Top performers are more than financial assets to your company. They are also influencers in your organizational development. Managed and motivated correctly, high performers will have a tremendous impact on the culture of your company and the professional development of your other employees.

The key to working with top performers is letting them know why they are valuable, learning what techniques they use that make them useful, and rewarding them appropriately.

Top Performers Are Walking, Talking Influencers

There is a lot of buzz today about social media influencers. Influencers are defined as respected people on social media platforms who can make or break ideas and products. A star performer has similar power in your company. What they say and do carries a lot of weight with other employees. They are powerful role models, and their mere presence on a project adds credibility.

Excellent Role Models

Organizational development is all about maximizing the talents of your top people to stimulate organizational change. You should seek out and examine a top performer’s work habits and characteristics and adapt them for other individuals in the company. For example, a top sales pro might have a particular set of practices for beginning the day, and you can see they have a tremendous impact on how he or she develop new customers. You can capitalize on this by working with the individual in adapting the habits for the rest of the sales force. Or perhaps, you have a manager who is adept at dealing with problem employees. By expanding on her techniques, you can develop a new set of procedures for all managers to use.

Top Performers Are Validators

Employees will not always be open to change or new projects. Inevitably, there will be a plan or implementation that isn’t welcomed or entirely supported by the rank and file of a company. The addition of a respected top performer to a project can bolster the validity of the endeavor. People who see the support from an important influencer will have a more favorable view of the project because they already respect him or her for their accomplishments.

Top Performers Who Train Deserve An Extra Reward

Top performers can make excellent mentors of newer or low performing employees if they are willing to work as mentors or advisors. But, the time they take out of their day to help train or mentor people takes away from their productivity and could even be detrimental to their income. This loss of productive hours is particularly the case in sales.

An employee who takes the time to mentor newer employees should be appropriately rewarded. The reward should be viewed and presented as more than a payment for their time. The company should give it as a token of appreciation for the top performer’s willingness to help.

We Can Help You Find Your Top Performers

Equal Parts Consulting can help you locate, nurture, and develop your top performers. Using our experience, we help you identify the influencers in your company and assist in developing them as catalysts of organizational development.

If you are interested in learning how to effectively use your top performers to help organizational development, contact Equal Parts Consulting and find out how we can assist you with creating an optimal company culture.