Is This a Sure Fire Way to Kill Your Best Performers?

We’ve all heard the oft quoted cliché that rings through offices in America: “Teamwork makes the dream work!” It sounds great and it gives everyone (especially in management) a nice warm fuzzy.

What if it’s not true though?

If you read my post about the bane of open offices, you already know how I feel about constant surveillance. But what about that modern day sacred cow of the American workplace: constantly collaborating together as a team? Frankly, one of the most potent kisses of death for the average worker these days is to be labeled as “not a team player.” It immediately conjures images of an angry bear gone rogue. He’ll wander the forest alone and keep all the salmon for himself instead of taking direction from his boss and sitting politely through hours and hours of mindless meetings each week. What is the actual necessity of driving these top performers into collaborative team exercises and open office floor plans? More importantly, in the short term, are you damaging your company culture and decreasing profits by doing so? Emphatically YES.

We have the psychological data to prove it.

Earlier this year, a study was published that proves forcing high performing employees into groupthink activities drags them down and your company suffers for it. Why is this? Think of it as low hanging fruit and mediocre employees dragging down the best:

A multisource field study of 936 relationships among 350 stylists within 105 salons offered support for our model and an experiment with 204 management students constructively replicated our findings and ruled out alternative explanations. Results indicated that peers offered more support and also perpetrated more undermining to high performers. Paradoxical cognitive processes partly explain these behaviors, and cooperative contexts proved socially disadvantageous for high performers.

We like to think that putting the A+ employees into a group with the Bs and Cs will cause the others to rise to the occasion and strive to be like the A+ guy. Sadly, no. Remember in school when the teacher put everyone into groups. How many of the slackers pitched in to help the bookworm write the report? Exactly.

A+ talent will always have more options.

You may remember the Timex Social Club song “Rumors.” Hard to believe it’s more than 30 years old (oy vey), but it’s still valid: “How do rumors get started? They’re started by the jealous people.” As Geoffrey James points out in his indictment of forced collaboration: “Rather than improving their own performance, mediocre employees socially isolate top performers, spread nasty rumors about them, and either sabotage, or attempt to steal credit for, the top performers’ work.” Simply put, A players will not stick around and tolerate this kind of bad behavior from their teammates. Their skill set is in demand and they know their worth. Rather than hoping conditions will improve or that the company will somehow clean house and remove all the lackluster deadbeats, the A player will move on—taking his hard work, revenue driving performance, and knowledge with him. Who loses there? You do.

Protect your best.

Sometimes in life, it’s best to rip off the band-aid. This doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t attempt to coach or counsel less-than-stellar employees. There can be times when a mediocre performer is simply a square peg in a round hole and can improve drastically in a different role. But if it has become obvious someone is a mediocre or poor performer and is happy to be so, replace him. If you have been settling for mediocrity because you think the process of replacing the B and C team is too great, hire an experienced, professional search firm or headhunter to help you and clear out the detritus. When an A player leaves your company, it’s usually not because an offer fell out of the sky magically and wowza, it was just coincidentally so perfect that they had to take it. News travels fast. Recruiters and HR professionals find out who is exemplary in their industry and they go after them. The trick is to protect your best players; make them unpoachable. Give them no real reason to take a phone call from a corporate HR manager or a search firm. Statistically, the majority of people who quit do so because of a poor relationship with their frontline manager, i.e., the person they report to and they see every single day. Conversely, if you create an environment that does not force top performers into groupthink and instead promotes creativity, autonomy, and healthy dynamics between management and teams, you can keep those A players engaged and willing to plant roots.

Think of it this way: do you want a highly compliant, super polite Winnie the Pooh who generates $100K in profits each year or a grizzly who’s a bit rough around the edges and very independent but brings in $1mil each year? It’s a no brainer, folks.

Are you a hiring manager in food or agriculture who’s been settling for mediocrity when you shouldn’t? We can help. Email me directly at: sara@sectechnical.com and I will personally respond with recommendations.