And in conclusion...What do High Performers have in common?
In this series of articles, I have indicated that there are seven essential characteristics of high performers. The individual articles can be found here: on intelligence , competitiveness , resilience , drive , communication skill , passion & values ?.
As mentioned in the previous articles, for the last 23 years I have been helping companies of all sizes source talent. Most of those roles have been genuinely achievement orientated, and for that end we have been assigned to find high performers. Along with colleagues (and particularly my colleague Lorna Rutter ,) my organisation has interviewed and assessed thousands of potential applicants. The analysis we have done drew us to the conclusion that there are seven essential characteristics of high performers.?
In this last article in the series, we will discuss how employers can look for these characteristics in applicants to develop a high performance hiring and retention strategy?
The seven characteristics that I have outlined in the previous articles are what one might term “performance predictors” if taken as a whole. It is my contention that anyone who is able to demonstrate high adherence to all these characteristics will most likely have at least the potential to be a high performer if given the right environment.?
What then is a high performer? A reasonable definition is that they are someone who will be in measured as performing in the top 10 to 20% when compared against their peer group. If you intend your organisation to be high performance orientated, you should be looking to have a reasonable proportion of such people to help you drive that performance. A study by O’Boyle and Aguinis (Personnel Psychology Feb 2012) suggests that high performers are 400% more productive than average workers!?
When it comes to measurement, some professions or occupations are easier to evaluate than others. Salespeople or “fee-earning” professionals such as lawyers or management consultants might be measured quantitatively against targets (though I would argue that other qualitative measures should also be used when assessing performance). It is very much a fact that target orientation is a high-performance trait, but target performance may also be a function of the comparative reasonableness of the target set.??
However, as anyone who has had experience of selection will know, gaining really hard irrefutable evidence of performance is difficult. How can we differentiate genuine performance that was largely down to the individual, and that that might have been down to a fortunate set of circumstances? There is the old adage that “a rising tide carries all ships”, so how can we be sure that the person we are interviewing didn’t just ride that rising tide? How can we be sure they are being truthful about the performance achievement they claim to have been responsible for??
The certainty is, of course, that there are no certainties! What we can do, however, is to create a system where we stand an increased chance of hiring those people who have genuine high-performance potential.??
This can be achieved through creating a robust hiring process that is high performance orientated, in both the performance of the system, but also with its intention.?
It should therefore have the following:?
A hiring system that that adheres to the above points will radically improve the chances of hiring high performers.?
Having acquired a team with an acceptable percentage of high performers, how do we keep them? This is a useful read from the HBR in that regard: What High Performers Want at Work (hbr.org) . It involved a survey of almost 3000 people, and based on their annual performance reviews, they categorised 40% as “high performers”?
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One of the findings was that high performers are not getting what they need from managers. Only 53% say their manager delivers on their feedback expectations. Whether you deliver feedback through the traditional appraisal method or more informally, this is an area that most organisations can improve on. The article also discovered that high performers have a strong tendency to direct their own learning. This very much aligns with our own observations. See the first article in the series where I refer to? autodidacticism ((4) What do High Performers Have in common? (Part 1) - Intelligence | LinkedIn ) . Two thirds of high performers reported in the survey that bosses did not support them looking for formal training programmes. Sometimes, of course, it may not be possible to support someone’s desire to study for an MBA, but delivering on other areas that maintain that person’s motivation and desire for self-improvement will certainly be possible.?
The findings in terms of job satisfaction didn’t seem to be a significant difference between high and average performers. This might be concerning for some organisations as they might assume that someone who is performing well and therefore is well compensated is unlikely to think of leaving. This does not appear to be the case in this study.?
My personal view is that the retention of high performers may not be massively different than retention of more average performers. It is essentially about good communication and understanding needs. If your organisation is able to communicate its core values with passion while simultaneously ensuring there is the right balance of competitive challenge, the very best team members will have the intelligence to show resilience where required, and the drive to ensure the organisation grows and prospers.????
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, please do comment below.
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Have a great day!
Nigel