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Treat people the way they deserve to be treated
A recent conversation I had with a supervisor in a community living organization reminded me of a lesson I learned a long time ago, one that changed everything for me as a leader, one that is so instinctual to me now that I forget that I use it every day.

Treating people fairly to me does not mean treating everyone the same,
it means treating everyone the way they deserve to be treated.

balloonsThe biggest part of this for me is spending most of my time and energy on my best employees. There is an exercise that I do in my employee engagement workshops where I hand out three balloons, each one smaller and harder to blow up than the previous one. I ask three people to fill the balloon as much as possible in 30 seconds. Workshop participants quickly see that the first balloon fills quickly and becomes huge, the second one becomes a normal size and the third one is barely blown up at all. This is a great analogy for determining who should get most of your time and energy as a leader.

Your best employees (the easy balloon to blow up) will get stuff done without you needing to spell it all out. Be kind and generous with them and set reasonable expectations that allow them to use their strengths and they will do tons of good stuff for you.

Some employees will waste your time and offer you very little in return. It is analogous to our work-shop participants spending all their effort trying to blow up little balloons made of hard rubber!

I spend most of my time with my best people. I get tons done this way with the least amount of energy expended. It's not that I am lazy - it's that I want to succeed. Many people (the old me included) tend to focus on the squeaky wheel: the employee that causes you the most grief.

Is this fair? What kind of message does it send?

The message I think it sends is this: "To get attention around here, stir up trouble."
Well, I want to send a different message: "To get my attention, help make things better."

To do so, I reserve my best stuff and my most creative ways of helping for my best people. It has changed the game for me and it has helped me create a more productive workplace in which individual work and original initiative are rewarded with more than a pat on the back or a bigger paycheck.

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