Every Friday, we make it our business to find a terrific reward oriented blog post from the past week from somewhere outside the Cafe, and highlight it here. This week I'm pleased to call your attention to a terrific post on the topic of performance from Cafe friend Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist titled Role Player versus Star: Embedded Observations from the Field.
What's great about this post: not only does Kris put his finger precisely on the pulse of what is behind our collective inability to make performance management work better, but he uses it to engage employees at his organization in a great discussion of what differentiates role players from stars.
A few nuggets Kris gleaned from the conversation with his team members:
--The term "Role Player" isn't a negative to most people. When asked to define a role player, most team members spoke in positive terms.
--Stars were thought by this group to be driven by passion and to be naturally curious, which leads to them gaining knowledge about other areas that complement their current role in the organization. That additional knowledge and expertise can either make them a star, or cement their status as one.
--There's some natural suspicion among general team members on the motivation of stars. Are they just naturally driven, or are they attention hounds who want all the glory. I thought this line of thinking was pretty interesting and got me to thinking - even if Stars are driven by ego, should it matter? Doesn't the organization still benefit? In any event, I can see the ego-driven point that was made.
--Team members generally think that someone can't become a star without putting in more hours than other people.
-THE CRAZY STAT: Over half the group in attendance thought that 60% or more of the team members at our company thought they (self-identification) were stars. But, when asked to provide a % of team members who were ACTUALLY Stars (the raters looking at the team member base), over half the group in attendance thought 25% or less of the team members in our company could legitimately be identified as stars.
As Kris puts it, that was the point where his head exploded.
While I can relate to that - I still think it was an awesome move as an HR VP. Until we get to the bottom of the Role Player versus Star distinction and make some real headway, we're going to remain stuck on the tarmack in terms of making performance management work in our organizations. Click through to read the rest of the post and also check out the slide presentation Kris used for the session.
Have a great weekend!
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