Season 3 Episode 33
Everyone wants a team of high performers. Or do they? This week, Jimmy and James dismantle the corporate obsession with “high performers”—a label so vague it could mean anything from “top salesperson” to “office psychopath who throws toys out of the pram when they don’t get their way.
The episode exposes the absurdity of how organisations define, reward, and often suffer from their so-called high performers. Is it the person who hits the numbers? The one who sucks up to the boss? Or the quiet grafter who never makes a fuss? Jimmy and James argue that the real problem isn’t just the subjectivity—it’s the chaos left in their wake. High performers can be super chickens, pecking their colleagues to death while laying golden eggs. And if you fill a team with them? You’ll end up with a department full of egos and a trail of destruction.
But here’s the twist: maybe the goal shouldn’t be a team of high performers at all. Maybe it’s about creating a high-performing team. The hosts tackle the hero culture, the danger of rewarding firefighters over fire preventers, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of labelling people as “low performers.” And, of course, they ask the question no one else will: What if your high performer is just someone who looks like you and agrees with you?
Five Key Points:
The canoe theory: Focus on the middle, not just the front.
High performers are often as easy to spot as a needle in a haystack—if the needle is on fire and screaming about how great it is.
The “Frank” dilemma: What do you do when your top performer is also your biggest liability?
Hero culture and firefighting: Why organisations reward the wrong behaviours.
The super chicken experiment: Why a team of high performers might just peck each other to death.
[00:03]
James: Hello, I’m James.
Jimmy: Hi, I’m Jimmy, and welcome to A Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance and enjoyment at work.
[00:15]
James: Good afternoon. How are you doing?
Jimmy: I’m doing well, James. How are you?
James: Thank you very much. What are we talking about today then?
[00:23]
Jimmy: Well, today, James, we are going to talk about high performers.
James: There’s a conversation if ever there was one.
Jimmy: Oh, yes. And we’re going to challenge some of the biggest assumptions we make about them. Everyone wants high performers in their team. You want a team full of high performers, don’t you?
[00:42]
James: Industry’s obsessed with high performers.
Jimmy: Yes. Every company wants more of them. Every manager says they can spot them and develop them. But if you ask 10 people what makes a high performer, you’ll get 10 different answers.
James: If somebody is a high performer, you’ll get 10 different answers as well.
[01:01]
Jimmy: Quite probably. At the end of the day, is it the person who delivers the best results, the numbers on the board?
James: Is it the person who sucks up to the boss best?
Jimmy: Could be. If I’m the boss, it is. Is it the person who gets promoted quickest?
James: Is it the person who quietly gets on with things without making a big fuss?
Jimmy: Not in any of the places I’ve worked.
[01:31]
Jimmy: But if high performers are so valuable, why—and we’ll discuss this—do so many of them create chaos wherever they go? So today we’re talking about the myths, misunderstandings, and truths about high performers.
[01:49]
James: So let’s start off. Here’s a question: What is a high performer? What do you mean by a high performer?
Jimmy: For me, I know I’m massively oversimplifying, but it’s about that combination: Do they get outstanding outputs? And do they go about doing things the right way? So the how matches the end outcomes. And actually, I think that’s a relative rarity.
[02:18]
James: Yeah, and I have to admit I struggle with this a little. Clearly, some people are more capable than others. Your chief executive, one would hope, is more capable than the person emptying the bins. We do seem to segment and segment and segment. If you’re a class 53 or a band 7 or whatever the hell your organisation calls it, we obsess about segmenting within those bands to find high performance. Whereas really, you’re looking at a lot of people who are the same. So can you really tell?
[02:53]
Jimmy: Yeah.
James: Would be my question.
Jimmy: Personally, I think so, because I’m back to: Are they going about it the right way and are they getting results? The problem is, there’s so much subjectivity in both those statements. Outputs can be tangible, but the how is quite subjective.
[03:15]
I remember when we worked together at an insurer, and we were in this contentious meeting. I was sitting in on another team’s meeting. One of the supposed high performers in this team—we’ll call them Frank to protect the innocent—didn’t like what was happening. So he threw his toys out of the pram, had a proper hissy fit, and was quite abusive to other people in the team.
After the meeting, I went up to the team leader and said, “That Frank—unbelievable. What are you going to do about that?” And he said, “Well, you know, Frank, he’s a real high performer. He wins us so much business, and the brokers love him. So you have to take the rough with the smooth and just accept some of his fits.” I was like, “Really? That’s a high performer?” And it was. This guy was the top performer in the team year after year. But as soon as he didn’t get his way, toys went out of the pram. That wasn’t a high performer for me.
[04:27]
James: For me, the question is: How do you define or measure high performance? Let me give you an analogy. If you’re looking at the fastest 100-metre sprinter, you can have a stab at saying who the highest performer is—it’s the person who got over that line the quickest.
