Executive Podcast #227: My Star Performer Just Entered the Portal

In college football, any player at any time may declare they would like to enter the transfer portal to transfer to another school and play football there. What if you, as a leader, had to worry about the people on your team declaring they were entering the portal? Oh yeah, you do!

Your top performers can resign at any time and join another organization. How should leaders engage with top performers to ensure they stay with your organization?

Harvard Business Review says, if your young stars are anything like those at the companies they’ve studied:

• 25% intends to leave your employ within the year.
• Over 30% admits to not putting all his effort into his job. 
• 20% believes their personal aspirations are quite different from what the organization has planned for them. 
• 40% have little confidence in their coworkers and even less confidence in the senior team. 

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president of Maxwell Leadership. Welcome, and thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of this growth journey with us. We’re grateful for you. We would love for you to share our podcast with those that you think it would impact. Share it with your team, have conversations about it. If you would like to download today’s Learner Guide to be able to follow along to our conversation, you can do that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. As well as if you want to leave a question or even just a thought for Perry and I to kind of work off of, he would love that. And then we could talk about it. Well, today’s topic is my star performer just entered the portal. I cannot, we haven’t talked about this in a long time, but Perry throws these titles in there and tries to catch me off guard as I’m reading them. But man, I cannot wait to see where we’re going today.

Perry Holley:

Well, the college football season just ended.

Chris Goede:

Yes.

Perry Holley:

And might I say it ended spectacularly.

Chris Goede:

Where you got a university, you got a degree from and a wife.

Perry Holley:

A wife. Yeah. I got a wife and a degree and now two national championships back to back.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Perry Holley:

And your son is a part of that team, and so congratulations to you.

Chris Goede:

Yes.

Perry Holley:

And your family because that’s a really big deal. Where’s he going to put all these rings?

Chris Goede:

Well, currently one of them is at our house right now, ’cause he didn’t want to leave it on campus, which I thought was a wise thing. I don’t know where the second one’s going.

Perry Holley:

Well, maybe leave it at my house.

Chris Goede:

You’ll host it right as you walk in the foyer, it’ll be like there’s lights on it.

Perry Holley:

What’s that? It’s from my good friend. So the college football season ended, but you’re hearing a lot just after the season ended that this player, that player, people are entering the portal and started thinking about what does that mean if your college football coach is kind of being a [inaudible 00:02:07]. I mean, all of a sudden people can just, these players, there’s no restriction. They can just declare, I’m going to go somewhere else. And then I started thinking that, “Wow, as a leader, that you kind of have that all the time, that your players can enter the portal anytime they like.” And I thought maybe you should explain the portal real quick, but then we’ll talk about some things that you should be doing to maintain engagement with your team.

Chris Goede:

I love this.

Perry Holley:

Retaining top talent.

Chris Goede:

I love it. I love the illustration leading into today’s topic. The portal is a place that has always been there. It was when someone was graduated from a school after they had spent three or four years and they become a graduate of the university, they could then transfer to another school one time. There was also an opportunity for those that were in a certain classification, if they wanted to transfer down a classification, they didn’t have to sit out a year, but if they transferred up a classification, they had to sit out a year anyways, it was this opportunity for people to put their name in the job market to put their name out there.

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Perry Holley:

But there were restrictions.

Chris Goede:

And back then you were able to control it. And coach knew that if he got a player that he was going to have them for three or four years and develop them and wasn’t going anywhere. And to your point, there are no restrictions now. And it’s like a free agency. And so if an athlete comes in and doesn’t like their playing time, doesn’t like to coach, something’s not working out, they can just jump in this transfer portal and then the rest of the nation will see they’re in the transfer portal. And so they’re just watching that ticker. They’re just watching availability. And then they begin to connect with people and say, “Hey, do you want to come to our school? Do you want to come play this sport? Do you want to…” Whatever. And so it has become craziness. It’s become a free agency.

And then you and I got to thinking, and you kind of led to this topic of saying, “Well, that’s going on right now.” With the quiet quitting with all these different turnovers and things that are happening, maybe a couple bucks more over here and great resignation is in essence moving people. And it’s become this portal where now there’s a bunch of talent out there and they’re moving because of all of that. And so the real question that we’re talking about where we’re going to go today is, of the talent that you have, before they get in that portal, before they leave or they resign from their role, how do we go about engaging them and retaining them because they are a top talent?

