Do you challenge your high performer(s) ?

The other day, my son’s teacher mentioned that GATE (Gifted and Talented) students tend to perform better when they are challenged. When a child is a high-performer, the teacher must set the bar high. In fact, a challenging environment boosts their energy to excel further.

How interesting.

I realize that the same is true in our work environment. If you have a highly productive team, you tend to set high expectations for them. Each time, they amaze you with their dedication and commitment; they build your trust and confidence.  That trust, inspires you to challenge them more to the benefit of the whole team. 
 

In a typical work environment, we tend to focus on how to motivate people, and often overlook how to challenge a high performing team so that they don’t lose steam.
While, managers usually feel fortunate to have high performing talents (so that they can get the tasks done easily), they tend to forget the fact that with great gifts come great responsibility.  Managers need to continue to set the bar high, and be ready to reward achievement.   As a middle manager, with little in the way of monetary budget, intrinsic motivations are even more important.

 I strongly feel, as a leader, it is our responsibility to focus on our high performers and set challenging environments for them to thrive and excel.

Motivation

Recently over a weekend, my laptop got virus infected. Frustrated me, filed a bug. Someone closed the bug asking me to file a different kind of ticket instead. It was very frustrating already. Since it was urgent, I decided to just go to the IT group directly to try my luck.

Then there, I found this gentleman buried within a bunch of laptops, hard drives, cables etc., busy doing his work. He immediately agreed to look at my laptop and asked me to come back later.

Thank God!! By noon next day, I got my laptop and things were all fine. I thanked him and came back. Later I realized, some of my data and my saved emails in local copy were gone. I surely needed those. Upon reaching him for help, he again started working on fixing the issues and spent hours to get it resolved. He went out of his way and helped me get everything restored and configured properly.

It’s always a pleasure to see such committed and considerate people around.

I am thinking what keeps him so motivated and committed for his job? It could be that he is passionate about the type of his work that he does everyday or his work culture or his personality or the perks he gets or the encouragements from his manager or the feeling that he has helped someone !

I don’t know what it is, but I surely sent a note to him and his manager expressing my gratitude for all his help. He surely deserves that !