Top 10 Reasons

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Company Needs An Employee Incentive Program

Article found on IncentiveQuotes.com

Employee Incentive Programs reward exceptional employees for reaching work goals, achieving milestones or simply doing a good job. These types of programs are designed to offer incentive and rewards to valued employees. Employee Incentive Programs have proven very successful in arousing motivation in employees and increasing the overall performance of the company. An incentive program is a great way to show employees that you value their input while at the same time increasing your businesses potential.

Here are the top ten reasons your company needs an Employee Incentive Program.

1. Mutual Rewards. An Employee Incentive Program is mutually beneficial. The employee feels valued and motivated and is therefore more productive and committed. The company reaps the benefits of a motivated, focused and loyal employee. The results of Incentive Programs have a consistent theme. The company’s bottom line increases as the employee’s productivity peaks.

2. Increased Motivation. Many people find it hard to motivate themselves at work. This is a common occurrence and one that has been significantly effected by Incentive Programs. These programs motivate employees by offering rewards for reaching targets and company goals. These come in many forms ranging from cash to cars to holidays to gifts. The rewards are a great motivator but what is more inspiring for the employee is that the company cares enough to offer these incentives.

3. Increased Company Morale. Rewards, incentives and recognition make for a happy, harmonious working environment. Goal setting and targeting objectives helps with focus and purpose. Employee Incentive programs offer all of these things and are highly conducive to company morale. Increases in company morale help to reduce absenteeism and overall company costs.

4. Increase Company Loyalty. Company loyalty is not something you can buy. However incentives for good work and rewards for hard work go a long way to securing commitment from employees. Employee incentive programs show employees the company values their input and their work. If an employee feels valued and appreciated they are more likely to form an allegiance to the company.

5. Increased Productivity. Incentive programs promote productivity in a number of ways. Employees are offered incentives for reaching targets or for good work in general. These incentives vary but the main aim is to encourage employees to work towards company goals. With the promise of incentives and clearly defined targets employees are more productive and motivated.

6. Increase Objective Achievement. Incentive Programs are a great way to reach targets and company objectives. Using an Incentive Program employers can set realistic goals and reward employees when the reach them. This is a great way to boost productivity and morale while at the same time achieving company goals.

7. Reduced Company Costs. Overall company costs can be reduced as a result of an Incentive Program. This cost can be measured in terms of reduced absenteeism, reduced recruitment costs and turnover of staff. You will also see a significant return on your investment via increased productivity and motivation within the office.

8. Reduced Absenteeism. The bottom line with incentive programs comes down to the very simple fact that people like being rewarded for hard work and a job well done. The rewards are only part of the equation. Incentive schemes show employees the company cares and appreciates the work they are outputting. If an employee feels appreciated and has clear targets that result in rewards then they are more likely to want to come to work.

9. Team Work. Incentive Programs promote teamwork and foster an environment that is conducive to success. Employees working towards rewards or targets will pull together to achieve desired results. Teamwork increases efficiency and creates harmony within the workplace.

10. Decreased Turnover. Incentive Programs foster happy, productive working environments. Employees enjoying this kind of environment will be more likely to stay long term. This means incentive programs reduce the amount of turnovers within the company. The advantage of consistent staffing is that you are not spending money on recruiting or training new staff. You are also able to retain loyal committed employees with a vested company interest.

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Four Tips

Four Tips For Structuring Incentive Programs

Article written by Ann McKeough

Company success rests on the performance of employees. As organizations look at ways to reward and motivate their workers, recognition methods have come a long way from a pat on the back and upgraded parking spot. Structured incentive programs—which reward employees for meeting performance-based milestones—are helping employees set, meet and exceed goals, and helping companies attract and retain valuable talent. Employee incentives also help build brand loyalty.

In fact, employees who participate in company-driven incentive programs say they feel more valued (85%), are more loyal to their companies (65%) and get better results (60%). And at companies without incentive programs, one-third of office workers say they’d put in an extra workweek each year, if their company would implement one.

Here are four tips to help companies structure effective incentive programs:

1. Align the program with company objectives: By keeping your incentive program in line with company business goals, you’ll ensure that employees are trying to achieve milestones that matter. That is, they’ll be focusing on your organization’s priorities while striving to improve the business as a whole.

