High achievers are highly motivated. They do not need supervision. This is a great strength, but most employees need supervision to keep motivated. They need someone to hold them accountable, encourage them when challenged and help them find the resources they need. But, many achievers fail to provide supervision and support to help the employees meet their objectives.
If you are high achiever you are highly motivated and do not need anyone to supervise you. A self-starter, you know what you want and you go for it. This is a great strength and a necessary one to be a truly high achiever. However, this can be a great weakness if you do not understand that others are not like you. It is a human tendency to judge others by assuming they think like us and are motivated like us. Do you fail to provide supervision and support for your people to meet their goals and objectives? Here is a classic example of two high achievers who had this problem and what they did about it.
The Johnson Brothers had a potentially lucrative business. They had a system for saving companies 10% to 25% on most of their purchases. They would arrange the savings for their clients for a fee based on how much money they saved them.
However, they knew that their growth and income were limited by the amount of time and energy make us they could spend in direct selling.
They decided to form a company and have associates do the selling for them. The associates were paid by commission. The brothers spent a short time explaining the business, giving them an idea who the best prospects were, and turning them loose. Their idea was that the good ones would sell and the poor ones would simply fail and drop out of the business. They thought that this system would cost them nothing. They went ahead with this simple plan and soon discovered that the majority of their time was spent in recruiting new associates. They spent as little time as possible training because the brothers saw this as an expense.
Most of the recruits failed. All the time the brothers had spent in recruiting them was wasted. They did have a few associates who were moderately successful for a while, but soon burned out and the brothers lost them too.
They managed to hire two very successful associates. These associates sold very well, but after a while one found an even more lucrative selling job (really good salesman are highly sought after), the other started a business of his own.
As a result, the brothers were making less money than they did when just the two of them were doing all the direct selling. They had to rethink their business plan.
They made two strategic decisions. The first was to carefully select, train and supervise new recruits. They provided support and encouragement on a regular basis. They also provided a multi-level commission system. The idea was that when they hired high achievers to sell for them, they did not want to lose them. These excellent salespeople could become associates, much like a junior partner. They would benefit not only from their own selling but from some of sales of the lower-level people. These high achieving salesman also contributed to the supervision and support of other sales staff.
With this system of providing support and supervision for their staff,the brothers business became lucrative. They spent much less time recruiting new sales people and enjoyed a larger income from their sales organization. The brothers had made a big and important shift. Instead of expecting everyone to be like them and not need support, they gave their staff the support they needed. They held their staff accountable, encouraged them, and helped them find the resources they needed to reach their goals.
As a result, they left their early struggles behind and created a lucrative business.
