Your best people might just be surviving. They are doing an OK job despite significant pressures, but they do so at great cost to their wellbeing. They carry on, but at a level very far from their true ability. They tolerate toxic and dysfunctional situations because they are fundamentally capable people. This is frustrating and demoralising. They are at great risk of leaving or suddenly failing.
These people handle their difficulties differently. Some are in denial about problems in and out of their control. Others may feel pressured or targeted, whether this is real or not, so they don't speak out. Others are simply embarrassed to admit they are struggling.
The last thing any capable person wants is a 'mental health intervention'. It's an undesirable stigma. So they resist or skilfully evade this kind of help, even if it's offered.
It is hard to overemphasise how much better these people would feel, and perform, if there were some way to help them be at their best more consistently, and to be more aligned to their work.
The truth is they can perform much better, but they don't need therapy: they need to refine and enhance their skills, to bring out their best. This is what we do.
Enhanced workplace ability
Jim is a fantastic engineer; his team are in awe of his skill.
His colleagues think all is well, overlooking telltale signs that he's unhappy.
They assume that his exceptional skill is evidence of his all-round happiness.
Jim is treated with kid-gloves, forgiven when he's absent or when he speaks out of turn.
When a senior director asks Jim if he’s OK, he becomes defensive and indignant. He's suffering inside, but he doesn't want to admit it, and besides, nobody wants to be labelled as 'receiving therapy'. He just soldiers on, with the secret aim of making enough money to get out.
Then, without warning, Jim forms a consultancy and takes key clients with him.
Looking back, the problems were both with Jim's mindset and the mindset of the senior team.They paid Jim for results, but beyond a point, high salary simply didn't make Jim perform better. In fact, it did the opposite: it helped him fund his own breakaway outfit!
Despite his high salary, he was deeply unsatisfied with the way the company wasn’t flexible or creative enough. He had so many ideas, but the macho culture just wanted him to deliver the goods; no room for change in this juggernaut. A shame, he thought, so he just stopped trying to change anything.
And he drank. Secretly. A lot more than what was good for him. Yet he still performed well. How much better could he have been if he was actually nurtured and given the right support?
Knowledge and Service Sectors
Evidence shows that skilled senior people, especially those in specialist, high-stakes or fast-moving sectors, are more prone to wide fluctuations in performance.
Their talents are concentrated, leaving little room for wellbeing, balance, and development of a more sustainable, consistent pattern of delivery. They are often misunderstood, even by themselves, and become isolated, at risk of leaving, absenteeism, or presenteeism (coming to work but performing very below par).
Exceptional staff need specialized support
People with extraordinary talent can be particularly difficult to approach, and manage. When the issue is approached by seniors or colleagues, a common response from a star performer inside their own mind, whether they say it or not, is ‘why should I be led by you?’.
They may seem to be OK, but they can’t or won’t elaborate their problems, which then brew up inside unaddressed, and come to the fore in a drastic or undesirable way. Star performers leave because they feel unsupported, or unaligned. This attrition of key staff can damage an organisations competitiveness.
Email us your questions. You may want help for your team, or you may want to try performance consulting for yourself. It's totally confidential, and free to set up.
Performance Consulting: Help without the stigma
People often avoid doctors, occupational health, and work-based therapists. The idea of ‘remedial measures’ or needing mental health assistance carries a stigma. Besides which, high performers often believe that their talent comes with certain faults, so they continue as they are because they fear the cost of becoming 'normalised'.
Performance consulting covers the full range of performance, from high flyers to broken wings. So you could be seeing someone both to help refine your talents AND solve your problems, or either one. Nobody else needs to know. It elegantly avoids all of the troublesome issues and optics of more conventional HR-level support or labels like 'therapy'.
Moreover, many people are not underperforming at all: they are intrapreneurs: innovators within an organisation who need to be identified and put in the correct place. With the right processes,. these are the very people who go from being underperforming, resistant and unhappy, to helping their firms leap forward in quality and offering.
At the top end of the performance pool, people tend to be exceptionally talented but uneven. They do very well at certain things, exceeding expectations, but they struggle at some ordinary stuff. They need assistance in the same way that a pro tennis player needs a coach: to improve their already good performance, or they need specific measures to deal with unusual sticking points. The last thing they need is to focus on their weaknesses because this defeats the very reason why they were emoployed and valued in the first place.
Identify them, understand them, and give them the help to truly find their stride. It's what we do.
A team consulting contract offers a great solution without targeting anyone specific.
It has an open door policy for any and all team members to access performance expertise without any of the stigma. You could be struggling along, seeing if they could help with personal or interpersonal issues, or equally, you could be a stellar high performer who wants to refine their skillset even further.
No stigma, no shadow of judgment, all straightforward and of course, confidential between you and the expert alone.
Whether you're a director, CEO, partner or owner of a firm, if you believe that your top staff deserve to be in their best mental state all round, then get in touch and we will set up a discussion to make this happen. Email us with any questions.
© Copyright DrTKHarris.org All rights reserved.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details and accept the service to view the translations.