Business and Marketing

Clone Your Superstars. When certain team members consistently outperform others, both the low performers and their managers sometimes begin to assume that these performance variations are natural, unchangeable, and the result of an innate characteristic of the superstars. Nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the most effective ways of challenging the performance limits that your team has set for itself is by grafting on to your team the skills and competencies of your team’s superstars. The following four steps can help you successfully clone your superstars:
1. Measure the gap between the performance of your superstars and your team’s average performance level.
2. Determine whether these performance differences are the result of nonskill-related factors such as:
• Unique conditions (whether your top sales person was given the most potentially lucrative sales territory)
• Specialized technical skills that require extensive training (the engineer who specialized in advanced metallurgical processes)
• The fact that the top performer has been rewarded differently from other members (receives more attention and coaching from you than do other members)
If you are able to eliminate these factors, you are safe in assuming that the performance gap is largely the result of skill differences between your top performers and the rest of your team.
3. Break down the performance area under review into discrete activities, and identify areas in which superstars consistently outperform other team members. If you are managing a sales team, you could ask yourself whether the superior performance of certain members results from their approach to cold calling or their method of qualifying sales prospects.