A Potential Star Employee's Wish List

If you are a manager, every so often you will come across an employee in your organization, hopefully under you supervision, that just shines above all the rest of their peers without much effort. That star or potential star employee is a gem you may have lucked upon, but it will take more than a little luck to keep them working for you and your company. And even worse than them leaving for your competition, they could get sullen and just stop putting forth any effort, and are no longer working 'with' your company. How do you keep your stars happily working in their cubicles and shining for your company? If you were to ask any of these employees, I bet the following items would all be on their wish list: * Give Them Co-Workers Who Can Keep Up - Nothing is more frustrating to a highly motivated, highly mobile worker that being partnered with a slug who just simply can't keep up. Chances are your star is not stuck up or conceited, but if you place them in teams that aren't performing because they truly can't perform or just don't care all long as the checks don't bounce, you’re just showing your star that you don't care about their level of effort. They'll find a place where movement at their speed matters. * Give Them The Resources They Need - Just like being placed with bad people, having poor or no resources available to get the job done means it will be harder--if not impossible--to get the job done. Make the jobs easier to get done, and they'll get more jobs done. * Give Them The Time They Need - Micromanagement is awful. Insane deadlines are awful. Not letting your stars get their job done, or rushing them to complete tasks sooner than they need to be completed will frustrate, confuse, and infuriate. * Give Them A Chance To Screw Up - If Jack Welsh gets to blow up a building and still become CEO of General Electric, a star employee in the making could surely survive a missed deadline, target, or even bombing a presentation. They're not screwing up on purpose. They'll learn a valuable lesson from the occasional failure, and especially from a huge failure. You've got a star employee, or a potential in the making. You've got a prime chance to directly effect the career and life of person who could be an eventual rock star CEO, or just another business burnout. Most of their outcome will truly be up to time, chance, and their own efforts. Don't be the jerk that makes it harder that it needs to be. StealthSurfer: Protection from spyware and online ID theft