What do you look for in a top performer? How do you ensure they have the skills and the mindset to succeed long-term? When identifying a top performer, make sure they aspire to rise to senior positions and engage with the company in addition to having strong leadership skills.
Here are my top 10 ways to groom a top performer for long-term success:
1. Mentorship
Top performers on a leadership track should have access to senior executives for learning opportunities and occasional feedback.
2. Job Rotation
High-level leaders have the responsibility of being the company’s visionary, which means looking at the big picture. The best way to get a glimpse of all the moving parts of an organization is to step into the trenches.
3. Special projects
Take risks on your high-potential employees. New account? Hand it over to Parker. That milestone project you’ve been working on, ask Jessie for feedback on it.
4. Opportunities
Allow a top performer who has proven themselves on a special project to spearhead one of their own initiatives.
5. Acknowledgement
Praise successes and offer constructive criticism in areas where your team members can show room for improvement.
6. Skills training
Fine tune coaching to help bridge the gap between today’s supervisor and the future’s senior executive. Provide insight into company objectives, KPI’s (key performance indicators) and advice on navigating through office politics/red-tape.
7. Resources
This item on the list can account for your team’s daily annoyances (which can really add up) if you don’t stay on top of it. Everyone on your team should have the tangible resources necessary to perform the task(s) at hand to the best of his or her ability. Are laptops and PC’s running up-to date programs quickly and efficiently? Is there sufficient memory on your employees’ machines? Are there ergonomic solutions in place and how’s the lighting in your workplace?
8. Teambuilding
Workplace engagement is so important for a top performer. People don’t only work hard to achieve goals…they work hard because they know other people are relying on them.
9. Work-life balance
You don’t have to offer nap pods like Google, but maybe you can shell out $100 for wellness training or morning yoga once a week. Who wouldn’t want to have the option of half-day Fridays during the summer?
10. Seamless collaboration tools
Communication is important in every relationship and workplace relationships are no different, except we don’t discuss our goals over a candle-lit dinner. Office objectives can be streamlined into everyday work conversation through the use of project management software like Trello and project management platforms like Slack.
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How have you managed to groom a top performer into a committed senior leader? From your experience, what else can we add to this list?
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