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The Science of High Performance: What Unites Top Talent
May
You’ve probably heard a thousand times that having a competitive advantage is important for business success. But can a person’s mindset and ways of working be a competitive advantage to your enterprise?
I’d argue that it’s the ability of the talent management process and the scarce resource that it provides – high performers – that can assist turn your enterprise around.
In this text, based on my speech at Lithuania’s biggest tech conference, Login, I need to share a few of our ways of working and the mindset that made Hostinger successful. I consider you may easily apply them to any company or team, no matter size or field.
You Can’t Play in a Skilled League With Amateur Players
We’ve at all times been quite strict on only hiring in line with our company principles. Early on, we understood that we, as a team, couldn’t play in a world-class league with amateur players. To compete, we would have liked skilled players.
But we noticed that it’s not only the technical skill set and experience that set professionals apart – there was something else when it got here to high performers.
To scale and improve our talent management process, I started conducting internal research and interviewed our outstanding employees. And I discovered that certain individual traits were distinguished across the board.
1. Ambition
For top performers, probably the most significant internal motivational attributes was ambition.
A lot of the high performers demonstrated a continuous must undertake and achieve demanding tasks. Due to their ambition, employees show more proactiveness, enthusiasm, and persistence of their day by day work.
Ambition connects two motivational needs: achievement and power. Striving for power can present itself through aiming for top positions of their careers, in addition to influencing or impacting others around them.
It’s necessary to notice that these two motivational needs should go hand in hand, and striving for power without striving for achievement can appear as a desire for a certain title without actual high performance.
If, in the course of the hiring process, you’re on the lookout for this trait, check the candidate’s CV for fast internal growth inside an organization. Ask about their biggest achievements and what they need from their future. This could provide you with a snapshot of how ambitious the candidate is.
2. High Expectations of Colleagues
It’s probably obvious that prime performers have high expectations of themselves, mostly due to their ambition. But interestingly, the research also demonstrated that they’ve high expectations of others.
We found that colleagues who don’t express the identical level of motivation and performance demotivate the highest players. High performers strive for achievement and don’t prefer it when others put in less effort than they do. They’re irritated by the dearth of quality and persistence. Also, it’s hard to learn from individuals who exhibit lower performance.
Working in a team has two objectives: maintaining collaboration and achieving results. Depending on the situation, people must decide to “get along” or “get ahead”. Getting along means cooperating and searching for approval, where maintaining relationships is a priority. Getting ahead, however, is all about taking the initiative, competing, and searching for results. Normally, people attempt to balance between the 2. Nonetheless, one in every of these profiles tends to dominate.
Basically, we found that the get-ahead type is more common amongst our high performers. Nonetheless, each profiles can achieve high performance, especially when an individual has other attributes related to top performers. It will be significant to do not forget that get-along type managers will probably be more prone to tolerate underperformance of their team, and team members might attempt to hide underperforming colleagues to save lots of a collegial relationship.
During interviews, you may ask a candidate what they expect of their future colleagues. Most times, high expectations of others are closely related to high performance overall.
3. Seeing the Big Picture
The third trait that defines high performers is their ability to see the large picture.
On this context, it doesn’t mean one must understand business strategy well. It signifies that the duty they’re doing should make sense to them. They don’t aim to only execute it but to obviously understand the why behind the job and how they contribute to the corporate’s success. Typically, high performers start their tasks by analyzing general information and only then move on to specific parts. In brief, they need to see how the dots are connected.
In response to literature, the sort of performance process is typical for experts of their fields. Nonetheless, lots of the high performers I interviewed were still on their technique to constructing their expertise. These findings suggest that there may be an inclination for some people to construct expertise quicker than others.
To ascertain how candidates approach tasks and whether or not they have a big-picture mindset, you may ask them what they do in a different way or higher than others once they are working.
4. Self-Efficacy, aka a “Can Do” Attitude
Self-efficacy is a trait that’s at all times present in high performers.
Self-efficacy means self-belief in your ability to attain what is required – essentially, a can-do attitude. It creates an internal feeling that one is capable and that additional effort will grant success, often going hand in hand with the sensation of being on top of things.
But why is self-efficacy necessary for performance? Self-belief and feeling such as you’re on top of things help individuals adjust higher to different situations. It also improves focus, making it harder for external aspects to take attention away from the specified result. It’s a trait that offers individuals willfulness, determination, and execution focus, helping them to not hand over and always strive to enhance of their roles.
Some people say that adaptability is probably the most necessary traits nowadays. Nonetheless, we’d argue that self-efficacy means that you can create a greater strategy and learn faster in uncertain and changing situations.
That is backed up by science, too. Researchers conducted several experiments demonstrating how those with higher self-efficacy could adjust their speed to achieve the specified goal in comparison with those with lower self-efficacy.
In practice, which means individuals with higher self-efficacy can easily navigate themselves in a fast-changing environment and deal with complexity and uncertainty. They sometimes enjoy difficult tasks and simply learn by simply doing. You’ll be able to expect a junior fast-track their technique to becoming a senior specialist in the event that they have this trait.
To ascertain in case your candidate has a can-do attitude, ask them how they reacted once they got an project that was very complex and unclear. Concentrate to how they performed and what the tip result was.
Don’t Get Stuck With Underperformers
The reality is that almost all managers and HR specialists in every company are busy with underperformers. They deal with making performance improvement plans and having countless one-on-ones to see the tiniest signs of improvement. And at the identical time, the opposite 20% of high performers silently do 80% of the work. That’s unfair.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take care of underperformers in any respect. But I would love to suggest prioritizing in a different way. Your first and most vital task as a manager, HR skilled, or CEO is to not demotivate your high-performers. As an alternative, allow them to perform to their full potential.
All in favour of joining us? Take a look at our job opportunities or connect with us on LinkedIn. In search of more details about find out how to retain your top performers? Watch this space for more tech talent acquisition content.
