217: How to Position Yourself as a Star Performer
How to Position Yourself as a Star Performer
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This week, we’re talking about how to position yourself as a star performer. According to the book The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace by Cherniss and Goleman, there are several key competencies of Star Performers. A Star Performer is defined as someone who is in the top 10% of performance.
Those competency clusters are:
Self-Awareness – Understanding yourself
Self-Management – Managing yourself
Social Awareness – Understanding others
Relationship Management – Managing others
The goal is not to be a star in every competency in each of these clusters, but to have a good balance of competencies across the four clusters.
It’s also important to define a derailer – a behavior or attitude that curtails an individual’s performance or advancement. Because of the person’s visibility or impact on others, one derailer can undermine or trump a whole set of Emotional Intelligence competencies.
If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode on Your Emotional Intelligence Profile, I highly recommend it, as we define and discuss the facets of Emotional Intelligence in that episode. These facets form the basis for your Star Performer Action Plan, which we are creating today.
Briefly, here are the competencies:
Under Self-Awareness:
-Emotional Self-Awareness
-Accurate Self-Assessment
-Confidence
Under Self-Management:
-Emotional Self-Control
-Trustworthiness
-Adaptability
-Conscientiousness
-Achievement Orientation
-Initiative
Under Social Awareness:
-Empathy
-Organizational Awareness
-Service Orientation
Under Relationship Management:
-Developing Others
-Inspirational Leadership
-Influence
-Change Catalyst
-Communication
-Building Bonds
-Conflict Management
-Teamwork and Collaboration
Here are the steps to creating an action plan to become a Star Performer.
Step I: What are the competencies that you currently identify as strengths that you would like to improve even more?
Step 2: Do you have any critical derailers?
Step 3: How can you leverage your strengths to help mitigate your derailers?
Step 4: What resources do you need to make this happen, such as training, feedback, etc.)?
Step 5: Who can support you and hold you accountable, and what can they specifically do to help you?
Step 6: How might you sabotage your efforts and best intentions?
Step 7: What will your first 3 steps be to begin executing your plan?
I like examples, and I think you do, too. Let’s call our person Casey, who works as the assistant purchasing manager at a large manufacturing company.
Step I: Casey identifies these three strengths that she would like to develop even further:
-Emotional Self-Awareness – Casey recognizes her feelings and how they are affecting her work. She would like to improve on owning those emotions in a male-dominated workplace without feeling guilty about having those emotions.
-Adaptability – Casey is great at “going with the flow.” She would like to improve on seeing the opportunities for new challenges proactively, instead of just being reactive to what is already in front of her.
-Building Bonds – Casey has a strong network at work. She would like to improve her network in her community and in her profession.
Step 2: Casey identifies her critical derailers.
-Confidence – This is, by far, Casey’s biggest derailer. She hesitates to speak up in meetings and doesn’t always express her opinion on matters she is very familiar with.
-Organizational Awareness – Casey considers herself to be “apolitical,” and resists the idea of “playing politics” at work.
-Inspirational Leadership – Casey wants to move up into greater leadership roles within her profession and company, and she recognizes that her “worker bee” approach will not serve her in leadership roles.
Step 3: How Casey can leverage her strengths to help mitigate these derailers.
-To improve on her Confidence, Casey is going to leverage her extensive internal network to identify 2-3 mentors who are confident women and would be willing to help her.
-To improve on her Organizational Awareness, Casey is going to establish this as a goal with her immediate supervisor, who is strong in this area.
-To improve on becoming an Inspirational Leader, Casey is going to check out TEDx talks and look for YouTube videos and books on becoming an inspirational leader.
Step 4: Casey has identified the following needs:
-Mostly, Casey needs time to achieve all of her goals, so she is going to reorganize her work schedule to accommodate meetings with potential mentors and her boss. She will learn about Inspirational Leadership on her own time, so she is going to set aside time for that, as well.
Step 5: Casey has identified her best friend, who works at the same company in another department, as her accountability partner.
Step 6: Casey recognizes that her biggest challenge in making these improvements is her lack of self-confidence – she is concerned that she won’t have her own back about taking the time and showing the courage she needs to do these things. Her best friend is very self-confident and assertive, so she is specifically asking her for help with this.
Step 7: Casey has identified these first three steps in reaching her goals:
Reach out to 2 internal contacts each week to schedule a lunch date, coffee date, or some other way to meet with them to discuss becoming a confidence mentor for her.
Establish a meeting with her direct supervisor to discuss strategies to improve Casey’s Organizational Awareness.
Set aside 2, 1-hour blocks each week to find and view TEDx talks and YouTube videos and read books on Inspirational Leadership.
It is important with any big goals such as these to share them with people who will support you and hold you accountable – who will be your cheerleaders when you succeed and your friend when you stumble.
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