Leading and Managing Difficult Star Performers

Leading and Managing Difficult Start Performers
Leslie Martinich

To be great leaders, engineers need to develop communication, negotiation, execution, budgeting, scheduling, human resources, and team building skills. We’ll focus on just one aspect of the skills a leader needs to learn, that of managing difficult star performers.

Do you have a star performer on your team? Is that person sometimes a prima donna? If so, you are not alone.

A recent Gallup study of thousands of managers found that the difference between "great" and "not-so-great" leader/managers is the ability to manage difficult star performers.

Star performers on your team allow you to deliver innovative products. However, most leaders have trouble managing their difficult star performers. It’s up to you to learn the skills necessary for this job.

Some managers are baffled by the behavior of these star performers. You might have heard a variant of this, "They act like a kindergartner, and can get upset over the smallest issues! They disrupt the dynamics of our team. What is wrong with them?" (I can almost hear you saying, "Yes! That person is on my team, and he/she drives me crazy!")

So, what do you need to do to be a "great" leader, to manage these difficult star performers, and to successfully deliver those innovative products?

Star performers occasionally get irritated when they feel that their manager has not listened to them. In fact, most people feel irritated when they think they have been overlooked.

Here’s an example. A company hired me because they were having difficulty with employee recruitment and retention. Their management staff was not effectively leading their technical staff. And it wasn’t their fault; they had been taught to be outstanding electrical engineers but had little training in what it took to be a manager or a leader.

So, I arranged monthly leadership development days (well, half-days), taught them my three easy techniques for engaging their stars and mentoring their average performers. And morale, retention, and productivity increased. I heard a comment, one that I've heard from other organizations as well, "My boss needs this training!"

We used a program I call "Leadership Improv" to learn and practice these three skills:

Pay attention to your audience. Here I am using “audience” in a technical sense: it means the person or persons with whom you are talking or interacting. Try to understand what makes them tick. Be present. This takes time. And it’s a wise use of your time. Look at them when you talk with them. Put away your devices.

Engage your audience. Ask them for their input regarding schedule, features, planning, and strategy, and genuinely listen. As you learn more about their strengths, you’ll be able to include them in discussions where their insights might make a difference. And you’ll be better prepared to help guide their careers. Especially the genius star performers! Of course you want to leverage their insights! They are geniuses!

Respect them. Find points of common interest and use those as anchors to build a respectful relationship. Respect Sue’s skill at finding the solution to a complex problem. And respect her for putting herself through school and raising three teenagers. (Believe me, that is much harder than managing a team of engineers!) Respect Jack’s ability to find the most elusive bug in the code. And when you ask enough questions and learn that he built a helicopter in his garage during the COVID-19 lockdown, respect that too!

The takeaway: Know your team members: That requires knowledge and dedication. And it is a fundamental responsibility of the leader/manager. Star performers, critical to the success of innovation, sometimes exhibit difficult behaviors. It is your job, as a leader/manager to build skills so that you are able to work with your difficult star performers.

The big picture: When team members feel heard and respected, they become more productive and more committed to the team’s goals. Leaders need to learn a lot of skills to be successful. It’s not enough to have the best engineering skills. Leaders need communication, negotiation, execution, budgeting, human resources, and team building skills. Among others. Fortunately, these are skills that one can learn and develop.

About the Author
Leslie Martinich, an internationally recognized, award-winning keynote speaker, teaches leaders how to manage their (difficult) star performers and out-innovate the competition.