Nothing can be better, can it? Having genius employees chugging away at what they do best while your company rises to the top of the pile of all its competitors. This is like a dream come true for all employers, across the world – being able to afford brilliant employees. It’s obvious why. Geniuses are so good at what they do that they aren’t only more productive than everybody else but also inspire everyone to be better than what they’re used to. The only problem is managing those outstanding employees.
If you’re a genius too, then you’ll most probably enjoy working with such employees. However, if you’re like everyone else, then you’ll find managing brilliant employees a challenge. If you’ve never dealt with one, let us explain to you. These types of employees tend to be emotionally temperamental as well as demanding when it comes to working. They demand that everyone around them including the boss performs.
This is why it can be difficult for a normal human being to manage and keep up with genius employees. So, as a promoter or Chief Executive Officer of your business, how can you get around the double-edged swords that these employees can be? Here are some secrets.
Genius Employees Respect Merit, Honesty, and Fairness
You don’t become a genius without valuing the right principles in life. In fact, you can’t excel in life if you don’t value the right principles. What are these values? They are basic things such as merit, honesty, and fairness. All genius employees will value merit, honesty, and fairness. Because they believe they have merit, they value it in others as well.
Moreover, because of their brilliance, they can’t really be fooled. This means that they prefer honesty over duplicity because they can invariably recognise hypocrisy and double standards in people. Finally, they expect everyone around them to be fair. If they make a mistake, they expect to be called out for it and if they achieve something great, they expect appreciation for it as well.
Being true to these standards with genius employees can go a long way in keeping them happy. In contrast, if a business owner tries to keep them subservient or plays games with them, he will invariably end up losing them to his competitors.
Genius Employees Expect Respect for Their Accomplishments
In the previous point, we explained how genius employees value merit in others. Well, they value merit in others because they’re proud of their own skills and merit. This pride means that they expect to be rewarded or, at least, appreciated for their achievements. On the ground, this means praising them, applauding them, or even rewarding them for great achievements in their line of work.
If they solve a particularly difficult problem, diffuse an especially volatile situation, or bring in loads of money into the organisation, it is better to appreciate them openly as opposed to brushing things under the carpet just to keep them working hard. Genius employees will almost always produce results, regardless of whether they get complacent or overconfident. So, it is best to keep them happy as opposed to using psychological entrepreneurial techniques to keep them productive.
Genius Employees May Question Knowledge and Skill but Never Experience
Because genius employees are observant and spot merit wherever it is, they will also always spot someone who is faffing or using his position to put them down, despite the fact that their capabilities are greater. This is why bosses who use their position to deal with their insecurities rarely ever retain such employees. In contrast, bosses that aren’t insecure about their knowledge and skills or even experience tend to do well with even the most mercurial of such talented employees.
In fact, experience is the key in dealing with brilliant employees. These types of employees are sure to question knowledge, facts, and skills but they’ll rarely ever question an individual’s experience. This is especially true if the experienced individual explains the logic behind his actions and the reasoning behind his thinking. Genius employees will never give up a chance to learn and this means listening to other people’s experiences.
Genius Employees Enjoy Innovation and Appreciate Management’s Support
Learning is at the core of all genius employees. The reason why people think that they’re geniuses is that they never stop learning. They’re constantly in search of new skills, knowledge, and experiences. In fact, even in the same tasks and projects, you’ll often find them trying to improve productivity and efficiency. However, this means innovation and creativity.
Innovation and creativity aren’t always appreciated by entrepreneurs that are set in their ways. If you’re not open to innovative methods and creative techniques, then you may not be able to retain genius employees. More importantly, if you’re not open innovation and creativity, then you aren’t really tapping into the full potential of your employees.
Sometimes, even the most mediocre of employees can come up with better ways of doing things or even a particularly effective solution to a problem. Encouraging this won’t only help you retain your geniuses but also improve the overall knowledge base of your organisation.
Genius Employees Desire Upward Mobility With Respect To Skills and Positions
Merit and reward go hand in hand. Even the most talented individuals will stop trying to excel if you don’t reward them for their genius and hard work. This is precisely why genius employees desire upward mobility wherever they work. This upward mobility could come in a number of forms including position based, region based, or even financial.
Furthermore, upward mobility can also come in the form of skill advancement or acquisition. For example, if you have a technical genius and he has more or less tapped that area i.e. he knows almost everything there is to know, then giving him a chance to get into management may be considered upward mobility. Upward mobility is important to these types of employees not because they’re greedy but because it symbolises success and achievement to them.
Managing brilliant employees isn’t all that difficult if the business owner is a self-aware and sorted individual. This means that the entrepreneur needs to know what his strengths and weaknesses are as well as accept them as his personality traits while trying to improve on them. Being self-aware and sorted also means knowing what hang-ups you have and keeping them in check so that they don’t end up scuppering your conscious efforts.
If the manager or business owner is self-aware and sorted, then he should have no problems recognising genius employees. More poignantly, these qualities will allow the individual to recognise what the genius brings to the organisation, can bring to the organisation, and even what he expects from the organisation in return.
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