Jimmy: Yeah.
James: Even then, it’s a bit difficult, because was it him, or was it the person who tied his shoes, or his nutrition coach, or the performance-enhancing drugs he took?
Jimmy: Or his doctor?
James: It could be a whole host of things. But even as simple as that, it’s not quite straightforward.
[05:02]
The problem with most businesses is we look for high performance, and it’s a bit like driving a lorry over a rutted field with a bunch of people inside juggling. Their challenge is to keep the ball up, but once every six months, you open the door and see who’s dropped the ball. So how are you really measuring high performance? I think we tie ourselves in knots about it.
[05:44]
Jimmy: I think another point about high performers—which we touched on at the start—is that some people who are perceived as high performers leave a trail of destruction behind them.
James: Yeah, because they’re good at messaging and managing upwards.
Jimmy: I can certainly think of one person who was like that. Did phenomenally well, just left a trail of destruction behind him.
[06:16]
James: And I think it’s driven in part by this hero culture we have. We like the story of the strong man, the hero.
Jimmy: We do.
James: A bit of psychology for you: fundamental attribution error. When things go well, we think it’s because we did a super job. When things go badly, it’s the system and everything around us. We all think we can spot a high performer, but when it goes badly, well, it wasn’t him, was it?
[06:51]
Jimmy: And I think there are a few other things organisations get wrong about high performers. Obviously, the hero culture, but I think we also reward firefighting—reactivity. So when there’s a big problem, we reward the person who fixes it rather than the person who prevents it in the first place.
[07:12]
James: It’s a very dangerous game.
Jimmy: Just to dwell on it a second: Some of the other things. High performers are often thought to be the most visible—the people who grab the spotlight or want the spotlight. And one of the classic things I’ve seen is high performers clearing up their own mess and then claiming the glory for it.
[07:23]
I had an example of this recently in a company I was working with. Again, I’ll protect the innocent, but this person had been managing a business unit that was underperforming. But they were very good at managing upwards. They got promoted, took over the whole area, fixed the team they’d messed up, and then claimed a massive success for fixing what they’d broken in the first place. And that takes some skill, to convince people that they’re obviously a high performer.
[08:15]
James: He or she was obviously a high performer in one way. But then we sort of see it as a strategy, don’t we? “What’s our strategy for having the best business? Our strategy is we’re going to hire the best people, and we’ll hold onto them.” We’ve both worked in organisations where they talk about “bench strength.” We need to create it.
Jimmy: Yeah.
James: But actually, is that a good strategy for a business? If your business relies totally on the quality of the people you’ve got, are you going to make sure they don’t leave? Because you’re into one hell of a wage bill if that’s the only lever you’ve got. And secondly, if they do go, does everything else fall apart around them? As a strategy, I think it’s quite lazy.
[09:13]
Jimmy: If we go back to our early days together, the organisation was doing exactly that. It went out and hired the brightest and the best, and the brilliance of the people there could overcome the inadequacies of the ways of doing things. So you were reliant on the individuals, not the system, the process, or how things worked. And actually, worse than that, in one of the teams I was in, all the first-line managers were graduates who wanted to be promoted. There were 30-odd of them, and only three or four positions above them. You had low satisfaction because they all thought they were the ones who should be getting on.
[09:58]
James: So there’s a strategy. It’s just a bad strategy. I also worked for a while with a Magic Circle firm of lawyers in London. They had exactly the same attitude. You weren’t good enough to become a secretary in this organisation unless you’d got a degree from Oxford or Cambridge.
Jimmy: Yes.
James: Just wasting a whole load of talent and frustrating a load of people doing jobs they don’t want to do. As a strategy, it’s nuts.
[10:25]
Jimmy: Also, there’s a real entitlement if you’ve hired me and I’m the best and the brightest. People believe their own press, don’t they?
James: So it just creates a load of dissatisfaction when they’re not getting what they think they should be getting.
[10:37]
James: So there’s another problem here as well. If you go and recruit all your shift managers from Oxford, then what you’ve got is a bunch of shift managers from Oxford. But of course, you’ve got no diversity. They all see the world the same.
Jimmy: No.
James: So bringing people in from different backgrounds is hugely important. The whole diversity thing is massively important because people see things in different ways.
[11:07]
Jimmy: So, James, high performers—are they born that way or are they made? Can you develop them? What’s your thinking?
James: Some people are lucky. Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They’re more gifted from birth, brought up in places where they’re educated well—sort of a birth lottery. However, I think the trick is not so much are they born, but once you’ve got people, do you get the best out of them? It’s not so much are they high performers, but how do you improve their performance? I think that’s a much more interesting conversation.
