Top Talent Takes Top Management

Top tal­ent, or A‑Players as we refer to them, are fan­tas­tic and eas­i­ly rec­og­nized in an orga­ni­za­tion. Have you ever said, ​“Wow! It’s so easy to man­age so and so”? Chances are high that you’ve got an A‑Player on your team. That said, have you ever stopped to con­sid­er what they need and want, what will keep them around, and how to unlock their talent?

We recent­ly host­ed a work­shop for one of our clients who want­ed to revi­tal­ize the company’s stag­nat­ing per­for­mance. We began by look­ing at how they man­aged their team and A‑Players and real­ized more could be done to tap into and ampli­fy each person’s unique strengths and abilities.

With A‑Players, when it’s done right, the returns you get are expo­nen­tial­ly pos­i­tive – but, when done wrong, the results can be neg­a­tive. So how do you do make sure you’re tap­ping into A‑Players correctly?

A‑Players gen­er­al­ly needs three key things:

• Direc­tion (goals)
• Space (auton­o­my)
• Resources (time, peo­ple, money).

Direc­tion

It’s impor­tant to set very clear goals with your A‑Players – to define what suc­cess looks like. A‑Players can often be per­fec­tion­ists, and if you’re not clear about desired out­comes, they may iter­ate on a deliv­er­able for months because it wasn’t good enough for them. Now, some of you might ask, ​‘well, wouldn’t I want per­fect?’ But their def­i­n­i­tion may not be yours, and their time and tal­ent could have been used on anoth­er project to achieve twice the results.

Space

A‑Players don’t typ­i­cal­ly like to be micro-man­aged so once you’ve giv­en clear direc­tion — includ­ing when you need reg­u­lar updates — get out of the way. Trust that they will ask for help if they need it.

Resources

If you trust that your peo­ple will come to you when they need some­thing, it’s impor­tant that you lis­ten when they do. Whether it’s time, mon­ey or peo­ple, you can be sure they’ve already tried to solve the prob­lem before ask­ing for help. Pro­vide an envi­ron­ment in which they feel sup­port­ed, know­ing they can come to you with clear requests.

We Are All Different

While it’s easy to lump A‑Players into one cat­e­go­ry of ​‘high per­form­ers’, a great leader sets spe­cif­ic guide­lines to match their indi­vid­ual needs so that they can focus on the right things and per­form at a con­sis­tent­ly high lev­el. We recent­ly coached a CEO strug­gling to get the most of his A‑Players as the com­pa­ny pre­pared to tack­le high-stakes oppor­tu­ni­ties in the next Quar­ter. We did DISC and Ennea­gram assess­ments on his team to help him to iden­ti­fy each person’s needs, and lever­aged the tools in Teach Peo­ple to Meet your Stan­dards (Chap­ter 13, Your Oxy­gen Mask First). As he start­ed to up the bar and get more spe­cif­ic, out­put from each A‑Player increased between 20% and 50%.

The Chal­lenge

• Do you know who your A‑Players are?
• What are you doing to keep them?
• What brings the best out of each per­son and what shuts them down?
• What’s the best way to com­mu­ni­cate with them?

PS – If you want to know more or need help man­ag­ing A‑Players, ask us about our Lead­er­ship Edu­ca­tion Pro­grams, or call us for some one-on-one insight.

Tim Schokking is a Coach and Strate­gic Plan­ning Advi­sor at Lawrence & Co. Growth Advisors.