Don’t Be So Successful!
September 22, 2009
An overachieving employee is told by her manager to not work quite so hard.
One of the big issues facing leaders today is how to motivate employees to perform at their highest levels. So it came as quite a shock to learn of one manager who took just the opposite approach.
We have a friend who works part time as a salesperson at a clothing store in a major mall. She is a confident, funny, and outgoing person who would seem like a natural for any type of sales.
As soon as she became familiar with the merchandise and the store’s commission policy, she began to excel. She had a knack for knowing what looked good on a customer and was able to sell a good deal of clothing at any given time. Customers would wait up to 20 minutes so our friend could wait on them.
Because of this, her sales volume was consistently the highest in the store, and she regularly sold more merchandise as a part-time employee than did any of the store’s regular full-time staff.
Naturally, you would expect the store manager to be delighted. Retail managers typically have a portion of their overall compensation determined by the overall sales of the store. More sales from a top salesperson – part-time or full-time – would translate into more compensation for the manager.
But instead of working closely with this top performer, the manager had a decidedly different and surprising response. Our friend was told to stop working so hard. Her performance was causing discontent among the store’s full-time staff, and she was making them look bad because she regularly outperformed them working only part time.
In a time when all retail businesses are struggling, this kind of attitude is puzzling at best. Anytime you are faced with a new challenge, one of the most intelligent things you can do is to find someone who does it exceedingly well, study what makes them successful, and try to incorporate some of their actions and behaviors into your own approach.
Look at your own reaction to other people’s success. Are you resentful and envious, or do you take the opportunity to study and learn? It’s up to you.
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