Run for fun or chase the medal?
The personal growth of an individual is indeed very individual — and that’s how managers should approach it.
Let’s imagine two hypothetical characters, John and Paul. John wakes up every morning, takes his running shoes from the rack, and runs into the forest next to his house. He usually runs for around an hour. If he feels great, he runs faster or longer, but he doesn’t care how fast or how far he runs.
Paul wakes up every morning and goes running the same way John does. However, unlike John, he has a plan. He desperately wants to run 10k in under 40 mins and chase the medal in the local competition, which is in three months. He also has a precisely designed plan for every day. Today he should run 8k at a steady pace between 4:15 and 4:25 min/km.
In the end, John decides to go to the competition as well because his friends will be there and it might be fun. Both guys finished the track in under 40 mins.
Identify motivation
The conclusion is that there were at least two different “career” paths leading to the same result. If you have read Kim Scott’s amazing book Radical Candor[1], you will recall her division of people into Rockstars (John) and Superstars (Paul), with neither of the two being better or worse than the other.
While Paul is most probably motivated by future results, status, money, or recognition, John is living in the moment and is motivated by the joy it brings him. But how to help these people get what they want and increase their value for the company at the same time?
Practical tip: Try a tip from Radical Candor: Identify motivators. One great way to do this is through an interview. Ask the person to walk you through his or her past experience and pay attention to all the decisions they made, especially regarding career changes.
This interview is very similar to a normal interview where you are evaluating a candidate. The big difference is that you might have already built trust with the person you are interviewing, so the conversation will be much more honest.
I talked to one of my team members once, realizing that this manager always wanted to open his own cafe. His motivation is to gain the management experience and money he needs to one day run his own business. After we’d identified that, we were able to have much more honest conversations about his goals and the types of challenges that interest him.
Have your ambition set right
With people like Paul, their ambition should be fairly obvious, but it might not be entirely easy to achieve. Paul wants to be promoted a level up. But the more intangible and unreal this ambition is, the more frustrated he can be. He might be asking what he should do to be ‘good’ enough.
Career ladders typically describe the responsibilities and expectations of an individual in each position, but they rarely say anything about how to get there. Rather, they might be based on the “I’ll know it when I see it” principle. The existence of such a list of steps might cause people to make only minimal effort to tick the box, proceed to the next item, and expect promotion once the list is completed.
The point is, such a list cannot be finite, and being motivated only by sitting on a better chair might be considered dangerous and the “wrong” kind of ambition. Ben Horowitz said: ”The wrong kind of ambition is an ambition for the executive’s personal success regardless of the company’s outcome.”[2] Although he is mainly talking about how to run the company at an executive-level, I think this might be at least partially applied to any level.
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships” — Michael Jordan
So a person’s primary goal should be to increase his or her impact on the company’s revenue, with a possible promotion being the secondary goal that reflects their hard work and impact on the company. This is easy to say but hard to implement.
I’ll return back to Paul. Besides being a runner, he is also a developer and wants to become a senior-level engineer, be recognized, and get more money. To help him grow, any goal should provide guidance around how he can increase and demonstrate his impact. Such a goal might be making him accountable for solving a very complex problem that others hesitate to take on. It could also be something softer, like making team meetings more effective, or writing some tech articles for the company blog.
If done well, all of these activities might potentially increase the person’s impact. But how would you know whether it’s good enough for promotion? As I mentioned previously, promotion shouldn’t be the only target, but for people like Paul, recognition is fairly important. A great way to approach this might be through department-wide calibration.
The main purpose of calibration is to preserve the level of standard for each position where people should have a similar impact. In Paul’s case, we might compare him to other colleagues in senior positions and see whether or not there is still a gap. The topic of calibration would fill up the pages of a whole new article, but to cut a long story short, the main advantage is that the person might compare themself to other colleagues and therefore see areas for improvement more clearly.
Opportunity to shine
To quote Lara Hogan, “To sponsor someone is to feel on the hook to help get someone promoted.” [3] Increasing one’s impact within the company might be extremely hard if there are no challenges to demonstrate your higher impact, new skills, or experience.
I have seen some people stepping up on their own, finding the right challenge, and nailing it down. But this is very rare and sometimes even impossible. People are usually tied up with their current working agreements and the expectations of their peers, managers, etc. That means they have very little time to focus on something outside of the day-to-day business — and if they do, it’s usually in their free time.
It is crucial for people’s growth to give them space to grow. For you as a manager, it might be giving them some extra time to find and tackle their challenges. You might spread the word, saying: “Hey, did you know Paul already tackled this issue? Have you considered consulting him?” Or: “I believe John is the right person to do the job for us.” The main difference between coaching and sponsoring is that you also help the person find the right challenges.
Practical tip: Always make sure you have clearly defined WHY it is important to solve this particular problem, and HOW it will impact company business. It is much easier to measure and recognize success if you can support it with quantitative or qualitative data.
Recognize results
Recognition is often much more powerful than just getting more money. It is important that you identify the best method of recognition for each person. Some people need public recognition, so giving a short thank-you speech during a team, tribe, or company meeting might make them feel proud. Other people just need to hear from you during a 1:1 meeting, read a note in the company communicator, or receive a gift card for food delivery. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it must be there.
You gave the person five minutes of fame and made them feel proud, but you also gave them much more than that. Everybody just heard, saw, or read that they did something outstanding, which will help raise their reputation. Remember the calibration meeting? That’s exactly where it might help that person be promoted.
Conclusion
Let’s return to the running analogy. You might think this article was solely about high-achievers — the people with strong goal-orientation who are desperate for promotion. The truth is, you can apply a similar principle to both categories.
Paul will be more likely to get promoted if their ambition is set right. That’s mainly because their primary motivation is to be the best and achieve great things. You might spend more time with them because setting the right goals is time-consuming, they need to see progress faster, and it might be frustrating for them if things are moving slower than expected.
However, that doesn’t mean that the others won’t achieve promotion as well, and it would be a pity not to reveal the gem hidden in your team. For that, you need to set the right work environment and support them in what they love to do. Chances are, you wouldn’t need to spend that much time with them.
So be a sponsor for your people, set them up for success in their specific challenges, and recognize their contributions.
Bibliography
- Radical candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You MeanKim Scott, 2017, ISBN: 9781250103505, https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kim-Scott/dp/B01KTIEFEE
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, 2014, ISBN: 9780062273208
- https://larahogan.me/blog/what-sponsorship-looks-like/, Lara Hogan, quoted: 11/17/2020
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