Let’s say you have three direct reports: Cindy always exceeds her numbers, rarely asks for your help, and often takes initiative on new projects. Performancewise, she’s every manager’s dream, although she can be abrasive and dismissive of her colleagues. Compare her with Ed, a pleasant colleague who gets the job done competently. His attitude is “a day’s work for a day’s pay,” and for him that day ends at 5:00 pm. And then there’s Sam. He’s very likeable, but he can’t seem to get things right. It’s heartbreaking—he stays late every day and takes work home on the weekends just to perform at a subpar level.
How do you coach Cindy, Ed, and Sam? Should you give them equal time? Should you emphasize the same things?
This may sound unfair, but you cannot treat them the same way. You need to make some choices—place some bets on where your efforts will pay off.
We often assume it’s best to leave A players like Cindy alone. They’ve mastered their domain, and we don’t want to muck things up, so we keep our distance as managers.
But that’s a mistake. You should actually devote more coaching time to your stars than to anyone else because that’s where you’ll yield the greatest results. Plus, they need more support than you might think. As executive coach Steven Berglas points out in “How to Keep A Players Productive” (HBR September 2006), stars, “despite their veneer of self-satisfaction, smugness, and even bluster,” are often insecure individuals in need of praise and nurturing. Many high performers grew up in an environment where great was never good enough. As a result, they often feel they’re masquerading as successful.
When you coach A players, offset their insecurities with affirmation. Try the following suggestions, drawn from Berglas’s article:
High performers can be hard to take. It’s tempting to bring them down a peg or two when they start acting up, but keep that impulse in check. You’ll get much more out of them—and less grief—if you allow them to savor their accomplishments.
If A players are your lead singers and guitarists, B players such as Ed in the example earlier are your drummers and bass players. They certainly don’t get top billing, but they hold everything together in the organization. B players make up the lion’s share of the workforce—75% to 80%, by some estimates. And they dutifully get the job done with little fanfare or oversight.
Still, they need your attention. Here are some tips on coaching them effectively, based on insights from “Let’s Hear It for B Players” (HBR June 2003), by Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan:
Managers often devote most of their coaching to the employees who struggle the most, like Sam—and that’s a losing proposition.
When we talk about C players, we’re not referring to employees who are adjusting to the organization or to new roles; we’re talking about individuals who should be performing at a higher level. Over time, they just don’t carry their weight. They drag down their teams and sometimes even corrode their coworkers’ attitudes. And to the extent that C players are taking up space, they block the advancement of stronger candidates.
So what do you do with them? In “A New Game Plan for C Players” (HBR January 2002), Beth Axelrod, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Ed Michaels suggest a tough but respectful approach: Give low performers a chance at redemption but set firm expectations to overcome procrastination and rationalization. Here’s how:
That’s how to coach someone like Sam. If he doesn’t make progress, don’t let him stick around, no matter how nice he is and how hard he tries. The amount of time you give him will depend on the nature of his job and his commitment and capacity to improve. In most instances you’ll know within a few months whether further investment will help. You need to move sensitively but swiftly in dealing with Sam. You owe it to Cindy and Ed—and to your organization—to focus your coaching efforts where they’ll pan out.
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Jim Grinnell is an associate professor of management at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. His consulting firm, Grinnell Consulting, works with firms on leadership coaching and organizational change and development.
Adapted from “The ABCs of Employee Coaching,” posted on May 31, 2012, at businesslearningcoach.com