Raising a team of superstars

Imagine a football team comprising the best footballers in the world. The team has the best keeper in the goalpost, the best defenders, the best midfielders, the best attackers as well as the best wingers. That would be a team of superstars and it would be simply unbeatable. The same applies to a workforce that comprises superstars. If a workforce consists of superstars not only will the company come up with irresistible products, it will also record unparallel sales and get incomparable results.

It is important to raise a team of superstars because just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link so is the capacity of a team determined by its weakest member. But if a team is comprised of people who are quite effective and efficient in their respective areas, then exponential success becomes a way of life for the team. No one is born a superstar; every superstar is a person who has been subjected to proper nurturing and mentoring. So, leaders can nurture and mentor their employees into becoming superstars.

Employees can either be an asset or a liability. When employees contribute maximally to the organisation’s bottom line, they constitute an asset but if not, the employees are a liability. One factor leaders need to come to terms with is that it lies within their powers to either turn employees into assets or liabilities. Employees are a resource. Like any other resource, employees are to be appropriately deployed to produce desired result. They also should remember that while an asset produces more value than it consumes, a liability consumes more value than it generates. So, how well a company performs is a function of the ratio of its employees who are assets to those that are liabilities. Wherever the scale tilts determines the fortune of the organization. A company that is populated by more of employees who are assets will be profitable while one that has more of value-draining employees will be in the red region.

How to turn employees into superstars

To make superstars out of a workforce, the leader has to do the following.

Model your expectation

In every organization or institution, members take a cue from their leaders. In Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s Aso Rock Villa, the bowler hat style held sway. Now that President Muhammadu Buhari is in charge, the babaringa is seemingly the official attire of the Nigerian President’s office. Followers of Chief Obafemi Awolowo identify themselves by the type of cap popularized by the Sage. The average male member of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) wears a bow tie just like Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the leader. Directly or remotely, consciously or otherwise, leaders mentor their followers. Therefore, raising a team of superstars begins with the leader not being an ordinary star.

A leader must be the embodiment of what he wants his team members to be. Every leader must show by his conduct and utterances what he expects to see in his followers. When a leader demonstrates competence, he attracts the respect of others and encourages them to toe that path. When he exemplifies excellence, it becomes the followers’ aspiration. When he demonstrates honesty, he engenders honesty in the workforce; when he is innovative, he raises a culture of innovativeness among his employees and if he is sacrificial in his leadership, this becomes the pattern among his followers. When a leader goes the extra mile in getting his job done, he does not need to preach to his followers that they have to travel the extra mile, it becomes a matter of course. So, raising a team of superstars begins with the leader being a superstar. Pray, why should your employees cry more than the bereaved? Why should they be more zealous about the work than you their leader? Why should they go out on a limb for the organization when those in leadership positions will not venture into doing same? When leaders show the way to superstardom, followers travel the route.

Treat employees like your best customers

Employees are human beings with blood running in their veins. They have feelings; they have fears. They have issues and challenges. They respond to stimuli and they can decipher when they are appreciated or tolerated. Not many things are as important to the average person as being respected for who he is. In spite of his weaknesses as a human and foibles as a worker, he still wants to be treated with dignity.

To really respect employees you have to treat them as your best customers. How do you treat your best customers? Do you treat them with disdain or dignity? Do you tolerate or celebrate them? If you treat your employees with dignity they develop a sense of commitment that impacts on their productivity. When you celebrate them they develop a sense of fulfillment that boosts their creativity and surges their innovativeness. When you treat your employees with respect it boosts their loyalty which makes them literally work their hearts out for you. Treating workers as customers engenders workplace engagement. When workers are engaged, their creativity comes alive and their commitment is hiked. They bring their best to bear on the work and productivity soars.

The practice in many organizations is to treat employees as a means to an end; tools to be used to achieve the organizational goals. Companies that treat their employees as a means to an end dim the luster of the employees because they will only work halfheartedly and the company will be deprived of the best from their hands, hearts and brains.