2. Communicate effectively: When structuring an incentive program, it’s essential that the goals and details of the program be communicated to participants. Have a clear plan that outlines communication frequency, along with vehicles—such as conversations with managers, an internal website, a company newsletter, etc.—for communication. Increased understanding within the business can ultimately lead to better results.

3. Engage all levels of business: It’s critical to align the entire company around the goals of the incentive programs. Providing incentives for just one level of business can ultimately have a negative impact on performance goals. If salespeople are part of the incentive program, make sure the sales managers are as well so that everyone feels engaged and motivated.

4. Choose effective rewards: An incentive program is only as good as its rewards. When selecting rewards. Remember to provide products that motivate employees and drive performance. Many incentive programs are points-based, allowing workers to earn points that can be redeemed for a reward of their choosing—which in turn, can make it more meaningful.

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The Money Trap

The Money Trap – How Cash Can Kill Your Incentive Efforts

Article written by Paul Nolen, SalesForceXP

With apologies to Shakespeare, we did not come to praise cash, but we didn’t come to bury it either – only its use as an employee incentive.

Research released within the past year continues to support the widely held belief that people who earn enough income to cover basic needs are happier than those who don’t. Beyond that minimum level, however, those who are much richer aren’t necessarily much happier.

“Once you’re safe and warm and fed, [earning more money] makes surprisingly little difference,” says David Schkade, professor of management at the University of California at San Diego and the co-author of “Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion,” which was published in the June issue of Science magazine. Among other things, the report studied government data detailing how folks divvy up their waking hours. They found that people with higher incomes tend to spend more time working, commuting and engaging in obligatory non-work activities such as home maintenance. All of these are associated with lower happiness.

Schkade’s research dovetails with findings on why merchandise and travel are stronger incentives than cash. We reported last year on research by Columbia University Professor Ran Kivetz that shows people are reluctant to spend money on non-essentials, which is a significant reason why non-cash rewards are better motivators.

Now, Scott Jeffrey, an assistant professor of management sciences at the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada, has released his findings on the characteristics of non-cash incentives that make them effective motivators. Why should you care? As Jeffrey emphasizes, “A significant amount of money is being spent on tangible, non-cash incentives with a limited understanding of how they can best be utilized.”

Why Cash Falls Short

Proponents of cash incentives may argue that recipients can use them to purchase whatever provides the most satisfaction. As Ran Kivetz points out, however, people are more likely to spend windfall money on utilitarian rather than hedonic items. Even if the recipient of a cash incentive purchased the same item that could have been offered in its place, it would not carry the same social reinforcement as if it were awarded by the firm, Jeffrey emphasizes.

“Mental accounting research suggests that once the money is given to the employee it becomes the employee’s money. Anything purchased with it is something the employee chose to purchase rather than something the firm awarded to the employee.”

Used But Not Always Understood

Many U.S. companies already believe in the motivational muscle of non-cash incentives. A recent survey by the Incentive Federation, an incentive industry research and lobby group, found that 78 percent of firms use tangible incentives with their sales employees and 67 percent use them with non-sales employees.

In order to get maximum return on the use of non-cash incentives, it’s important to have a general understanding of why they are effective, says Jeffrey. He has identified four characteristics of tangible incentives that make them motivating characteristics, it should be noted, that are not available with cash incentives: Justifiability, Social Reinforcement, Separability and Evaluability.

Justifiability

A common denominator of many tangible incentives is that they are items (or trips) that are viewed as luxuries. The recipients wouldn’t normally buy them for themselves, even if they had sufficient funds. If an item is something that an employee values highly but would never purchase himself, the opportunity to earn it as a reward for hard work provides a means of obtaining the desired object without violating one’s standards of justification. For example, a hard-charging salesperson might not propose an expensive family vacation to Hawaii, but everyone would be pleased if it was earned as a reward for being a top performer. “In this sense, hard work becomes an attractive means to acquire something that would be difficult to obtain through other means, causing the earning of a tangible, non-monetary incentive to carry additional value,” says Jeffrey. “The perceived value of a tangible incentive will increase with the difficulty that the employee would have in justifying the purchase of that incentive with his or her own money.” Since everyone’s determination of a “justifiable purchase” differs, the strength of this effect will vary across national and organizational cultures, as well as among individuals. In other words, tangible incentives will not be as effective with a salesman who treats himself to everything he desires without hesitation. The good news for incentive users, says Kivetz, is that we are a culture of people who are reluctant to spend money on nonessentials.

