OK, so Loyalist staff are particularly valuable. Where do they come from, and how do you set about ensuring that they remain loyal?
Firstly, where to find them? The answer is to look around for individuals who perceive themselves as failures, or at least less successful than they could, or better still should, be. A lack of self-worth is fundamental to creating loyalty. Their failure must, however, be of quite specific kinds: straightforward lack of experience, inability to conform to norms, career change following failure on a previous career track (preferably vocational), lack of communication skills, and low self-confidence are all ideal material. An underlying native wit and ability is of course, useful, as you would like these people to become amongst your most trusted lieutenants.
Creating the Loyalist from the individual is a simple matter, if you have the right raw material.
Individuals lacking in experience are the best raw material to become Praetorians, although certain career changes can be effective too (retired sports-people for example). Your approach is simply to pluck them from the obscurity or inferiority in which they perceive themselves as trapped, and “give them a chance in life”. You reward success with trust and responsibility. In more venal Praetorians, you follow through with higher than average appraisal grades, pay, steps up the promotional ladder or whatever other material or semi-material rewards are within your gift.
Poor communication skills and low self-confidence make the individual ideal as a candidate for Dependent. This can work in one of two ways. Their weakness may manifest itself directly in the workplace, or it may be more a more general life-issue.
If the former you simply become the confident and champion of the individual, arguing their case for them in public, appearing to champion their causes on their behalf so that their channel to the world of work becomes you and you alone. They cannot advance their cause without routing it through you, and they know it and see you as an asset.
In the latter case, of a general life-problem, you will need to play a role for them. It is rarely difficult to identify the correct role: forgiving and/or approving parent, proxy-partner/object of unrequited sexual-desire are the standards with a very occasionally side order of proxy-child (although such individuals usually have cats or dogs filling this gap in their lives). Ask a few questions about their home-life or childhood. The right role will become obvious.
Inability to conform to norms is a viable characteristic to transform into loyalty only if your team has scope for back-room jobs or contains Specialists (and importantly, is known to contain them, so you can use the Jack and Jill gambit described above whenever they have to be allowed out in public). Frequently such individuals are continuing their unresolved teenage rebellion against authority. With care, you can harness this by representing everyone outside your tight-knit team or inner sanctum as “them/authority” and create the illusion of a good versus evil fight in the mind of the Loyalist. Of course you cannot participate in this yourself, since this is exactly one of the characteristics that has prevented the candidate-Loyalist from getting ahead by themself, so you will have to maintain double-standards. You explain this to the Loyalist as doing what is necessary to beat “them” at their own game, or what is necessary to get the resources, political support or whatever, to move forwards. If you can carry it off with a straight face, represent yourself to the Loyalist as a kind of Judge Dredd, stepping outside the law yourself in order to enforce it on others. This kind of imagery often appeals to their student mindset. Develop a passing knowledge of Minority Rights issues, Real Ale, or Civil War Re-enactment. It will be useful as a bonding and communication tool with these individuals.
Having acquired your prospective Loyalists, you need to maintain their dependency. Here the strategies for Praetorians and Dependents diverge, although the approaches are complementary and in ideal cases you can use both methods.
Praetorians need to see themselves as reaping additional rewards from their loyalty to you. It is important that you keep providing the reality, or better still (because you will be able to represent yourself to more important audiences elsewhere as thrifty or tough) a suitable substitute for reality, of rewards. Excellent substitutes are items which can be described as “c.v./resume enhancing” or “career lifetime value-adding” such as representation on or management of prestige projects. It does not matter that their career lifetime would have to be several hundred years before the value was actually added; it’s the perception that counts.
Dependents are easier. Their dependence on you should be like dependence on any other addiction. Just keep giving them occasional hits, spaced out and never quite sufficient to remove the craving for any significant period. Friday afternoon is a good time for you to play parent/object of desire/rebellion-leader as required, since the positive effects leave an afterglow which persists undimmed by other events through the weekend while by Monday morning the craving should have returned again. In many companies responsiveness to such emotional hits on a Friday afternoon may be enhanced by the effects of lunchtime alcohol. While generally lunchtime drinking is to be deplored as detrimental to performance (in your own staff of course, in other people’s it should be encouraged so you can deplore it aloud to a suitable audience), in these particular individuals it should be tolerated or even encouraged.
No comments:
Post a Comment