The Performers and the Producers

This one may be challenging for you. I’m going to ask you to take a hard look at your team. I also may be asking you to make some changes on that team. Here goes.

I’ve come to believe that on many leadership teams, there are often two kinds of people: performers and producers. Now, by performers in this Leading Thoughts, I mean actors. Thespians. Those presenting themselves as more than they actually are.

Performers tend to be good looking, cheerful, and well-liked. They were the ones the teachers favored in school and who were likely office-aids or chosen for the field trips and internships.

They aren’t evil. I don’t dislike them. I have just come to realize through the years that these folks have often risen in the world by learning to conform to the expectations and needs of the bosses or the professors or the search committee or the elected official. The big boy way of saying this is that they’ve risen by “ingratiating” themselves. It means behavior “intended to win favor, flatter or be sycophantic.”

They are always there. Always with a smile. Always with the winning, studied manner. I’ve noticed through the years that they are ever at the side of the powerful, ever in the C-Suite, usually on the rise.

Now, these performers tend to get the attention. Often overlooked are the producers. These folks can be among the good looking, cheerful, and well-liked—they just haven’t made the way they are perceived their life’s work.

Instead, they have usually focused on their craft. They’ve earned the degrees, taken joy in being really good at what they do, and usually are praised as dependable, skilled, and essential.

Yet they are often overlooked, often aren’t the favored ones or the easily promoted. Every firm needs them but senior leaders often fail to reward them and help them rise. The performers get the limelight.

Now, my purpose here is not to get you to fire every good-looking, cheerful, popular person in your firm. Instead, my goal is to urge you to think about each person in your firm in light of these two words—performers and producers—and make sure you aren’t unduly favoring those who present well but don’t help you achieve your goals. It’s easy to do. The performer/actors often have the smiles, the clothes, the highlights on the resume, and the complimentary way. It’s natural to lean their direction.

Now, let me surprise you. I don’t want you to get rid of the performer/actors. I want you help them gain heft. I want you to help them be in reality what they want you to believe they are—productive stars.

I say again, they aren’t bad people. Many of them have just been engaged in a game of “make them like me” their whole adult lives and they need to grow beyond it. They can be both engaging and productive, but not if you let them slip by.

At the same time, in order to have a culture in your firm that transforms performers, you’ll have to build a culture that recognizes and celebrates (rewards, promotes, brags on) the producers. Everyone should be welcomed as part of the team, but it is ultimately producing—not just the dancing at the company party or the jokes told in meetings—that ought to determine value.

My mother once returned from a high school reunion with this report: “The nerds won.” She said the Most Popular crowd from her 1950s high schools days had not done well in the end. It was the ignored kids, the brainiacs, and techno-geeks who ultimately prevailed.

I remember thinking, “What would have happened if someone had refused to allow the Most Popular crowd to get by on bodies and BS? What if both the Most Populars and the Geeks had been led to their well-rounded best back in those days?”

This is your goal in your firm. Everyone well-rounded. Everyone productive. Everyone rewarded—because your eyes are open and you are not deceived.