How to avoid demotivating your top performers

You’ve already got top performers on your team? Awesome. You’re doing something right. Or, you got lucky. Either way, it’s a good thing.

Now, how do you keep that top performance happening? You need to give them what they need. Let them perform. Don’t look over their shoulders. That should be the easy part. But, how do you give them what they really need?

In the recent past, I had a top performer on the team who almost always delivered. She hit targets quarter in and quarter out. But I could never fully understand her. She had high Competition needs, which were easy to address for me as I’m also highly motivated by Competition.

There were Autonomy needs. And there were Status needs, which don’t come naturally to me, but she gave enough signals during our interactions that I could adapt.

But there were other needs too.

In the days before Attuned existed, it turns out that I missed some of her important needs.

After years of top performance, she then entered a long period of malaise. Her motivation wasn’t there. Yes, we got a couple of extrinsic-driven spurts of motivation here and there, but nothing sustainable, nothing to help overcome the big startup obstacles, nothing that could feel joyous, nothing intrinsic. No matter the tactic I chose for our catch ups, nor how I tried to change her job scope, the accumulation of all those unfulfilled motivational needs was too much. There was too much baggage and it was time for her to move on.

It happens, but I couldn’t help feeling that I’d failed. One way or another, I’d demotivated a top performer.

At this moment in time, I find myself blessed with multiple top performers. And they are very motivated. But, almost 20 years into my management journey, I’m still getting things wrong.

I know I’m not the easiest person to work with. And sometimes, it has to be said, neither are they. But we have a big vision at Attuned, both sides of the reporting relationship are talented, and we’re committed to figuring out how to get through the bumps.

A few months back one of the top performers let me know he wasn’t happy. He didn’t like the way our interactions were going, how tasks were being assigned, how the interpersonal working relationships were going. The great thing was he let me know.

It was uncomfortable, as it could easily feel that I was being told I was a bad manager. Had I been less secure as a manager, I might have gotten defensive. But thankfully, I was able to listen, try to understand, and try to craft things to meet his needs going forward.

Which I did. And he’s still performing at a top level.

To manage a diverse, talented team that performs well you will need to interact with a diverse set of intrinsic motivational needs. To manage in such a personalized way you’ll need help (that’s why we built Attuned), but you’ll also sometimes be wrong.

The key is to give yourself space to be wrong. Let your team know you will try to craft an environment that is best for their personal situation, but that you are still going to get things wrong. There are just too many variables.

Let them know that if things aren’t great they can communicate that. And when they do, listen, try to understand, and accept. As a top performer, they are putting a lot of their energy, passion, and identity into that performance. When things aren’t going well it can become emotional.

You might be met, perhaps unexpectedly, with a wave of their intense feelings. If so, let that wave of feeling wash over you and try to empathize with them. But the most important thing is not to push back, which is probably your instinctual response. Like getting caught up in a real wave, or a river’s undercurrent, let yourself go slack, let the currents do their thing. You’ll pop up for air soon enough, and be able to handle the situation.

On a wider scale, think carefully about the systems you’re creating, the environment your norms have built, and whether or not this gives you and your team the space to get things wrong sometimes. If you do this successfully, you’ll create a sense of belonging, security, and—ultimately—Psychological Safety.

Doing this hard systems thinking work to solve things upstream, rather than trying to fight every individual motivational fire as it happens, lies at the core of keeping your top performers motivated. Or rather, as everyone already has their own set of intrinsic motivations, the core of not demotivating them. Then you can really get out of their way.

One last thing worth saying plainly: by the time a top performer starts showing the behaviors everyone watches for, the narrowed output and the thinning calendar, the decision is usually well under way. If you want the earlier read, we set out the full picture in our guide to employee flight risk, including the twelve signs, the condition under which each one means something else, and a scoring worksheet you can copy.