Social Reinforcement

One of the central tenets behind reinforcement theories of motivation is that rewarding specific behavior will lead to additional instances of that behavior. This has proven to be so with sales incentive programs. Tim Houlihan, vice president of reward systems at Minneapolis-based firm, says clients who experience a significant sales lift from incentive programs continue to enjoy that lift after the program is over. A tangible incentive is an effective carrier of this type of utility because of its high level of visibility, says Jeffrey. People will happily show off the golf clubs, gas grill or widescreen TV they earned for hitting a sales goal. Cash is visible in its own way, of course, but it’s less socially acceptable to tell a neighbor or co-worker about the $1,000 you earned as a bonus. By providing a better means to indirectly bring attention to one’s good performance, the value of earning a tangible incentive is enhanced. An additional benefit to using tangible incentives is that they serve as reminders of the exemplary performance that led to their receipt. Physical goods remind the employee of their performance and the firm every time they use it. Incentive travel works much the same, providing memories, pictures and mementos that conjure up goodwill toward an employer.

Separability

People do not consider all of their income collectively. They mentally segregate some sources and uses of funds and aggregate others, assigning subsets of income to different “mental accounts.” Investment income and home appreciation, for example, are likely to be placed into different income accounts than salary. Once a source of income is categorized, the value of that incremental income is calculated. There is less incremental value of increased earnings as earnings increase, says Jeffrey. “A person gains less utility from each additional dollar as the total pay increases.” Since a cash incentive is earned as part of the job, an employee is more likely to view it as “more salary.” This means that the employee will evaluate the increase relative to his or her base salary, making the award subject to the value-reducing
effects of diminishing marginal utility. A tangible incentive does not have this problem. Since it’s consumed less frequently, a tangible incentive is more likely to be evaluated in isolation, or at least as part of a much smaller mental account such as travel or entertainment, says Jeffrey.

Evaluability

The most effective non-tangible incentives are items that are associated with pleasurable experience rather than more instrumental or functional items. When considering whether to exert additional effort in pursuit of a reward, employees instinctively predict what the item offered is worth to them. The vivid attributes of incentives like expensive vacations, gourmet food or home electronics raise the perceived value of the incentive. An equal amount of cash is rarely perceived as having equal value. “The harder employees work toward an award, the more they think it’s worth, which in turn leads to more effort. This is less likely to occur with cash awards since the economic value of cash is less ambiguous and less prone to the psychological modification of perceived value,” says Jeffrey.

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When Generations Collide

When Generations Collide

Article written by HJ Cummins, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The first wave of Generation X recently turned 45, making Gen Y-ers the new youngsters. Traditionalists are wrapping up their careers, and Boomers soon could follow them into retirement – or not. With four generations on the job, employers find that their biggest diversity issue these days is age.

Sheila Gallagher tries to be a sensitive manager. So even though young Frank Brodie, a new Carleton College graduate, had just joined her restaurant sales and support staff at General Mills in August, Gallagher invited him to make a presentation at his very first staff meeting in September.

That’s huge. A Baby Boomer broke company protocol in order to make a Gen Y-er feel included. Gallagher thought to make the gesture because she was fresh from a training session on generational diversity – the biggest workplace diversity issue today, many say.

U.S. employers now count four generations on their payrolls, mostly because people are living and working longer. The leading edge of Generation X just hit 45 this year, and they have issues with Generation Y. Boomers have to start taking Gen Xers seriously enough to talk succession plans. And they all need to figure out how to work with their elders – the Traditionalists – as the U.S. workforce continues to age.

Their differences are more than simply age. They have to do with lifestyles and work styles shaped by forces as disparate as dust bowls and iPods. And unless companies sort it all out, they will be in trouble, said David Stillman at BridgeWorks, a Twin Cities consultant on generational diversity. “What ten years ago was seen as a `fluff’ topic has become a clear, bottom-line issue, a retention issue,” Stillman said. “People who say `I don’t feel understood here’ or `I don’t feel respected here’ go to work for someone else.”

More employers are getting interested in the generations and how they work together – or not. Workplace specialists say it can get complicated. The oldest group, the Traditionalists or Veterans, was born before World War II. Its members tend to respect authority and tradition. And while they prize loyalty, they still may balk at younger bosses’ new ideas – after living through everything from Total Quality Management to Six Sigma.