Perry Holley:

And it’s easy to think that people can’t jump, but they can. And that especially top talent, that’s really what I was focused on today, was are there strategies for managing top talent? We’ve talked here many times about under the title of engagement about having a boat, your team in a boat. And in that boat, depending on the level of engagement of someone, you would have rowers, watchers and sinkers. So some people that are rowing, some people that are watching scenery and some people that may be trying to sink the boat. We have podcasts on that. But I’m thinking about the rowers specifically today to think there are chances of them looking for another boat to be on, what keep them here? And so the whole strategy around having, do I have a strategy for top talent? Where do I spend my time and my time working with the sinkers and the watchers? Or can I let the rowers, I mean go off on their own? What do you think about that?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I think if we’re being honest with ourselves, I think it’s a great question. I think you tend to go, “I’m going to solve problems. I’m going to fix what’s not working.” Which we need to have some of that, don’t get me wrong. But I think if we’re not careful, we’ll find ourselves spending more time with the watchers and the sinkers, the back half of the boat than we do with our top performers because we go, “Oh man, they got it going on. They’re hitting their KPIs, they’re driving results. Just get out of their way.” And I want to discourage us from doing that because we should be spending, I was going to say as much, but I think more time with our top performers than we would with those that are our sinkers. Now there’s some things you got to do with that and you got to be aware of it, we’re not talking about that today. But our top performers, man, they have choices. They could go in the portal.

Perry Holley:

That’s what I keep thinking.

Chris Goede:

And that’s where you’re going with this, is they have choices, especially now, and they’re in such high demand that it wouldn’t take long for them to decide or get a little bit unsettled. They go on the portal and they’re going to get picked up. And we don’t want to lose our top performers. So in fact, Harvard Business Review says that if your young stars are anything like those at the companies that they have studied, this is what’s going to happen. So here’s some data for you, 25% of them intend to leave within a year. They’re going to leave within a year. Over 30% admit to not putting all the effort into his or her job. 20% believe their personal aspirations are quite different from what the organization has planned for them, which is interesting, ’cause we’ve talked about what’s important to team members and are we providing that? It says it right there in a Harvard Business Review. And then finally it says 40% have little confidence in their coworkers and even less confidence in their leaders.

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

Okay. I’m not about to ask my team any of these questions, but man, that came straight out of Harvard Business Review. That’s fascinating.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. So I have some ideas, I thought I would just, we can go through them quickly, but if you’re thinking about your top talent, are you taking actions that you should be taking and not just assuming that because they’re top talent, they’re always going to be there? We don’t want anybody heading for the portal to declare that. So you can give me your reaction to these, but number one, I would say was provide them with up upward mobility and visibility to the organization. Not all top performers want to be promoted to the next level. I had a senior sales guy, he was amazing, I said, “I’m going to make you a manager.” He said, “If you do, I’ll quit.” I said, “Okay, don’t quit.”

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Perry Holley:

But he just wanted to be the salesperson, but that’s okay. They don’t necessarily want to go into management, that sort of thing. But you need a new know who doesn’t, who doesn’t, so that you play that right. But on the other hand, almost everyone welcomes and appreciates upward visibility and access to important people and important ideas, to be in the inner circle. That sort of thing in the organization is that I don’t want my top performers who are out there rowing and really making a difference to feel like they’re pushed off. They don’t get any of the upward look. And so I want my senior leaders to know about them. I want them to have access to that. What are your thoughts?

Chris Goede:

Well, I love that you put both mobility and visibility in there, because to your point, I have an individual contributor that kills it, that has no desire to lead a team. They want to continue to be an individual contributor, but they do want the visibility that comes with it, and they should as a top performer. So I absolutely love that, and I want to make sure that we don’t ever limit our top performers. So you can cast a vision of what could be, to our two examples. They may say, “No, I prefer this role right here.” But it shouldn’t keep you from exposing kind of what they’re doing to senior leadership. Number two is, man, with our top performers, we got to challenge them. We can’t go spend time with the sinkers and the guys and the gals that are in the middle of the boat. We got to really dial in and challenge them. Our top performers, they want to be challenged. They want to stretch, they want to see what’s possible. And so are we giving them opportunities to do that with meaningful work, meaningful challenges? Not just busy work, but truly meaningful.

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Perry Holley:

I’ll go one further is, don’t give them the worst jobs. You know they can handle it. I had one boss, we had a team that we were killing it, but he knew that the middle of the boat couldn’t handle it. He said, “I need you to go do this. I know nobody wants to do it.” But well, why would… And I’m okay with, we share the load, but this leader made sure that all the worst jobs got passed to the people he could trust the most, which were his top performers, and they felt put upon and then started looking for other options. So yeah, be careful not to fall into that trap of the worst jobs, or the nasty jobs goes to the top performers, because they can handle it. Number three, mentor them and let them mentor others. Again, top performers want to grow. They want to improve. They appreciate mentorship.

