Blog Post: Don't Get Blinded By the Stars

Martha I. Finney, president and CEO of Engagement Journeys, LLC., helps companies attract and keep high-passion, high-performing talent. For a sample chapter from her new book, The Truth About Getting the Best From People, email her at Martha@marthafinney.com  For a complete collection of all her extended HR blog postings, including “Why I Love HR,” visit her site Paths to HR Greatness.

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Good candidates are hard to find, we all know that. Star recruits, on the other hand, you often have to hunt down like a lion on a gazelle on the Discovery Channel. And once you’ve bagged one, wow! Kudos to you! As a recruiter, landing a big one is huge! How soon can they start? Well, maybe you want to slow down a little bit before extending that offer. You could rue the day when you got star dust in your eyes.

Here’s the problem with stars: Their bright light could be blinding you to some very real flaws, either in their personalities or on their resumes. Not all stars will burn you, of course. But when they’re toxic stars, their fire power could torch you so badly, so quickly and so thoroughly that you didn’t even know a match was struck.

Let’s take a quick look at what makes a star employee. And then what makes a toxic star.

A star: These people are true high performers. They deliver what they say they will when they say they will. They play nicely with others, even the lesser mortals on your staff – like, perhaps, yourself. They treat your customers precisely according to company expectations. They bring to the organization a unique brilliance, insight, renown, background that you just can’t find anywhere else. Perhaps they came from a previous company that has a high cool factor. Perhaps they came from a competitor. They’re one-of-a-kind. To get them onboard is big snaps to you. Likewise, to lose them would be a strong hit to your company’s prospects. (Heaven forbid they might go on to another competitor!)

Toxic stars: Toxic stars are “all that” but then some. They know they’re hot shots. Or they know they’re really losers who had the good luck to have come from a hot shot company (so what you’re really doing is hiring the pedigree, not the person). And now they’re going to ride off that resume until the wheels fall off. They may or may not deliver what they said they would when they said they would. And so you can just wait until they’re good and ready. Or maybe they’ll deliver if you ask them in a way that’s just so. Extra nice, like. Without knowing when it happened, you’ve found yourself to be a marionette dancing on the ends of their strings.

They’re mean to their coworkers, or they’re rude to your customers. But at the same time, your CEO just loves them because they always seem to know exactly what your CEO wants to hear.  Why does the name Eddie Haskell (from Leave It to Beaver) keep coming into my head as I write this?

Here’s the damage they can do: If you’re a recruiter, you might find yourself getting suddenly busier because people are quitting right and left. Good people who have seen your company through the proverbial thick and thin.  Steady Eddies (there’s that Eddie again, only a different Eddie) who aren't stars to your company because they don’t happen to have a cool company on their resume -- they’ve been busily devoted to you for years. And now they’re leaving. Or maybe they’re just not doing the work you’re used to getting from them because the star has ground them into the ground. And as busy as you have become, you find that you can’t attract good people anymore because word is on the street that Toxic Star has taken up residence (or, rather, has built a rat’s nest) in your organization. And no one in their right mind would apply. (And therefore, you have to wonder why anyone would apply. What? Are these applicants so out of the loop in their industry or community that they don’t know what’s been going on over here? Even you, the recruiter, are going to start wondering why anyone would want to join your club.)

Tolerating toxic stars is bad business all around. But you don’t necessarily have to fire them. Getting them to “lose the ‘tude” maybe one of the most singular moments of truth in your HR career. But you stand to gain so much by taking a stand…now. Your company, its reputation, its relationships with your customers, the financial security and mental health of the innocent bystanders, even your own career and self-respect. Not a bad ROI for putting a stake in the ground.

Last week I talked about how to handle toxic stars with David Russo, the famously no-nonesense former svp/hr of the famously engaged SAS Institute (I mean, when 60 Minutes does a feature about how great your company culture is, you have to be doing something right. Right?).  For the full article that resulted from the interview – complete with his characteristic brass-tacks advice, visit my blog Paths to HR Greatness.