Not Knowing How Your Top Performers Feel About Your Leadership is Career Suicide
The #1 reason people stay in a job and leave a job is because of their manager. Don't wonder about whether your people are staying or going.
Andy felt crushed.
Sydney, his number 2, his most trusted leader, his go-to person, just gave notice.
At least she was honest about why. The job no longer felt like a growth opportunity. She wasn’t learning and the business challenges felt insurmountable. Andy had known that she was ambitious, very ambitious, but thought he had more time.
What Sydney didn’t share was that she had lost confidence in Andy as a leader. He had been distracted these last few months by his own fears and overwhelm. He had started to micromanage, checking in more than was necessary, demanding detailed plans, and revisiting topics they had already discussed. Sydney and her teammates felt that he was wasting their time and distracting them from their work. Worst of all, they felt he didn’t trust their judgment.
Andy was also increasingly irritable and no longer the clear, decisive leader they had come to appreciate. He didn’t just second-guess his team, he was second-guessing his own thinking and those of his peers. Whereas in the past, you could count on Andy to be thorough while knowing when to move forward, now, his team would hesitate before bringing things to him because he was becoming an unpredictable bottleneck.
But Andy, while aware that he was more stressed lately, didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. Andy thought he was still operating the way he always had.
Sydney’s departure was a rude awakening.
Your top performers drive your team’s success. And your team’s success is your success.
It’s the classic 80/20 rule. 80% of outcomes are often driven by 20% of the talent, effort, and people. You need these special people to reach your goals.
It might feel mercenary and transactional.
But it’s the truth and if you’re a smart leader, you know this.
It’s why you fight to reward your top talent and it’s why you work so hard to find and develop top talent.
But when you are stressed, and let’s be honest, for most senior leaders these days that is a lot of the time, you tend to focus on what’s not working well. You ignore what is working well and who is driving that progress.
When things aren’t going well, leaders tend to stop focusing on their top talent. You take for granted these people who are driving most of your business, solving most of your problems, and innovating on your most promising new offerings.
These are the people who hold together your culture and strengthen your team dynamics. They can literally make or break your outcomes, which can mean making or breaking your career.
Too often, companies focus on the wrong statistic, employee retention.
Healthy companies should regularly churn out employees who no longer fit the company’s needs. A productive goal should never be about retaining all of your staff.
Retention goals should be focused on top performers.
These are the people who anchor your operations. They set the cultural tone and they set the performance bar. They are the model professionals that uplift the results and behaviors of the entire team.
It can cost more than 1.5-2x the salary to replace a top performer.
Between the lost productivity, legacy knowledge, recruiting costs and time, and the effort to onboard, this is very expensive.
It’s not just the cost of replacing a top of performer that’s a problem. Even when you finally hire a new person, you won’t know if they will work out until weeks if not months later.
It’s not worth the risk. It’s far more effective and efficient to keep your top talent.
So how do you retain a top performer?
There are many different reasons why people leave, but the most common reason is their manager.
Managers determine the trajectory of an employee. They are responsible for assigning them goals and responsibilities. They resource (or under-resource) them, develop them, and provide (or don’t provide) growth opportunities. Managers can help employees succeed and be recognized and rewarded, or they can let them languish, or even worse, hold them back.
The power that a manager has over an employee’s experience and path forward is so significant, it’s no wonder managers are the number one reason why employees leave.
It stands to reason that managers are also the number one reason why employees stay.
You might already know this, but I bet many of you reading this article are still taking the “it’s probably fine” approach, which, let’s be honest, doesn’t work.
Just because you don’t know what your top performers think of you doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it. You are just choosing to operate blindly.
Don’t do it.
Don’t be like Andy.
Get the intel you need to understand what you need to do to retain your top talent. Even if there are truly mitigating circumstances that prevent you from keeping them, at least you will know that they are on the way out. This will give you and them the opportunity to plan a smooth transition.
Most managers don’t truly understand what matters to their top performers.
It takes time to build the trust necessary for someone to open up, to share vulnerably. One method to try is LifeLab’s CAMPS model.
Use it to get structured input from your direct reports on what matters to them and how much. Add a table to your 1:1s with employee and ask them to rate on a scale of 1-10 their satisfaction in each area (10 being the highest):
Certainty - How much do they need to feel sure about what’s ahead?
Autonomy - How much independence do they want in their day-to-day?
Meaning - How do they make sense of their work and purpose?
Progress - Are they advancing and growing at the pace they want?
Social inclusion - Are they having the interactions they need to feel fulfilled and connected?
If you make this a part of your regular conversations — monthly or quarterly, you will get a better sense of how your people feel about their work experience, and therefore, about your leadership.
Importantly, in this model, you have an opportunity to learn more about what actually matters to your people. Getting context not just on how happy they are, but why is where this really gets interesting.
LifeLabs also recommends you ask folks for what could help them move their score up by 1 point. This is a great way to get feedback on what you can change to improve their experience.