[11:47]
Jimmy: The danger with high performance is that when you get there, you think that’s it—that’s your entitlement, your work here is done. And so people believe their own press. Whereas actually, I think there are massive impacts, not just on whether you were born lucky, but also how you use your experience. You and I were both lucky. We worked in a number of organisations and learned a lot. But what set us apart from other people was that we then learned and applied our learnings and kept trying to improve. Where other people, as soon as they got that label of “high performer,” they didn’t have to learn anything, did they?
[12:27]
There’s value in experience. There’s importance in the system and how the system works, because that can impact high or low performance. We were discussing in preparation for this episode a former colleague—who shall remain nameless—but they had an outstanding year because they had an opportunity and took it with both hands. For a year, they got stellar results. But the following year, they didn’t have that opportunity, and for a number of years after that, they never recaptured that.
[13:15]
James: So let’s summarise that. The positives of having high performers?
Jimmy: In theory, you’re going to get some decent results. You’re going to get people promoted potentially. It shows others what they’re capable of doing. So it sets a bar for everyone else to aspire to.
[13:36]
James: And the negatives? For me, if you obsess about recruiting high performers, you probably end up with a load of disenfranchised people. Frankly, you don’t need high performers. You waste a lot of talent and enthusiasm.
The next thing I think is: Who says they’re a high performer? If you’re only trialling people who are high performers because they look remarkably like you and agree with you and are made in your image, that doesn’t necessarily make them a high performer.
[14:10]
Jimmy: Or you get the situation where they hit every target and get great numbers like Frank, but they absolutely cause chaos and leave a trail of destruction. That subjective view of what a high performer is—that person’s still going to get called a high performer, but they’re not going to add any value overall to your organisation.
[14:30]
James: Imposter syndrome?
Jimmy: So do you really want a team full of high performers then?
James: Well, I think you get caught in this theory: Every time you get a vacancy, you think you want a high performer for that vacancy. You can’t help yourself. Theoretically, team managers, organisations, execs—they think they want a team full of high performers. The reality is, there are some real downsides to that. If you end up with a team full of high performers, you can end up with a bunch of egos and prima donnas. There is that risk.
[15:15]
James: Chickens?
Jimmy: No, corn?
James: Chickens. So it was a breeding experiment. It’s very easy with chickens. You can tell who the high-performing chickens are because they’re the ones laying the most eggs. So if you want high performance, what you do is breed the female chickens with the males who lay the most eggs. You run four or five generations, and you get a breed of high-performing chickens.
There’s a lovely TED Talk about this. They did that—they bred them, and after four or five generations, they went into the control shed, and there were a bunch of chickens bumbling about, laying eggs, happy. They went into the other shed, and half the chickens were dead, and the others looked emaciated. The problem was they’d just pecked each other to death. Because being a high-performing chicken means you suck up all the resources, and to hell with everybody else.
[16:29]
So when you go for your team, are you just recruiting a bunch of super chickens?
Jimmy: Why?
James: Let’s be honest, we’ve all worked for a super chicken or two in our career.
[16:38]
Jimmy: And that’s the thing. High performers, as individuals, if you end up with people who want the spotlight, they feel entitled to it. Have you ever gone from being a supposed high performer to a lower performer at any point in your career?
James: Oh, as hard as this might be to believe, I went from being Mr. Golden Balls to Mr. Nobody Wants Him On Their Team within the space of a year.
Jimmy: And how did that feel?
James: It felt dreadful. Talk about demotivational. But actually, I hadn’t changed at all. The boss had changed. It wasn’t that my performance had changed—it was just that the goalposts had moved. All that did was piss me off. I ended up leaving the organisation. Maybe the organisation was happy I’d left. There’s another story.
[17:32]
Jimmy: Another good example on that motivation thing, James. Again, we’ll mention no names, but there have been times when we worked together where we found out who the supposed high performers were in the view of the organisation, and that didn’t chime with our experience of them at all. We found that unfair, and a number of us ended up leaving on the back of that discovery. The challenge isn’t just what the high performers do—it’s the impact they can have on other people.
[18:15]
James: The more you talk about it, the more I think it isn’t that you don’t want high performers on your team, but that a team of high performers would be an absolute nightmare.
Jimmy: I think that’s the thing. You want one or two. It’s like your Amazon canoe story.
James: Yeah. I had a boss once who put it very nicely. He said, “Managing a team is a bit like a canoe—one of those log dug-out canoes going down the Amazon. You’ve got two or three people sitting at the front paddling away like billy-o. Those are your high performers. You’ll have two or three people sitting at the back who really can’t be arsed, with their hands trailing in the water. But in the middle, you’ve got 12 people who are sort of paddling and putting their back into it, but they’re not as motivated as they could be.”
