Truth 41. A hot star can brighten your whole team

Who doesn’t want star performers on their team? They can ratchet up the excellence of all your performers. Assuming that they don’t haul their ego into the workplace, like their very own espresso machine, they can inspire would-be stars who have gotten into the habit of leaving their A game at home. They can bring a certain level of celebrity to your entire company. And, let’s face it, they can make you look fantastic.

Some stars expect star treatment. Some stars just want the trust and respect necessary to be left alone to do their work. Some stars will be courted by your competitors who know the value of their brand, perhaps more than you do. Some stars just like to work with colleagues who care about the mission as much as they do and who aren’t threatened by the little extra oomph of passion they bring to the table.

Stars need a little bit of special handling. But it’s worth it for your entire team. Keep them onboard with your group, and their influence will lift the performance levels of everyone who works with them:

• Choose their immediate teammates carefully. Nothing will alienate the brilliance of talent faster than being yoked to mediocrity. If you want to attract and keep high performers, make sure they have people of the same caliber to play with. Not that your high performers are necessarily talent snobs. It’s just as likely, if not more so, that the mediocre talent will do what they can to diminish, dilute, demoralize, or destroy the contributions of your best employees.

• Accept the fact that your most impassioned employees are likely to contribute to their profession or industry outside the scope, confines, and control of your organization. They’re curious. They’re passionate. They’re generous. They’re energetic. They know that to be cutting edge in their field, they must bring out the sharp implements and do the cutting themselves (which can threaten the dull-edged folks on the status quo side of your enterprise). Give them the time and flexibility to be active in their professional community. They’ll bring back the goodies they gather (new knowledge, skills, acquaintances) to you.

• Accept the possibility that your high performers have to cultivate a fan base to do their work. They recognize that to build their own effectiveness in their field, they probably have to build a network or even a following, which necessitates creating celebrity of one sort or another. It’s not necessarily an ego trip (although it might look like that to the mediocrity cadre). It’s a necessity. Still it can foster envy, resentment, and general peevishness among the rest of your workforce, who aren’t as energetic about their careers but still want the attention swag your stars appear to enjoy.

• Accept the fact that your customers might love your star more than your brand. Or that your star is your brand. Is that necessarily a bad thing? It can be if your brand is more important to you than your customer is. But there is still no getting around this fact: If you have a star who positively influences how the public experiences your company’s product or service (by inspiring excitement and loyalty and excellence), what’s it worth to you to keep that star onboard? What’s it going to cost you when you lose that star to a competitor?

• Use the star’s presence to inspire the rest of your team to excellence. Your employees are your customers. They have, in a sense, hired you to help guide their career development. If you have a star in the group, recruit that star to share his or her brilliance and to foster opportunities for excellence from your B++ players. And then recruit your B++ players to do the same for the B players and so on.

Recruit that star to share his or her brilliance and to foster opportunities for excellence from your B++ players.

• Don’t play favorites. Sure, star talent is hard to find. But whole teams of really great B and B++ players are even harder to build. A star who is toxic, mean-spirited, or who dismisses the team spirit out of arrogance is not a star at all. Bending rules for one that you won’t bend for all will result in trust and communication issues among your entire team. They’ll end up resenting your star player (further diminishing your star’s effectiveness) and losing respect for you (completely undermining your power as an inspiring leader).

Employee engagement experts agree that an important key to keeping your top performers is to give them continuing opportunities to develop their careers. Your star players can be your best asset with regard to helping raise the potential levels of all your people. This might just be the most valuable service they’ll give you.