Let Your Thoroughbreds Run

I will offer this disclaimer up front, I’m not a horse person. I wish I could say that I am proficient in riding a horse, but I’m not.

In understanding the basics of a thoroughbred horse racing, I understand they are truly bred to run and run very fast. The bloodlines of a horse are highly important and a horse owner may pay millions of dollars for a young colt with the right bloodlines. That said, your high performing or top talent employees are like thoroughbreds.

A thoroughbred horse needs to be trained effectively to get the most out of them on race day. In most circumstances, the jockey does not need to do much in the way of using their riding crop or whip. There are actual rules that need to be followed on how many times the crop can be used during the race. Many great jockeys given the right horse may never need to use the whip, their horse instinctively knows when they need to “change gears” during a race to win.

In a similar fashion, your top performers or high-potentials need to be challenged with large and complex projects. You also need to not micromanage them, that’s the kiss of death if you do so. A micromanaging boss with a high-potential is like oil and water, they don’t mix. A high-potential needs to be given room to run with very little oversight. If they are over supervised, there is a very high likelihood they will leave the company. It would be like having a thoroughbred working at the carnival pony ride where they go around and around in circles with 5-year-olds riding them. The poor horse would be crazy in short order.
The loss of a top performer always has huge strategic impact to the company. Losing a high potential can be as costly as 10 times their annual base salary lost in overall productivity and revenue opportunity. True high-potentials do not grow on trees, most organizations only have roughly 5-15% true high-potentials or top performing employees. The secret recipe with them is to challenge them often, give them room to run, and when you do check in with them, ask them what help they need from you to be successful. Another great question would be – is anything slowing them down from doing their job well. Often the manager could be getting in their way, is so, they will quickly leave for greener pastures, pardon the pun.
As you can see, treating your high potentials like a thoroughbred racehorse can be a gamechanger for your organization in employee retention, employee engagement, increasing performance and achieving company goals. Let them run, keep them challenged, sit back and watch the results.

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Small and medium-sized businesses may not have the time or expertise to implement the necessary people strategies for business success. The ideas above can be easily implemented by you to help improve the performance of your employees which leads to increased employee engagement and increasing the bottom line.

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