Do this for all your employees, and use the information you learn to help you create a stronger organization, but pay closest attention to how your top performers rate their experience and why. They are what will make the biggest difference to the success of your team.
Retreating from conflict or feedback is often a sign of giving up or lack of trust.
When your top performers — the people who normally step up and step out from the rest to offer suggestions, provide critical feedback, or engage in debate — start to clam up, that’s a clear sign something isn’t right.
The issues could be personal — something in their family life, health, or other non-work items. But don’t make that assumption.
The most frequent reason why previously vocal or engaged people become silent is that they no longer believe it is worth the effort or the risk to stick out their necks.
When you see this happening, instead of getting suspicious, get curious.
Take time out of your regular schedule to spend time with your talented direct report to hear them out. Maybe add an extra 1:1 meeting or carve out more space in your existing 1:1 meetings for open discussion.
A highly structured agenda may actually shut them down further or distract them from more difficult topics like this one. Instead, ask open-ended questions and get comfortable with awkward silences. Giving them the time and space to share is of the utmost importance.
Making sure your top talent feels you are available, curious, and ready to listen is perhaps the most important way you can ensure that they don’t give up.
A shift from proactive to reactive behaviors can be a sign of distraction or disillusionment.
If you start to see your top performers get surprised or have more emotional reactions and swings, that might be a sign they are no longer operating at their best and most committed.
Generally, your top people will be more planful, more organized, and more grounded in how to respond to change and curve balls. If they are starting to feel more like a loose canon or no longer anticipating what’s ahead, they may not be feeling engaged anymore in their job.
Instead of coming down on them or avoiding confronting them on what might be happening, offer what you’re seeing as an observation and ask them if they are aware of their behavior change. Having a more light-handed, but still direct approach may create more psychological safety for them to respond honestly.
Don’t be afraid of a 360 assessment even if it takes time and is expensive.
There is tremendous value in using a 360 evaluation to signal to your team that you care deeply about their feedback.
A 360 is exactly what it sounds like — you take a snapshot of how everyone around you views your effectiveness as a leader. While not strictly focused on your top performers and their feedback, this type of assessment can surface themes about your leadership that will directly impact your top talent.
No one works in a vacuum. How your peers, manager, leaders who are senior to you, in addition to your direct reports rate your performance and offer insights around how you can improve will help your top performers as well as you. Why? Because your top performers will benefit from your strengthening your performance.
The more strategically and operationally excellent you are, the more your influence grows, the more your top talent will benefit from that halo effect, and the more you will be able to provide your top talent with growth opportunities.
These evaluations can take several weeks and be pricey, but your HR team or an outside coach or consultant can easily conduct this for you. The results could be life-changing not only in capturing valuable feedback from your top talent, but in the totality of the feedback to help you improve your effectiveness.
Once you know what your top talent wants, actively work to address the situation.
With the knowledge of what’s happening for your top performers, you can adjust how you lead, how you dole out assignments, structure and resource your team, and any other decisions in your purview that can help improve their experience while advancing business objectives.
The great news is that many times, the demands of your top talent are the demands of your staff overall and will help elevate your organization as a whole.
There will be times when you won’t be able to make a change or make it fast enough. That’s OK.
For some of your top performers, simply having an open discussion about what is realistic will help reorient them and bring back some motivation and trust.
For others, their concerns are non-negotiable. While you might not be able to retain them, with your newfound knowledge, you can now collaborate together on how to make a smooth transition. Working out in the open is beneficial for everyone.
Your top performer will be more motivated to still perform if they feel you are being supportive of their needs to transition out. You can also be more thoughtful about how you replace them as they depart. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to restructure the team or to provide another top performer with a growth opportunity.
In addition, top performers are often people you want to work with again in the future. They generally go on to do even bigger and better things over time. You may want to hire them again or perhaps your amazing direct report might become someone you might work for one day.
You never know.
Adjusting how you lead based on your top talent feedback can payoff long after you work together. It’s worth the investment to learn now what is happening and become a stronger leader now.
Key Takeaways
Your top performers drive the majority of your results and so it behooves you to understand what matters to them and how you can improve their experience to retain them
Seek out to understand what matters to them regularly. Try the CAMPS method or find one that works for you
Watch for signs of waning interest, engagement, or a reluctance to speak up. They are early signals worth paying attention to
Consider a 360 assessment as a way to support not just your growth, but how you can be a better leader on behalf of your top performers
Even if you cannot retain a top performer, creating a safe space to have open and honest dialogue will allow you to plan together and mitigate risk. It will also allow you to maintain a strong relationship with someone who you likely want to work with again in the future
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Fantastic article, Kathy.
High performing teams always have switched on, competent managers. But as you say, stress or other personal situations may make an exceptional manager less effective.
The downward slide from amazing to ho hum doesn't happen overnight, more like over several months. And of course, nobody says anything in case it comes back to bite them, they just leave with their feet.