Boomers are a driven bunch, partly because their sheer numbers mean they always have had to compete for jobs. Trained that asking for help is a sign of weakness, they’re burning out with today’s workloads. And they’re not very impressed with the less-ambitious Gen X-ers.

Generation X is emphatic about balancing work and life, partly because they don’t want to follow Boomers into burnout. Their goal is building careers, which means they welcome new and different assignments at work.“X-ers love lateral moves,” Stillman said. “Boomers see that as being `sidelined.’-” Also, unlike Boomers, X-ers don’t trust companies. “A year-end bonus doesn’t work for X-ers,” said Karen Stinson, CEO of ProGroup, another diversity consulting firm in Minneapolis. “They’ll be thinking, `I may not be here that long. Your company may not be here that long. You all might be in jail by then.’-”

Generation Y – also called Nexters or Millennials – finds Gen X-ers too distant, and X-ers think Y-ers need too much handholding. Parents doted on this generation, so they feel loved and supported and optimistic about the world. X-ers see them as Pollyannas, but their world views connect well with Traditionalists, Stinson said. Also, this heavily scheduled generation worked less than any other while growing up, so they missed basics such as punctuality and dress codes. “I’ve seen huge conflicts over whether they can wear flip-flops to work,” said Stillman of BridgeWorks. “I’m telling their bosses, `Don’t get mad at them. Don’t dismiss them as bad workers. Just back up and teach them.’-”

And one more thing: Understand the difference between generalities and stereotypes. Stillman hears: Oldsters are technophobes. Baby Boomers are workaholics. Gen X-ers are slackers, disloyal. Millennials are too young to know anything. “The point is to get to know and understand the person,” he said.

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Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement: What It Is and Why You Need It

BusinessWeek.com reader Derek Irvine on the importance of engaging employees strategically and authentically

As someone whose job it is to advise companies on employee engagement, I was fascinated to read “Making Employee Engagement Fashionable” by the CEO of Gucci recently on BusinessWeek.com. As I was moved to comment on the column, strategic recognition is the key to fostering a truly engaged workforce. As the recession drags on, company leaders are looking for any solution to boost morale, increase productivity, and help gain competitive advantage. Employee engagement is rapidly becoming the answer for many organizations, though many remain confused about the benefits of employee engagement, what it is, and how to foster it in their organizations. Why should you care if your employees are engaged? The research on the bottom-line benefits of employee engagement is clear: Towers Perrin has found that companies with engaged employees boosted operating income by 19% compared with companies with the lowest percentage of engaged employees, which saw operating income fall 33%. What does that mean in real dollars? For S&P 500 companies, Watson Wyatt (WW) reports that a significant improvement in employee engagement increases revenue by $95 million.

Productivity Boost

The effects of engagement on employee productivity, retention, and recruitment are no less astonishing. Watson Wyatt further found that companies with highly engaged employees experienced 26% higher employee productivity, lower turnover risk, greater ability to attract top talent, and 13% higher total returns to shareholders over the last five years. Additionally, highly engaged employees are twice as likely to be top performers—and miss 20% fewer days of work. They also exceed expectations in performance reviews and are more supportive of organizational change initiatives. So you’re convinced you need to get your employees more engaged. But what does that mean? The definitions of employee engagement seem endless and include increased line of sight, greater commitment, and willingness to give additional discretionary effort. Instead of trying to define employee engagement, I want to know what an engaged employee looks like, how they behave while at work, and how to replicate that in the organization. One definition of an engaged employee is one who gives additional discretionary effort. That doesn’t go far enough. That additional effort, willingly and happily given, must be put toward something that matters to the company. The most worthwhile engagement is seen in employees who happily want to give additional effort and know where to apply it. This combination of action and line of sight results in an engaged employee who willingly works harder to deliver against your company’s strategic objectives in their own daily tasks.

