reps and leaders how to effectively penetrate and prepare to work with an account. This again is not focused on pipeline but instead how to think about dissecting two types of accounts.

1. Upcoming new meetings: It’s tough for your leader to help once a deal is too far down the pipeline, because at that point it is really just troubleshooting and tips. If we discuss how to prep and think about driving this conversation and the next steps, we can duplicate that thought process on future calls.
2. Diamond in the rough accounts: These are accounts that your team has been trying to crack for sometime now without success. It’s time to develop a new strategy to engage at the highest level- custom package, iPad, whatever strategy will help you to break through.

Although micromanaging is bad, failing to manage is equally detrimental. Your job as frontline or mid level leader is not to sit back and watch things unfold, or to only jump in when people are sinking. Your job is to guide and develop future top performers and leaders. As the leader, you need to give your people the skills they need to be successful at the next level so they can hit the ground running. You can only do this by actively involved and not watching people from the sidelines.