What your manager wants from you but will never say
Why you should be a low maintenance, high performance employee
A friend wanted to quit the company we were part of, a storied and successful Indian SaaS startup.
I knew our CEO would try to convince him to stay, my friend was good at his job. So I was interested in this conversation.
When he came back, he told me something that was said in that meeting, and it stuck with me. His boss, our CEO, had told him that he was a low maintenance, high performance employee, and it would be crime if he as a manager failed to make him stay.
Since then, this idea has been at the back of my mind, and over the years, I’ve realised this is what your managers want: Low maintenance and high performance. It’s a weird way to articulate a human resource, I know. But so is calling a human a resource.
Managers have a lot to do, there’s a lot going on that they know, and more going on that they don’t know. If you are reporting to a CEO, multiply this by a factor of 10. In such situations, half of your job is not to disturb them with silly stuff. That’s why you were hired: To handle things. You can go back and discuss and re-discuss the strategy, but you have to handle the tactics.
This is why managers love low maintenance, high performance employees, because they give managers the confidence. They know a professional is at work, and they know things will get done.
Contrast this with a high maintenance employee. What does that look like? Someone who complains too much, someone who doesn’t want responsibility, who constantly escalates things, who’s not a team player, and seems to create problems for his own team, and others.
And if you are that employee, you’ll know soon enough. You’ll start getting avoided at work, opportunities will not come your way, and your growth will hit a (low) ceiling. Soon, you’ll quit, and your manager won’t bat en eyelid.
This is especially important to understand if you are early in your career, and people are still assessing what value you bring to the role, and to the workplace. If you can put your head down and deliver high quality work without a lot of the above attention drawn to yourself, you’ll find yourself growing quickly.
Does this mean you have to be a pushover at times, and not raise your voice? No, quite the opposite.
Being a low maintenance, high performance doesn’t mean not calling nonsense out, or making your point clearly. It is about what happens after that. It is about execution and professionalism. Moreover, early in your career, this is the reputation you want: Of being a doer. Because reputations matter, and once you own this one, you become immediately more valuable.
This was what my friend did for himself. And our CEO saw him as a resource he simply couldn’t afford to let go of.
So he paid him more, gave him a lot more to do, and made sure that there was a clear path to a promotion.
My friend stayed.
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