Motivating and Developing Every High Performer
Every high performer has high expectations, making motivating top talent to stay a growing challenge.
In this article, we explore ways to keep top talent working at their best by engaging with the critical attributes that underly optimal performance.
Introduction
The success of both a high performer and an organisation together is bound by a single factor — motivation. Research conducted by the Harvard Business Review in 2010 indicated that up to 21% of employees are highly disengaged at work and looking for new opportunities — high performers make up most of this group.
Further research from the IEEE institute (professional organization for the advancement of technology) in 2019 indicated that even in technical fields like software development, the pivotal factor for success is surprisingly not technical ability but rather is linked to motivation and how this impacts levels of engagement. The Harvard Business Review research suggests that 70% of today’s high performers still lack critical attributes such as ability, engagement and aspiration that are essential to their future success, providing an incentive to reshape talent management with soft skills in mind.
In this article, we’ll explore the specific attributes that empower high performing employees to have a sustained impact and outline a better way to approach motivation from the outset of the employee journey.
Ability
Carving out the time for a rigorous initial job analysis to determine the fundamental knowledge, abilities and competencies that are vital for high performance is a stable starting point for beginning to identify high potential performers with an appropriate skillset.
In order to predict potential however, an additional step is vital.
“In forecasting potential to excel in a bigger, more complex job at some point in the future, the question shifts to how likely an individual is to be able to learn and master the requisite knowledge and skill” (HBR)
Cognitive ability assessments fulfil this very purpose by providing the most reliable indicator of one’s ability to learn and master knowledge and skills. 10x Ability highlights job relevant skills during the recruitment process as well as delivering actionable insights to aid you in understanding these abilities within the workforce. This allows you to integrate these skills within wider development activities or assess who is ripe for joining your High Potential programmes.
Personality
The research published by the IEEE showed that half of software developers’ performance in the study could be attributed to individual day-to-day variation.
“The programmers differ from themselves as much as they differ from other members of the group”. Bill Nichols, ‘The End to the Myth of Individual Programmer Productivity’, published in IEEE Software
One of the most stable indicators across inevitable day-to-day variation, is personality.
People’s self-perceptions are powerful indicators of their competencies to be successful; a person’s traits play a key role in determining how they might Consult, Plan, Think and Act at work.
10x Personality is the driving force behind our insights, forming the most important element of predictive analytics across our Solutions. The assessment has been built from our own original research and has been specifically designed with the workplace in mind. From ascertaining emotional resilience, to gauging levels of critical thinking and drive, 10x Personality offers a holistic view that provides a valuable perspective on high performing employees to get the best from their personal development.
Motivation
Crucial to gaining sustained impact is keeping your top talent motivated. This means meeting their expectations of what the title ‘Top Talent’ means and providing opportunities for development and taking on responsibility.
Failure to keep your Top Talent motivated means risking high turnover of that talent; research indicates that one in four high potential employees intend to leave their role within the year, with one in three admitting to not putting all of their effort into their job, and thus never meeting their projected potential.
10x Motivation is incorporated within all our Solutions and offers an efficient and effective way to assess motivation levels and provide the insight needed to foster a proactive work environment. Our Solutions provide management with a crucial opportunity to refine their development strategies (and spending) to best align with the individuals within their organization — boosting morale and promoting productivity.
“The most motivating and humane way to improve average performance is to find ways to improve everyone’s performance.” Bill Nichols, ‘The End to the Myth of Individual Programmer Productivity’, published in IEEE Software
Predicting Potential
10x Predict offers a revolutionary alternative to traditional talent management approaches by providing predictive insights from your current workforce that help you to refine the selection, on-boarding and development of your employees and top talent. Through machine learning and incorporating measurement points from our industry-leading psychometrics, 10x Predict can project the trajectory of employees and their potential. This gives you a head start in creating and shaping their development journey with you and helps you identify those employees who are more likely to be in it for the long term.
This results in minimizing turnover of top talent and maximizing the engagement of not only potential high performers, but entire teams — allowing an organization to holistically benefit from high performing employees.
