You Can Become A Star Performer
(Second of two parts)
Star performers. What sets them apart?
According to Robert E. Kelley, who began researching productivity for AT&T’s Bell Labs 13 years ago, some of the traits listed by managers and executives are intellect, creativity, driving ambition, affability and a willingness to take risks.
Kelley, a Carnegie Mellon professor and business consultant, identified 45 characteristics that repeatedly came up in descriptions of star performers.
From that discovery, Kelley and his research team found great news for workers everywhere: Stars are made, not born.
Innate factors do not make some workers outshine others. Rather, stars use nine workplace strategies to boost productivity - the key to better jobs and bigger salaries.
Stars use them and worker bees can learn them, Kelley says. They are: initiative, networking, self-management, perspective, followership (influence without ego), leadership, teamwork, organizational savvy (smarter than office politics) and the ability to show and tell (make a good presentation).
Below, Kelley answers more questions (the first ones appeared last Tuesday).
Q. You say stars are made, not born. How are they marketed?
A. One of the best things you can do is find a mentor. Self-promotion seldom works. A star doesn’t do things that say, “Look at me.” Instead they do something like offer to do a tutorial for everyone in the department about something they know about. That’s not self-promotion, it’s a form of sharing. They realize they have to add value and be of value to everyone else.
Q. Are they promoting themselves by networking?
A. The average person sees networking as building a grapevine in case they ever want a job. But it’s so much more than that. Stars know that people just don’t have the knowledge to get all their work done without getting stuck. Networking is about getting unstuck and developing dependable two-way streets that allow them to get tasks done.
Stars’ networks have the right people in them, someone who can get the right answer the first time when there’s a problem.
Q. A lot of people believe that if they do their job well, people will notice, and that’s all that counts. How does that figure in the nine strategies?
A. What stars do very well is they’re not passive. For starters, the work they choose to work on is different than the average performer. How they go about their work is different than the average worker. And how they work with people is different. They know the strategy of followership. They learn very early how to be a good No. 2; how to give the assist rather than making the basket. That comes from recognizing that when they’re the leader, they need someone to give them an assist. It’s not done in a schmoozing way.
Q. Would a star performer make a to-do list?
A. Sure, star performers have a to-do list, but more importantly they have a critical path, so they think about managing their whole life. They view their talents and experiences as a portfolio of assets, and they make sure those assets appreciate over time. This is self-management.
Q. How can employers find and evaluate star performers?