His point was: The people who aren’t paddling at all, you should get shot of. But your real challenge isn’t the people at the front—it’s the people in the middle who could be paddling but aren’t. So it’s not so much about the high-performing individuals in your team—it’s about how you create a high-performing team as a whole.
[19:27]
Jimmy: If you had 10 people in your team and all were supposedly high performers, and I had a high-performing team, I think my team would outperform yours.
James: You’re right. And there’s another side to this: If you’ve got high performers, or if you’re singling out people as high performers, then by definition, you’re also singling out some people as low performers. You can’t have the high without the low. And then the question becomes: Are you having a conversation with these people telling them they’re low performers? You get the whole Pygmalion effect—if you tell somebody they’re not very good, they get disengaged and become not very good. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Telling people they’re low performers is a very bad thing for their morale, motivation, and performance.
[20:30]
Jimmy: I think it’s true, but there are a couple of things I found useful when managing high performers. Avoiding that entitlement is one of them. Have the right conversations with people about their performance, because otherwise, they just turn up every year and expect the same high ratings and plaudits.
I think you need to focus the development differently on different people. High performers often need more stretching opportunities. You need to find other things for them to do to keep them occupied, keep them performing well in their core role, but don’t just take them out of their core role. Because what we often do is assume that somebody who’s technically a high performer is ready for promotion to team leader. We’ve talked about the danger there many times.
[21:15]
But the risk is you still want them to do their core role. So you get that balance. But I think your point is a good one: Yes, there are things you can do to manage high performers—retain them, reward them, stroke their egos, give them challenges. But actually, you want to try and turn that middle group in the canoe into high performers.
[21:54]
James: The first thing is: Don’t be blind to your own opinion. Just because you think somebody’s a high performer doesn’t necessarily mean they are. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. So be clear that your own judgment is probably flawed.
The next question is: How do you get people to play to their strengths? If somebody’s really good at something, give them the opportunity to do that and develop in that area, because then they’ll get better and better.
[22:19]
Jimmy: And we’ve got to have a quick plug for the episode we did on playing to your strengths with Patricia. Go back and have a listen to that.
James: There’s also this thing about providing opportunities. You should provide opportunities for your high performers, but you should also provide opportunities for everybody. Because everybody can stretch, everybody can do things. It’s about how you develop your entire team, not just focus on your high performers.
And then the other thing: Just say thank you and recognise people’s performance, because that will get more out of people.
The final thing I’ll bang on about forever: If somebody’s not a high performer, find out what’s stopping them and create the environment where they can be. For example, I would never be a great salesman. I’m not good at blowing my own trumpet. Don’t put me in a sales role. It’s very straightforward. It’s about finding the blockers and creating the environment where people can do their best work.
[23:29]
Jimmy: I think on that last point, James, I strongly believe that everyone has the potential to be a high performer at something. It’s just whether they find that something, and whether the system allows them to do it. As a manager, you’ve got to get to know your team, try and find their something, and if you find it, does the system enable them to achieve it? Because we’ve all got potential—we just haven’t all had the opportunities to realise it.
[24:15]
James: Not everybody can be a high performer by definition. So go on, summarise that for me. Where does that take us?
Jimmy: Everyone says they want high performers and a team of high performers and an organisation of high performers. But:
A) Would they know a high performer if they saw one?
B) It’s really subjective. What is a high performer? We’ll all have a different view.
James: And C) If you are reliant on high performers for your business to perform, you’ve got a very unstable business.
[24:53]
Jimmy: You have. And I think in discussing it, we came to the conclusion that you don’t want a team of high performers—you want a high-performing team, which is a completely different thing. We did a couple of fantastic episodes with Alana Freedman on this, so we’ll put the links in the show notes. Check those out.
James: Another point: The minute you start talking about your high performers, you’re also dooming people to be low performers, which by definition they will be because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is that really helping you?
[25:27]
Jimmy: Yeah, and you want to avoid the entitlement that high performers sometimes build up, and disenfranchising your theoretically lower performers, because that’s never going to get you the best overall outcomes.
James: So do you know where this takes us?
Jimmy: Where’s it take us, James?
James: The system, mate, not the people.
[25:51]
Jimmy: If that’s what makes you feel like you’re a high performer today, you do that. All right. Thanks, everyone.
[26:01]
Speaker 2: We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast,
Speaker 3: from purpose to corporate jargon,
Speaker 2: but always focused on one thing: getting the job done well.
Speaker 3: Easier said than done.
[26:09]
Speaker 2: So if you’ve got unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck,
Speaker 3: if your backlogs are out of control and your costs are spiralling, and that big IT transformation project just keeps failing to deliver,
Speaker 2: we can help.
[26:19]
Speaker 3: If you need to improve your performance, your team’s performance, or your organisation’s,
Speaker 2: get in touch at jimmy@ajobdonewell.com or james@ajobdonewell.com.
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