Capturing the Competencies of Star Performers

What feedback did you receive regarding those three questions from the last blog? Having asked these questions scores of times, our experience indicates that across industries, functions, and levels, from supervisors to the COO, the third response consistently is the dominant choice. It makes sense that business leaders care more about actual business results than about the potential to perform. People require the capability to perform (skills, knowledge, and so forth) to excel at their work. Yet having the capability is not sufficient to produce superior results.

Thomas Gilbert, in his 1996 work Human Competence, argued for a shift in focus to produce effective performance improvement: Focus on what people produce in the work environment, not simply on what they do. Helping workers to perform tasks more efficiently that don’t produce the desired accomplishments does not improve a company’s performance. Instead, focus on and identify what a worker’s major accomplishments are up front, and then determine how those achievements contribute to the company’s business goals. Once you have this information, you can determine the interventions needed for workers to produce such accomplishments with a high level of competence and confidence. However, no matter how elaborate the interventions and how busy the people, if no accomplishments are produced, no value has accrued for the organization.

The most effective and efficient way to capture models of optimal performance is to work with your current stars. These are the individuals who have established approaches to their work that consistently produce the desired accomplishments at a high level. You can think of these exemplary performers as internal benchmarks. They currently are operating within the same organizational structure and culture as the rest of your employees; yet these individuals have found ways to exceed your organization’s expectations.

One of the most interesting aspects of identifying exemplary performers is that these individuals often are unconsciously competent. They can't provide clear explanations for their success nor describe what they do differently to produce outstanding results. Many times these individuals have developed rich mental models of what success looks like and ways of predicting a successful outcome. Frequently we find these exemplary performers don’t share their approaches or methodologies because they assume that what they do is not that unusual.

Decades of experience have allowed us to refine a process for capturing this hidden expertise. We have learned that asking stars why they are good at what they do or how they go about doing their work always is unsuccessful. It is only through observation, interviews, and deep case-based analysis that we are able to capture reliable answers.

Do you agree? Disagree? Intentionally observe a star performer this week: Do you notice any differentiators from the “standard” performers?

For more on how to shift the performance curve, check out Paul’s previous blog article in this series.