The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. In "Managing the High Flyer", you'll learn how to manage the outstanding performers in your team and keep them motivated to achieve levels of excellence.

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Managing the High Flyer
Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
APPRAISAL SKILLS
Managing the High Flyer

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Managing the High Flyer
Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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Copyright Manage Train Learn 2020
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Managing the High Flyer
Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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Managing the High Flyer
Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
The time-honoured response to star performers in an
organisation has always been promotion and the career
ladder. While this option still exists in many cases, it is
becoming less and less possible as organisations contract
and become leaner and flatter. This means that star
performers can no longer be offered automatic
organisational rewards, even if they want them. Instead
their performance through appraisal needs to be managed
in ways quite different from other people.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
HIGH-FLYERS
While managing high performers may be like driving a Rolls
Royce, we should remember that even high performance
cars need regular maintenance.
There are three primary concerns that should be addressed
by the appraiser of high performers:
1. how to maintain high performance in the absence of
rewards such as money and promotions.
2. how to ensure performance remains high when jobs are
changing.
3. how to avoid complacency and boredom and find
challenge and commitment.
We can define high performance as consistently meeting the
high standards laid down by the organisation. A high
standard of performance can also be something an
individual sets for themselves.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
MANAGING HIGH-FLYERS
Managers of high performers need to think imaginatively
about ways in which people who are already doing well can
be encouraged to perform to a higher level still.
The following are seven ways to manage high performers...
1. crabwise learning, ie moving people sideways to learn
about other areas of the business
2. seeking more moments of excellence
3. adding quality to technically competent work
4. learning for personal development
5. using a person's knowledge and skills to help others in the
team
6. taking creative risks
7. building on existing strengths.

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Managing the High Flyer
Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
CRABWISE LEARNING
For those who have reached the heights of one job, it may
be tempting to rest on one's laurels and take it easy. "I know
all there is to know.“
One response to those who have stopped learning vertically
is to get them to learn horizontally. This means looking at
sideways-related areas, not necessarily in the mainstream of
the job. Some people call this "crabwise learning". It can
range from learning what colleagues do to working in a
similar job in another part of the organisation.
Mary was the most proficient typist in the pool. As a result
of her appraisal, she started to learn about work processors.
This in turn led her into personal computers, until she was
able to offer her customers not just an excellent typing
service but a desktop publishing one as well.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROWING SIDEWAYS
The tendency of moving the brightest and best upwards
tends to be a feature of Western organisations. In Japanese
organisations, for example, it is normal to rotate high-flyers
through a variety of jobs on the same level. Charles Handy
calls this "the horizontal fast-track". The result is that
individuals do not specialise in one discipline. Their talents
are exposed to different disciplines, different styles and
different leaders.
"A human being should be able to change a nappy, plan an
invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write
a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort
the dying, take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone,
solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure,
programme a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects." (Lazarus Long, a
character in a novel by Robert Heinlein)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
MOMENTS OF EXCELLENCE
Even when people reach a level of high performance it is
rare to see moments of excellence all the time. A moment
of excellence may be glimpsed at any time in any job.
1. The speaker who finds a way to hit it off with an audience
and promote a product that they want.
2. The receptionist who manages to use just the right tone
of voice, the right words, the right body language to greet a
visiting VIP.
3. The repair man who can detect a fault and reassure a
customer at the same time.
Appraisers can uncover, highlight and recognise moments of
excellence and suggest ways in which they can be adopted
as the norm.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE BLISSFUL MOMENT
This is how actress Maureen Lipman describes a moment of
rare performance, the blissful moment:
"That sudden feeling of happiness in a performance is very
very rare on stage, and it's when it comes that I remember
why I wanted to act. The rest of the time performing is just
hard work. It's stretching, it's interesting, it's useful, but it's
also callous-inducing. Perhaps if this miraculous feeling
happened more often it would lose its currency. In 30 years
of God-given vocation, I could probably count on my fingers
and toes the number of times it has happened to me.
Of course, not every actor appreciates the same blissful
moment. I remember one night, after Wonderful Town, the
musical, feeling: "This is it. I've arrived. This has been
magnificent, and taking my bow in tears because the
audience and I were one. My co-star lifted the curtain for
me as we left and said: "How much do you pay for car
insurance?" (from BBC Radio 4's "The Happiness Lectures)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
COASTING
Many high flyers reach a level of performance and then
switch off in the belief that they have now reached required
performance and can coast along.
The definition of “coasting” is “moving without use of
propelling power”.
In appraising coasting employees, you should give a mixture
of feedback: good feedback about achievements in the past
but warning feedback that in time they will be overtaken by
more motivated employees with an accompanying loss in
status and performance.
The aim in appraising coasting employees is to re-charge the
propelling power and set new goals, new interests and new
horizons.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
ADDING QUALITY
Being technically competent does not automatically lead to
excellent performance. The person who knows a job inside
out and is the acknowledged expert may not be the person
who knows how to translate their knowledge and skill into
the service of others which is the ultimate hallmark of
excellence.
Moving from competence to excellence means mastering
the ability to listen and understand others. It means putting
others' needs ahead of our own. It means adapting what we
know to help others. It means developing character in
ourselves, not just ability. It is the difference between
knowledge and quality.
When we can do it, there is competence. When we can do it
for others, there is service. When we can do it just as they
want, there is quality.

