Successful careers are driven by ‘worksmanship’. Because workmanship is the main component of performance appraisals. Of incentives. Of rewards. This leads to a high performance (individualistic?) culture of KPI’s meet-my-targets.
Adding ‘citizenship’ as a second dimension offers a more complete picture and opens up new perspectives on talent management.

Workmanship is your ability to work well; your professionalism in all what you undertake; your capacity to meet the quantified business targets you’ve defined or been assigned. Citizenship, on the other hand, is your daily behavior; your code of conduct; your capacity to live in your working community and integrate with others. Adding citizenship to workmanship opens new assessment perspectives.

In its simplest form, it reveals four talent review quadrants: role models, primadonnas, softie, and laggards.

  • Role Models: these score high on workmanship and high on citizenship. These are your best people assets. Treat them fairly. Empower them. Give them visibility in the firm. And above all, secure their loyalty, have a clear and shared career plan, and do your utmost best to fulfill their needs and demands.
  • Primadonnas: we all know these ones! High performers, poor citizens. Admired for their business performance, but hated for their absence of social skills. You sure don’t want to lose them: they are top performers – and they know it! Yet you should not leave their behavior unaddressed. Mentoring is what you and they are looking for… With a commitment to progressing on citizenship.
  • Softies: a silent, large group of friendly good corporate citizens… scoring low on workmanship. You like them – we all like them – yet their ‘numbers’ disappoint, time and again. It is probably not a lack of will, but either a lack of skills, clarity, or support. Training is what you and they are looking for…
  • Laggards: low on workmanship and low on citizenship. These require high maintenance, but that is precisely what you should not do. Give them one last chance. After that, exit management is your best choice – tough but highly effective. Don’t commit the classic mistake to waste your time and energy on these: your priority is managing the talents of the other three quadrants, not this one.

So here is our practical advice: First, integrate citizenship in your managers’ assessment. Start from the top. Measure citizenship against corporate values or against operating principles. Collect data via peer reviews or 360° assessments. Second, ask yourself in which quadrant you would put your team members. Third, think in terms of ‘consequence management’: empower role models, mentor primadonnas, train softies – and give a last chance to laggards. This will boost your talent management!

If you would like to know more about this topic, develop your people skills during our boost seminars, coaching programs and development trainings, contact us!