Say “Thank You”

Now that we’ve explained why you should care about employee engagement and defined it, there’s still one catch. Do your employees know your strategic objectives? More important, do they have any idea how their daily work impacts the achievement of those objectives? In my experience very few line employees can even cite the company’s objectives, much less articulate how their work helps achieve them. But it has never been more urgent for every employee to understand precisely this connection. You need to clearly communicate the needs of your company (e.g., your strategic objectives) and show employees how their individual, specific efforts help the company achieve those objectives. How? It’s simple: Say “thank you.” During a down economy, when companies need employees to give more discretionary effort to achieve critical objectives, strategic employee recognition specifically acknowledges actions and behaviors that align with company values and help achieve those objectives, encouraging employees to repeat precisely those behaviors needed for the organization to succeed. Recognition is based on fostering an environment in which employees want to perform, then letting managers and even peers acknowledge exceptional effort and praise deserving employees. All employees need recognition for their efforts and validation that their work is appreciated—now more than ever. If the recognition is for demonstrating a company value or achieving a strategic objective, employees begin to see how their individual efforts contribute to company success. Strategic recognition is by far the most positive and effective way to ensure that employee effort is maximized, aligned with company objectives, and reflective of company values.

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B Players Hold The Cards

Employers Learning That ‘B Players’ Hold The Cards

By Del Jones, USA Today

Micah Joel, a systems engineer at SupportSoft in Redwood City, Calif., calls himself a “B player.” There is no shame in his voice. He will work a 60-hour week when the company is under the gun but also feels no guilt when he cuts out early to volunteer in community theater or train for triathlons. His goal is balance, not a corner office. Gratifying work is more important to him than promotions or pay raises. “I work for mental chocolate,” says Joel, 29.

When employers aren’t busy weeding out the bottom 10% of their workforce, they’ve been trying to steal the A players from the competition in a battle to lure the best. But some of those employers are coming around to the realization that failure and success might not lie among the weakest and strongest links, but in the solid middle, the B players like Joel, the 75% of workers who have been all but ignored.

Companies have been trying to capture what organizational intelligence consultant Adrian Savage calls the “unicorns,” but the focus is starting to shift to the horses, the B players. “Ignore them at your peril,” says Thomas DeLong, a Harvard management professor who co-authored with organizational strategy consultant Vineeta Vijayaraghavan of Katzenbach Partners an article in the June issue of Harvard Business Review called “Let’s Hear It for B Players.”

Five years ago, high-tech companies were going to such extremes to raid each other for A players that National Semiconductor rented a billboard outside Texas Instruments’ headquarters in Dallas and gave a toll-free number for the competition’s employees to call for a new job.

Today, the high-tech industry is also coming to understand the value of B players. A players, by definition, don’t hang around when opportunities for riches and promotions dry up, DeLong says. So when dot-com and other tech stock options started to take on water, many in Silicon Valley ran like rats, some back to the industries from whence they came. Left behind were the loyal B players, who still retained the organizational memory to help their companies survive and now move forward.

The importance of B players may be only now dawning on the experts, but it’s one of those common-sense discoveries that many garden-variety workers have subscribed to all along. The backbone of every company is in the middle where the ether of great thoughts is hammered into reality. Every boss knows the frustration of seeing great ideas fall through the cracks, and in their best-selling business book
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, co-authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan argue that the biggest obstacle to success is not a lack of grand vision but turning a little vision into some product, service or useful innovation. “B players are crucial,” says Bossidy, retired CEO of Honeywell. “They may get directions from others, but they’re the ones who execute.”

There is no evidence that A players are any smarter than B players, DeLong says. The difference is in temperament. There are many types of B players, but most are loyal (to a point), don’t live and die for the next promotion (but want challenging work), don’t need coddling (but can die of neglect), are honest (if not diplomatic) and are not as driven by power, status and money as are A players, who live for little else. Indeed, A players admit to being maddened by the B players’ seeming indifference to what matters to those at the top.

Ken Siegel says he has worked with a number of top executives as a management consultant in Beverly Hills, California. When those executives talk about their promising employees, they usually lump them into just two categories. There are the “strong,” who are willing to sacrifice their personal lives, even morality, to get to the top. Everyone else is “weak,” Siegel says.

A players “don’t understand why I’m not trying to get their job,” says Todd Walter, who has a high-sounding job title as chief technical officer of Teradata, a division of NCR. But he has only one employee working for him, whom he calls an apprentice, and Walter considers himself a B player. Walter has coached his sons’ basketball and baseball teams and recently spent a week canoeing on the Green River in Utah with Boy Scouts. He says his immediate boss is OK with his priorities, but feedback from other executives has been “mixed.”

