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About the Author: Whitney Johnson; Innovative trainer, speaker and thinker has recently been introduced in the (Thinkers 50) as one of the most influential management thinkers in the world. He is the author of the book “Build a team”, published by “Harvard Business Review”.
The best managers know they’re supposed to assign challenging tasks to employees to keep them interested and engaged.
But what do you do when one of your employees gets to the top of their learning curve — and doesn’t want to grow anymore?
Is it acceptable for you if one of your team members is no longer motivated to do a new task or build new skills?
Is it ok for your employee to do a good job but never gets better than what he/she is getting now? Like a helium balloon which is floating near the ceiling, but never rising higher?
What can we do with an expert who seems to hit the ceiling and is completely satisfied with staying there?
As a manager, you may feel fine if your precious employee is ok with his current situation.
There is a mindset that says leaving good employees in their place when they mastered in their jobs, but it ultimately leads to a downside.
Think of the difference between a pond — an unmoving ground for breeding mosquitoes — and a lively stream. In the stream, the motion keeps the water fresh.
Employees at the high end of their learning curve also require change. People in the comfort zone can quickly become bored, indifferent, and disengaged. Stagnation can create an environment which leads to a lack of innovation.
This happens for one of these two reasons: the need for a new challenge, or the need for a change:
As managers we can decide which approach to choose, in fact we have two options.
Increasing Tasks:
This is what the Indian manager of SAP product manager, Sumeet Shetty did. After a reorganization, he became responsible for a new team. Some members of the team stated that they are satisfied with their current position. But Sumeet Shetty knew that these people were more capable than they thought.
So he gave more tasks to them. He asked them to repeat the report of the managing directors over and over again. But people were not happy with the exercise and complained that it was unnecessary and time wasting. Their first attempt showed that they were not really good. But in the sixth attempt, their performance improved, and finally, when the team members presented Sumeet Shetty’s year performance reports, they acknowledged that this was the best job expansion he had done as manager.
Encourage a New Learning Curve
If your employees’ current level of skill is high but not growing, suggest a move to a new assignment, team, or project or client to help them jump to a new learning curve.
When people are at the top, their skills and mastery are an obstacle for people who are ready to grow and progress.
Recently, one of the clients of the coaching courses told me; in the company he works for, one of the employees who had a positive performance and was one of the best people in the company was encouraged to leave the team. While the mentioned employee had been with the organization for more than a decade, consider that the employer did not intend to dismiss his valuable employee. But it was clear to both sides (employee and employer) that the employee was exhausted in his current job. After a difficult negotiation, both the employee and employer felt relieved, the employee no longer felt trapped, and finally entered the entrepreneurial stage of his life and after a while decided to retire, and this was a glorious end for him.
Shanna Hocking, vice president of development at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, used to talk a lot about his former boss, Pam Parker. Parker was a strict man, but he led Shanna to new learning path and helped him know when to take on new challenges. Shanna is now a president and hopes to continue Parker’s leadership style. He knows that investing on human beings involves devoting time, effort and mental energy. Human resource development does not happen in days or months, but takes years or even decades. When we have experts in our team, we should not allow them to go back or stay still, but we should offer people missions and tasks that will make them work harder or encourage them to move. Instead of being afraid of these negotiations, we should use them as a great opportunity to express our appreciation and encouragement.
All employees, especially those who have been working for you for a long time, need to know that they are important to you. There is no such thing as a growth opportunity for employees to show them the how important they are.
by Whitney Johnson, summarized by Ahmadreza Ahrarnejad
This post is also available in: Persian