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Appraisal Skills
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PERSONAL GROWTH
There comes a point in our personal development when,
having attained technical competence, we can only continue
in one direction: personal growth. When we grow
personally, we no longer just "do" the job, the job becomes
an expression of our personal beliefs and values. Such
development, which an appraiser can foster, results in work
becoming more meaningful and integrated with the rest of
our lives.
Studies amongst the so-called Generation Xers who were
born in the second half of the 20th century indicate that
their chief expectation in a job is the chance to learn and
grow. Unlike previous generations who were content with a
job for life, they recognise the need to keep pace with
change.
"Over the long run, superior performance depends on
superior learning." (Peter Senge)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
INFLUENCING OTHERS
A high performer is a valuable resource for any organisation
and a wise manager makes the best use of them for others
in the team.
There are many ways to use high performers for the benefit
of others. These include...
1. using them as role models and "heroes"
2. acting as mentors to others
3. asking them to coach in the team
4. inviting them to give feedback and teach-ins to the rest
of the team
5. helping others to learn.
"If you commit yourself to performing one 10-minute act of
exceptional customer courtesy per day and induce your
colleagues in a 100-person company to do likewise, that
means 24,000 new courteous acts a year. Such is the stuff of
revolutions!" (Tom Peters)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
FILLING IN THE GAPS
High-flyers are invariably those who have mastered most, if
not all, of the technical or professional skills of the job: the
researcher who is an acknowledged leader in her
specialisation; the consultant who leads the field. They are
unlikely to need an appraiser to tell them what they need to
do next. However, technical expertise is almost always
gained at the expense of other areas, such as interpersonal
skills, customer service, teamwork. These areas may be vital
features of an appraisee's next job or may be necessary to
meet the changing needs of the present job.
One route to filling in the gaps is through high-level
coaching.
"Coaching is for kids. If a player can't trap a ball and pass it
by the time he's in the team, he shouldn't be there in the
first place. I told Roy McFarland to go and get his bloody hair
cut. That's coaching at this level." (Brian Clough, when
manager of Nottingham Forest FC)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
CREATIVE RISK-TAKING
When we have mastered the skills of our job or profession,
we can afford to move into the realm of creative risk.
Creative risk means pushing back the bounds of what you
know and can do to find new ways to do it better still.
1. The shop manager who knows the ins and outs of
merchandising can turn his shop into pure theatre
through creative risk
2. The teacher who knows her subject intimately can re-
vitalise her material through creative risk
3. The manager who wants more out of her staff can elicit
great things from others through creative risk.
"I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two
nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you
can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or yodelling or
something, not music." (Jazz singer, Billie Holiday)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
BUILDING ON STRENGTHS
According to Strengths Theory, we are each able to do one
thing better than any 10,000 other people.
A strength can be identified as the thing that we find easy to
do, like doing and would do for the sheer pleasure it gives
us.
The route to excellent performance lies in helping others
identify their unique strengths and build on them. A team
works best when it is aware of the unique strengths of each
of its members and organises itself around them.
While building on strengths, weaknesses can be managed by
assigning them to others (for whom they may be strengths),
delegating them, or getting rid of them from a person's job
completely.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
LETTING GO
When members of the team reach a certain stage in their
skills development, the greatest thing that a team leader
can do is to let go. This means letting go of work the team
leader does that the team members could do better -
delegating and letting them go into areas that will help them
and the job grow. This is the art of empowering.
J. C. Penney, founder of the biggest retail chain in the USA,
was quoted as saying that his wisest-ever decision was to let
go. That decision enabled the growth of hundreds of stores
and thousands of jobs.
"Good leadership consists of motivating people to their
highest levels by offering them opportunities, not
obligations." (John Heider)

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
MENTORING
Throughout history, the support and guidance of an older
person for a younger person has been the key to the
younger person's development. Mentor was the person to
whom Odysseus entrusted the care of his house and son,
Telemachus, when he went in search of the Golden Fleece.
More recently, mentoring has become recognised as a
valuable and cost-effective way of developing high-flyers.
"The mentor is someone who is able to foresee
developments in our position before we do, perhaps
because of privileged information regarding executive
decisions or because they can sense our strengths even
before we do and can encourage us to take a big new step
or they will introduce us to someone who will prove to be
the next link in our advancing career." (Adele Scheele, "Skills
for Success")

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
MICHAEL FARADAY
The story of how Michael Faraday learnt his art and skill is
an example of the value of mentoring.
Michael Faraday, was born the son of a humble blacksmith
in 1791. He left school at 13 and became a bookbinder's
apprentice. His employer, George Riebau, saw Faraday's
potential and not only gave him access to all the scientific
publications that came into his shop but allowed him to
build his own laboratory at the back of the shop. In true
mentor fashion, Riebau introduced the young Faraday to
some of the most famous scientists of the day.
In 1813, at the age of 22, Faraday applied for the position of
assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution.
After working as Davy's assistant, Faraday was able to
publish his own work which led to the discovery of the
electric dynamo and motor.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
MENTORING SCHEMES
Mentoring schemes have been used successfully for some
time in the following areas...
1. to help disadvantaged or under-represented groups
2. to help disturbed young people
3. to help high-flyers in higher education
4. to exchange useful experiences, such as a private sector
mentor working with a public sector mentee.
Internal mentors are usually two or three levels above the
mentee and often from a different function. They need to
be volunteers with good communication skills and have an
understanding of the aims of the relationship. Experience
shows that the best mentoring relationships are those
where people have different personalities. Care may need to
be given to mixed-gender mentoring. The relationship needs
to take into account that the role of the mentee's line
manager is not undermined.

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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Appraisal Skills
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn