The Star Factor – William Seidman and Rich Grbavac (AMACOM)
I don’t
recall the source, but I recently saw a post on LinkedIn to the effect of a
company bean counter talking to a CEO about paying for special training for a
talented staffer: loosely paraphrasing- “what
if we pay and they leave?” to which the CEO responded- “what if we don’t and
they stay?”
One of the
biggest challenges that businesses face, even in a difficult economy, is to
identify and retain talented individuals. All too often it is the process to
identify the talent that is the hard part; like the song says, “you don’t know
what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”
In an effort
to help businesses identify and retain star talent, Dr. William Seidman and
Richard Grbavac from the the performance improvement company Cerebyte have put
together the book, The Star Factor –
Discover What Your Top performers Do Differently – and Inspire A New level of
Greatness in All.
Seidman and
Gbravac have boiled down the identification process to a set of three simple
questions that you can ask yourself-
1. Who are the people you most respect for
their ability to perform some or all of the functions associated with the
initiative, program or project?
2. Are these the people you would go to
if you needed to solve a critical problem or to identify leadership for a new
initiative, program, or project dealing with this function or area of
expertise?
3. If these people told you how to do
something would you (a) believe them and (b) do whatever they said to do,
without question?
Do you
notice a common theme that runs clearly through these questions? What is it
that sets your team’s stars apart from the rest of the pack? TRUST! You can
trust them to get the job done, to bring their A-game every day and to be able
to take the reins of a project and move it forward without you needing to
micromanage every step of the way. The stars on your team are the people you
trust.
Now the
question becomes how do you give those stars and the potential stars on your
team the tools and resources they need to take things to the next level and
succeed? The difficulty for some leaders is fear; fear that they will lose
those stars or be outshined by the people on their team. It is that “fear factor”
that you will have to learn to manage and overcome to continue you growth and
success.
I love your picking up on the trust factor and how fear can get in the way of trust. We have found that leaders who trust are invariably rewarded with great success and personal satisfaction. Leaders who live in fear, particularly that their stars will outshine them, may get short-term rewards, but ultimately implode. One of the great benefits of The Star Factor system is that it is easier to trust others when you have a system that produces consistent success for everyone.
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