How to grow a senior high-performer who's already good, using their Superpower
This is for you if one of your senior people is excellent and you want to keep growing them. The only levers left seem to be more of the same work, or another "great job." Meanwhile the rare thing they do might be getting spent on work that never needed it.
The better move does two things only you can do. Their report spells out their Superpower. But the report can't hand them the work that puts it to use, and it can't keep the company from wearing it down.
Open their report before the review. Read either of their Superpowers: the rare combination, its Draws From (the System and strengths underneath it), and its How to Protect note.
Put it to work. Name the one place next quarter where that Superpower makes the difference: the problem no one else can carry. Write it as an outcome they own. Make it big enough to run over months, so their first System has room to work.
Back it. A rare skill is often the first thing a company wears down. Start from the How to Protect note under either of their Superpowers. Take what fits this person. Then decide, in plain terms, how you'll protect this work:
- What you lift. One steady task you take off their plate. Best if it's the load that drains the very skill you're putting to work.
- What you name out loud. Where you'll say, in the room that matters, that this work is theirs.
- What you intercept. The reflex you'll block: the "can you just handle this" that pulls them back into the fires.
Bring it to the review as a proposal, not a plan handed down. Ask them to reread their own Superpower and Systems pages first and bring whatever fits. They'll see things in their own report that you can't, and that's the point: let them shape it.
You walk away holding one page: the stretch (the problem and the outcome they own) and the backing (what you lift, name, and intercept). Not another "great job."
