For many years I’ve helped organizations become more successful by coaching their people to higher performance levels, and during that time, I have occasionally come across the high-maintenance superstar. Perhaps you have known one of these folks yourself.
It’s not uncommon for someone like this to be in a sales role in a company. And he or she is not just in a sales role — he or she is the number one salesperson in all categories. For the sake of this article, let’s call our superstar “Bob.”
Bob is number one in sales every month. He also leaves a trail of customer service problems in his wake that have to be taken care of by someone else in the organization. Bob is a poor administrator, but who cares? He brings in the numbers. Let someone else take care of the details.
No one else in the office likes Bob. Somehow, he makes everyone work harder to take care of the problems he’s created. In fact, most people he works with, especially his fellow salespeople, would be incredibly happy if Bob left for another job.
Bob will often convince the sales manager that he should take over a new account that another salesperson has opened. The sales manager cannot even think of getting rid of Bob because he brings in almost half the business. Bob is irreplaceable from the sales manager’s point of view, even though he’s the number one cause of dissatisfaction in the office. In fact, turnover in the sales department is pretty high and never seems to get better. Employee surveys consistently mention Bob as the cause of unhappiness at work. The hardest thing to understand is how Bob’s customers do business with him. He seems to be such a jerk to everyone else.
Recently, with my strong advice, a client of mine finally bit the bullet and fired “Bob.” It was not easy, of course. But then a couple of things happened. Morale in the sales department and other areas that interacted with Bob went up, up, and up. People started enjoying coming to work. They walked past Bob’s empty desk and smiled. The salespeople started selling more, and most of Bob’s accounts stayed with the organization. It will take a while before the company’s total sales are back to where they were, but the trend is moving in the right direction. The sales manager is no longer losing sleep because of Bob and can now manage and lead the team, rather than being concerned about how Bob would react. Life is better without Bob.
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The surprise: About a month after Bob was gone, a customer called about an invoice problem. It turns out that Bob had given this customer a “special deal,” and the customer was put off that she did not see it on the invoice. This was one of just a few comparable situations revealed by Bob’s top customers after his exit. Eventually, these problems were worked out. What they did show, however, is that in order to puff up his sales numbers, Superstar Bob was doing some deals that were not authorized by the company.
Thoughts: The under-the-table surprise occurred in this particular situation, but higher morale results every time management gets rid of its high-maintenance superstar. This does not have to be a salesperson. It could just as easily be a software developer, engineer, or project manager. No matter how good someone is at getting results, if he or she is poisoning your company’s internal customers along the way, it is not good for any organization.
I have asked hundreds of managers in many different business sectors if they were happy they waited before they fired a high-performing employee they knew was not a good fit for their team. No one has ever said they were glad they waited. No matter how good that superstar might be, getting rid of a problem is the only way to shore up a sounder team foundation.
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