[theincredulousk]

There is a leadership book called "First Break all the Rules - What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently". It's data driven by a large meta-survey and research project.

One of the conclusions was that, essentially, the normal instinct with Performance Management to focus on improving weaknesses is wrong and leads to sub-optimal outcomes. The best managers actually doubled down on each individuals strengths, and simply accepted weaknesses as something to be smoothed out to the minimally acceptable level. (e.g. someone may not be "good with people", but they can't be openly hostile with co-workers.) Instead the manager would look for another employee which had that weakness as a strength, and manage responsibilities appropriately.

It speaks exactly to what was wrong in OP's experience.

[ebiester]

This is exactly true. The real problem is that sometimes, we have people who are good at things that aren't important to the value we are driving as a team. For example, someone who really good at whipping up proof of concepts is really valuable in an agency and not very valuable on a team that is primarily tasked with increasing the performance of an application, whatever it takes.

I can't change my project to need more proof of concepts in every case. So, I have two things in my toolbag: I can try to coach someone to know my expectations for this project and help with coaching those behaviors and skills, or I can let them go for being a square peg when we need a round hole.

I wish we had better ways for matching people with the best jobs that rewarded what make them excel.

[emeraldd]

If you think about it MMO strategies involve picking players how fit specific roles:

tank - can soak up damage and keep the big bad focused on them dps - does damage to the target while healer - makes sure everyone stays "alive" through the fight.

Mismatching roles never really works well. You get similar patterns in the "real world". You're people person does well with end users, etc .. It's a more diverse group (sometimes much less defined) but a similar set of ideas to follow.

[maerF0x0]

Or baseball. A good back catcher doesnt need to pitch.

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

Oh wow, you mean every book in existence got it wrong until this book came along and now we have THE ANSWER?!?!?!

Thank god they solved that problem!

No, this is typical "The only way to be smarter than everyone else is to do it different so I gotta do it different".

good managers are good because they're good managers, not because of this 1 weird trick.

[theincredulousk]

It's an entire book, based on a massive research project, of which that was one small result. The clickbait title of the book is because that is what sells books.

"good managers are good because they're good managers"

LOL thanks. I guess all these books are pointless because you figured it out! Thank god you solved the problem!