Managers Should Focus on Superstars

The best young employees often require more attention from managers, not less.

Source: Andrii Zastrozhnov / Adobe Stock

Taking their cues from the workplace of the past, many managers look at their best new young employees and think what they always have thought: Self-starting high performers must be the employees most likely to stay here, pay their dues, climb the ladder, and thrive. They must understand that no news is good news. They must realize that as long as they keep doing more work and better work than everybody else, in the long run, they will be rewarded.

But that kind of hands-off, long-vesting management style is not enough in today’s workplace. Leaders who want to engage and retain the best talent today must take a hands-on, just-in-time approach.

There are four common types of developmental relationships to foster with superstars, to ensure they receive enough time and attention from leaders.

Coaching Style Managers

Any leader, manager, or supervisor who is charged with managing any person on any project for any period of time has an obligation to play this role. But it’s doubly important with young, inexperienced people and triply important with the best of those young people. Any manager who is weak, disengaged, and out of the loop will seem completely unworthy to high-potential young talent.

Young superstars want managers who know and care enough to teach them the tricks and the shortcuts, warn them of pitfalls, and help them solve problems. They want managers who are strong enough to support them through bad days and counsel them through difficult judgment calls. And even more than average young people, the superstars want to know that someone is keeping track of their great work and looking for ways to provide them with special rewards.

Mentors

Many organizations try to implement mentoring programs. But mentoring means different things to different people. To many, mentoring evokes a deeply personal relationship that requires a natural connection between mentor and protégé that often takes a long time to develop. In this view, you usually wouldn’t know who your real mentors are except in retrospect. Who has shared with you the rich lessons of their own lives over the course of many years? Which of those relationships have been profound and formative for you?

Many argue that this type of relationship shouldn’t be forced. So, what can an organization do to promote this kind of mentoring? Encourage older, more experienced leaders to seek protégés and help these would-be mentors develop some of the techniques and habits of mentoring. Encourage younger, less experienced high-potential employees to seek mentors and help these would-be protégés develop some of the techniques and habits of being a good protégé.

Career Advisers

These are more experienced (usually older) leaders and managers within the organization who will make a commitment to be available to one or more young superstars to provide career advice. The adviser meets with the young team member on a regular basis to talk strategically about how the person should navigate their career within the organization. They might discuss how the team member’s work assignments have been going and what assignments should be sought next. They might discuss what the team member could do within the organization to request new training opportunities, transfer to new work groups, or move to new locations. The career adviser might recommend strategies for pursuing raises, promotions, or desired work conditions or might counsel the person to delay such requests until a more opportune moment. The idea is to offer the team member regular career advice from an insider’s perspective, so they don’t have to get it from outsiders—such as headhunters.

Organizational Supporters

This is like an internal career adviser with some clout. Organizational supporters don’t just discuss career strategies. They actually use their influence and authority within the organization to make sure that the most valuable young people are getting the lion’s share of resources to support and accelerate their career success. Typically, organizational supporters talk regularly with their high potentials to make certain that nothing has gone or is going wrong in their work assignments. They steer their superstars to the best training opportunities, the choice projects and assignments, and the most powerful decision makers. They help fast-track their superstars to help them win bonuses, raises, promotions, and desired work conditions. The idea is to make certain the superstar never slips through the cracks and finds a better deal elsewhere.

If organizations really want to retain the very best young superstars long enough to grow and develop them, someone has to make a concerted effort to surround them with coaching style managers, advisers, organizational supporters, and maybe even mentors. The questions every leader and manager should be asking are:

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• What roles can I play in this process?
• Who are the young superstars in my orbit?
• Will I be that person’s coaching style manager? Career adviser? Organizational supporter? Mentor?
• What can I do to make it clear to that person they are the best in their class?