B players demand but a fraction of the boss’ time compared with those who need either constant stroking or reprimanding. McKesson, a Fortune 20 pharmaceutical wholesaler, calls B players “performers in place,” and they make up 70% of its 24,000 employees. “They are happy living in Dubuque,” says McKesson CEO John Hammergren. “I have more time and admiration for them than
the A player who is at my desk every six months asking for the next promotion.”

To use the word of the day, B players are “embedded,” not only in their jobs, but also in their communities, says Tom Lee, professor of human resource management at the University of Washington- Seattle. He is also editor of the Academy of Management Journal.

“A players are motivated by a different set of rules,” says Joel, the systems engineer. He says the best managers recognize the difference.

The Harvard Business Review article on B players was buried in the back half of the June issue, but the message is resonating. The article ranked second among reprint requests from the June issue, and HBR editor Thomas Stewart says he expects the attention to B players to be a topic that will gain a following with time.

DeLong and Vijayaraghavan say they have been approached by several companies since the article was published that are looking for ways to address the needs of B players. It may have taken companies and experts awhile, but music lyrics have long connected with B players, most recently with the hit song Red Dirt Road, in which country stars Brooks & Dunn sing, “Happiness on earth ain’t just for high achievers.”

Then, there is the analogy that running a business is like running a sports team: “During my coaching days, the most dysfunctional teams were the ones who had no respect for the B players,” says Karen Freeman, former head coach of women’s basketball at Wake Forest University and an assistant coach for the Charlotte Sting of the WNBA. She is now executive vice president of Biologics, a cancer pharmacy company. Basketball coaches who attempt to forge a team of stars are asking for disaster, Freeman says. If every player needs 15 to 20 shots a game to be happy, there is going to be disgruntlement because each game has but one ball and 40 minutes. In basketball or business, when the team goes into a slump, stars are the first to whine, Freeman says.

Many companies long ago quit giving the gold watch for years of service, opting instead to recognize only performance. But SupportSoft last year brought back rewards strictly for longevity. Of the 14 employees who have been with the company since its founding in 1997, 10 are B players who held fast when the company’s stock went from $39 a share in 2000 to less than $2 and have nursed it back up above $8.

Recovered A players

The most valuable B players, DeLong says, are recovered A players. They have “breathed the rarefied air” but for various reasons rejected the demands of an A life. Recovered A players know how other A players maneuver. They can be called in as a pinch hitter for an occasional home run. Bob Bertrand is a recovered A player, says Gary Kowalski, CEO of Vector SCM, a supply chain management company used by General Motors.

Bertrand, 61, was a senior executive at Leaseway Transportation before retiring after 32 years. Now, he has a non-executive title at Vector SCM where he considers himself a “conduit” between the A and B players. B players talk to him because he is not management, and A players talk to him because he’s no longer “a threat to anybody,” Bertrand says.

B players interviewed hesitate to be called potential whistle- blowers, but they may be uniquely valuable in times of corporate scandal. They don’t weigh the political repercussions of what comes out of their mouths, DeLong says.

Walter says he recently persuaded Teradata to back away from a multimillion-dollar contract with a large client because he believed the sales agent had exaggerated to a customer what Teradata was able to deliver. “I’m the truth teller, the one who is brutally honest,” Walter says.

A CEO at age 36, Sam Goodner of software company Catapult Systems in Austin is by definition an A player. He’s married to an A player, Caroline Caskey, president of Identigene in Houston. Goodner says most CEOs understand the desire for a different lifestyle, then admits that executives get frustrated with B players who don’t use their leadership potential.

“We need A players to set the vision, get things started, close the big deals, but none is sustainable long term without solid B players,” Goodner says. “There are many positions that need someone accountable and hard-working but don’t have a lot of room for advancement. An A player would rapidly become frustrated in that role.”

“Some (B players) really do want to be A players but are risk averse” and need a motivational push, says Robert Wilkins, president of Danfoss, the U.S. arm of Denmark’s largest manufacturer. Bossidy says some talented employees are afraid that getting too high in the organization will rob them of freedom. “They come packaged differently. The job as a leader is to get the most out of them.”

When CEOs or coaches get together, conversations often turn to the players they have had with the talent to go to the top but without the disposition to fulfill that promise. “As I matured in my coaching life and now in business, I came to realize those people bring great stability and step up to the plate when they have to,” Freeman says.

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