The Star Factor-Discover What Your Top Performers Do Differently-and Inspire a New Level of Greatness in All

Abstract

The Star Factor-Discover What Your Top Performers Do Differently-and Inspire a New Level of Greatness in All William Seidman and Richard Grbavac AMACOM (2014) 232 pages, $25.00, hardbackThere are star performers in every business and to gain a competitive advantage organizations hope to acquire as many star performers as possible. Seidman and Grbavac based on years of experience have developed a proven method to help identify what behaviors, actions and attitudes star performers possess. The model known as Affirmative Leadership is grounded in Dr. Seidman's research conducted at Stanford and the most up-to-date findings in neuroscience.Seidman and Grbavac describe how as consultants they encountered many businesses that were having major problems within their organizations due to lack of leadership. They acknowledge that the few star performers within an organization can become overloaded. After many years of development Seidman and Grbavac produced a cost-effective system to identify what makes certain individuals stars and how others within the organization can achieve star level performance. Their methodology known as Affirmative Leadership helps a company to create leadership programs that match their needs and strengths.The authors have successfully implemented their Affirmative Leadership program in many Fortune 500 companies and they detail their experiences with companies from varying industries. Affirmative Leadership consists of four phases, including (1) Discover, (2) Prepare, (3) Launch and (4) Guided Practice. In Phase 1, Discover, a company identifies its stars, who will participate in a three-day workshop. A facilitator guides the stars as they identify what makes them successful. In Phase 2, Prepare, a learning program is created that will teach learners the skills that star performers possess. During this phase coaches are chosen and trained by the facilitator. The Launch occurs in Phase 3 and consists of an initial workshop in which the coaches meet their learning group and they instruct them on how to become self-directed learners. The final phase last approximately four to six months and the coaches guide learners through a variety of activities that include weekly group discussions and personalized exercises. The authors claim that 90 percent of those who completed the Affirmative Leadership program exhibit the behaviors and attitudes of star performers.Seidman and Grbavac describe the importance of star performers within an organization and how they can utilize their sense of purpose and esteem to create leaders. A unique section of this book describes how star performers identify what makes them great. The authors explain the wisdom discovery program, which will help uncover these qualities. There are four things that all stars identify from this process, (1) a clear statement of their true purpose in their role, (2) a big-picture view of the steps needed to achieve their purpose, (3) an in depth definition of what greatness looks like for each step, and (4) the activities that help build the necessary habits to achieve this greatness.The authors explain that when creating the Affirmative Leadership program it is important to apply the most effective ways in which people learn. They suggest varying the learning tasks in order to create positive habits. In order to create engaging content they stress the importance of selecting and training coaches that will assist with the alignment of the purpose, applying the Principles, adapting Learning Tasks and leading discussion and reflection for the learning process. The authors provide an example that details how the Affirmative Leadership program was implemented for a women's apparel chain consisting of 500 stores and how it assisted in transforming the knowledge of their star performers into a successful learning program. …