I love that you speak into them as a leader. Maybe again, that visibility, you let them be mentored by a higher level person from other successful people in the organization. You’re really signaling to them they matter, that you’re investing in them when you do that. But I also like, somebody asked me once about where do you spend, if you’re a coaching leader on your team, how much time do you spend coaching? And we had little quadrants of the top performers, the middle performers, the lower performers. Where does most of your time go? It almost always went to the lower performers.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

Because that was the squeaky wheel that was getting my attention. And then he said, “Well, what are you doing for your top performers? How do they know?” I said, one thing I put in place was, could they? Could I express my appreciation for them, and how much… By getting them to help me coach the lower performers and so it gave them… It couldn’t be too burdening to take away from their job roles, but could they mentor and coach lower level people and bring them along? And it showed that they were highly valued in the organization.

Chris Goede:

I love that. I absolutely love that. Well, number four is give them autonomy. Our top performers do not want to be micromanaged. Now you want to hold them accountable. I’m not saying don’t hold them accountable, but we do not need to micromanage our top performers, otherwise they will jump in the portal. And so give them the freedom to do the work that they think is best and how they want to go about doing it. You got to keep them in some type of guardrails with structure and processes, but man, give them autonomy and let them run. Don’t hold them back.

Perry Holley:

I find also helpful, because they have the autonomous nature by being a top performer, they don’t mind, they actually… Nobody wants to be micromanaged, especially them.

Chris Goede:

Yes.

Perry Holley:

But I also tap into their knowledge base about as you’re running your part of the business, what do you see? What am I missing? Hearing their voice, giving them a voice in how things are run, allowing them to speak into that for me, was a great way to, again, increase the value that I’m assigning to the top performers on the team.

Chris Goede:

Well and them speaking into not only what the organization is doing, but what is also going on in the department allows them to take even more ownership of what they’re doing, even if it’s as a individual contributor and I use the individual contributor, that may not be the right phrase, because they may be leading a team or whatnot and just don’t want anything above that. But they want to be able to speak into it. And then also, they want to hear feedback from you. They want coaching from you and your insights as a leader will add value to them and help them shine. So don’t ignore them.

Perry Holley:

Number five is provide them feedback to help them improve. Now, many people might kind of roll their eyes and think, “Wow, top performers, they don’t need feedback.” What I have found to be just the opposite, my top performers have a growth mindset. They want to grow and improve, and they love the feedback that you can give them. And as a leader, what I found top performers, they kind of crave feedback. They want to know more about that. So that I think it’s a great one to always be looking for ways to help them see their blind spots and know how to get better.

Chris Goede:

The other thing I would say around that feedback is, as you see them even getting better based off of conversations and feedback, acknowledge that. Acknowledge it and with them, but also acknowledge it to the team and it will become contagious with the team. Well, number six, as we wrap up, I’ll give this to you.

Perry Holley:

Are you surprised to see a number six?

Chris Goede:

I am surprised to see a number six and then also that you want to transition and wrap up and not have anything else to… No, I’m just kidding. But you are a top performer in our podcast, so I just follow along wherever you’re going. But number six is give them growth opportunities. They may be killing it at what they’re doing and they may not want any additional leadership or movement, but they don’t want to stay stagnant. They do still want to stretch. They want to understand what are other areas of the business that maybe they could dabble into and give them the right to say no if they don’t want to do it, but they are a top performer for a reason. They want to be stretched. They may want additional visibility. And so what we want to be doing is looking at saying, “How else can I put them in a position to impact the organization or to be more visible?” And so that’s number six, give them growth opportunity.

Perry Holley:

Well, top performers like to know they have a future here, and you do that by engaging them at all levels. You got to be intentional with these folks because it’s easy to be distracted and pulled away by lower performers or problems. We need to become intentional about connecting, guiding, leading our top performers to keep them away from the portal. I think it’s an interesting topic and I will wrap it up just to say that, you said it well, your top performers have choices and there’s a lot of demand in the marketplace. People would love to see your prospect’s name pop up in the portal and be able to choose that from you. So I think picking some of these six areas here to make them, give them a future, let them know that you value them and they add a lot of value to the organization and continue to reward them for that. I’ll just remind you, there is a Learner Guide for this episode as well as a place for you to leave a comment or a question for us, we love hearing from you. You can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Like I said, we love hearing from you. We’re very grateful that you would spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.