Page 48 - Twenty Four Lessons for Mastering Your New Role

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Don’t give poor performers
a chance to improve
Lift poor and
mediocre performers

Set a high bar. If you accept poor or mediocre performance from
your employees, you’ll wind up with a bunch of lowly underachiev-
ers.
Rookie managers need to push for excellence. Demand the most
from people and they’ll strive to deliver. Tolerate a halfhearted effort
and you send a message that your standards are easy to meet.
By transforming middling workers into high-performance stars,
you’ll impress your bosses and earn a reputation as a hard-charging,
results-oriented leader. Your employees will also feel better about
themselves once they see they’re part of an elite team. The desire to
excel will feed on itself and your staffers will no longer settle for sec-
ond-rate work.
Accept shoddy performance from others, and it’ll bring out the
worst in you. Your results may start to slip. Surround yourself with
mediocrity, and it becomes harder to give 100 percent. In profession-
al sports, there are many examples of athletes who struggle while play-
ing for a last-place team only to bounce back when they’re traded to
a playoff contender. The fact that they’re suddenly surrounded by a
coach and teammates who expect and demand superior performance
causes them to dig within themselves and produce better results.
When you spot subpar performance, get involved. New managers
may mistakenly spend most of their time with their top employees

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