HOW TO BE A STAR@WORK®
Over a seven-year period, Carnegie Mellon University professor and best-selling author Dr. Robert Kelley led nearly 1,000 knowledge workers at AT&T’s Bell Labs through this unique development process designed by the stars themselves—with outstanding results. By applying the ideas from Dr. Kelley’s groundbreaking research, managers found that the productivity of participants improved at twice the rate of non-participants in less than a year. The program was so successful that it was featured in a Harvard Business Review article, “How Bell Labs Creates Star Performers.”
We’ve developed face-to-face and virtual versions of the original Bell Labs program and achieved comparable results for our clients.
The program is most effective when the complete set of work strategies are delivered over time; however, the strategies can also be delivered as stand-alone sessions:
Initiative: Blazing Trails in the Organization’s White Spaces
This session focuses on the importance of taking on responsibility above and beyond the stated job description, and getting involved in more significant ways in projects and assignments. It involves busting out of everyday work routines to offer original, value-adding ideas.
Self-Management: Managing Your Whole Life at Work
Participants learn how to take charge of their time and careers. The session highlights strategies for balancing work commitments, time and career growth. Much more than project management, this session focuses on how to proactively create opportunities, exercise more direction in work choices, ensure high job performance, and carve out a career path.
Followership and Leadership: Leading at Every Level
This session introduces participants to the critical—and often overlooked—role that followers play in a thriving organization. The focus is on independent thinking and positive employee engagement as critical components of a successful leader-follower partnership. Participants gain insight into their followership style, and consider ways to become more consistently exemplary as they engage with leaders and others in the organization.
In the Leadership portion, participants learn how to accomplish substantial tasks by building and using their credibility to influence and gain the trust of others.
Getting the Big Picture: Learning How to Build Perspective
Star performers have a broad perspective that enables them to evaluate the relative importance of various, and often conflicting, viewpoints. The Perspective session demonstrates the value of seeing one’s job and outputs in the larger context, as well as the need to understand other viewpoints, including those of customers, competitors, colleagues and management.
Knowing Who Knows: Plugging into the Knowledge Network
The goal of this session is to identify and minimize knowledge gaps by building dependable pathways to knowledge experts who can provide assistance in completing critical tasks. The Networking session presents ideas on gaining direct and immediate access to coworkers with technical know-how, as well as sharing one’s own expertise.
Program Objectives
In this session you will:
- Accelerate your personal productivity
- Maximize your value contribution by taking initiative that makes a difference
- Learn how to manage time and projects effectively
- Partner with leaders to become more engaged in driving business success
- Learn how to gain credibility and influence when leading others
- Develop a broader business, management and customer perspective
- Close your knowledge gaps by broadening your knowledge network
- Take ownership of your development and long-term career path
Who Should Attend
This program is for individual contributors and managers who want to improve their personal productivity, leaders responsible for developing organizational talent and anyone looking for ways to significantly increase the value they add to their teams, their organization, and their customers.
It is also an excellent development opportunity for:
- People who have been identified as “high-potential employees,” or placed into “emerging talent” pools.
- People from diverse populations who want to integrate more fully into the dominant work culture and accelerate their performance.