Give them a reputation to live by

This is motivating your staff for increased productivity by setting inspiring goals for them. This is what Dale Carnegie describes in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People as the theory of giving a dog a good name. The general adage is to give a dog a bad name for an excuse to hang it. But in that book, Carnegie speaks about giving a dog a good name to spike its productivity.

This is the way it works. Rather than complain about the likely failure of a team to meet a target, tell the team of your faith in its ability not just to meet the target but to exceed it. If a person is given an assignment and he appears diffident, rather than concentrate on his lack of confidence, express your own confidence in his ability to exceed the expectation of the organization. When employees are given such challenges and they can sense sincerity in the leader, their morale goes through the roof and they will exert themselves no end to achieve the set target so as not to disappoint the confidence reposed in them by their leaders.

Once a leader labels an employee as an underperformer, the tag determines the performance of the employee. It becomes difficult for him to exceed that baseline because of the decline in his motivation. But leaders who know their onions bring out the best in their team members by always giving them a great reputation to live by. Once a leader expresses confidence in the ability of any of his staff to discharge a duty, the ceiling is knocked off the ability of that individual.

Grow their capacity

No one can function beyond his knowledge level. People do what they know. Therefore, to turn employees into superstars, organizations have to expose them to new skills and new knowledge. To do new things, employees have to know new things. For them to exceed their current performance level, they need to have their capacity increased. Organizations that want to optimize the capacity of their workforce have to boost the competence of the workforce by exposing the workers to training and capacity development programmes because people can only do new things when they learn new things.

But training is just one leg of capacity development. The second and the more important is increasing their capacity to think deeply, creatively, strategically and out of the box. Thinking is action’s precursor. As a matter of fact, thinking determines actions. Unless the thinking changes, action does not change. Therefore, for an employee to become a superstar his thinking process has to experience a transformation. According to Albert Einstein, a problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that produced it. The import of this is that unless the thinking changes new result does not surface.

Every human being has the capacity to think but it is only those who regularly engage in deep thinking that come up with great outcomes. Treasures are not unearthed without considerable efforts. Silver, gold and diamond are not found on the surface of the earth; they are buried deep down the belly of the earth. If these stones are located on the face of the earth like the common stones, they would not be referred to as precious. When employees are encouraged to think deeply, they will more often than not outthink and outperform competition.

Creative thinking is traveling into the future to get solutions to problems that have not arisen. When the television was invented there was no obvious need for it. But living without television is almost unimaginable now. When employees are encouraged to think creatively, they may not come up with completely new ideas but they are sure to come up with ideas that will improve the organisation’s operations or products.

Thinking out of the box produces results that are not run of the mill. To think out of the box is to think differently without the limitations that others have subjected themselves to. When employees are able to think outside the box, they break records and shatter boundaries.

Leaders also need to encourage employees to engage in system thinking. This is bearing the big picture of the organisation in mind in all their endeavours. So, rather than narrowing their plans and actions to their department or section they think about the effects of their actions on the organization as a whole. When this is practiced making progress as an entity becomes easy.

Give them liberty to make decisions

When employees are not allowed to make decisions on behalf of the organizations, not only does it convey to them that the leadership does not trust their judgment, it also slows down the organisation’s decision making process because everything has to wait until it is approved by the boss. The response time to customers’ issues and queries is unduly slow because nothing gets done until the manager gives his assent and consent. Perhaps the worst effect of this is that it stifles creativity and innovation because employees are not allowed to immediately give expression to their thoughts and energies.

Allowing employees to make decisions on behalf of the organization is an expression of confidence in their ability. When employees are made to understand that they are trusted, they try hard not to betray the trust. This boosts their confidence and as their confidence grows so does their competence. The more competent the workforce is, the lower the cost of production becomes because the team works with precision. So, freeing up the workforce to make decisions on behalf of the company frees up their creativity and energy.

Last line

When leaders turn their employees into superstars, the employees in turn mould the business into a super success.