How to Overcome the Dark Side of Stretch Assignments

Most high potential employees can benefit from a well-designed stretch assignment. However, there are some concerns and downsides that has to be carefully planned for. 

Here are some concerns and how to overcome them:

1. Putting inexperienced employees in an important role may put your business at risk

 
Concern: Employees who are given tasks that require them to stretch their skills may not perform as well as those who are already in their role. Work done may not be error-free or completed in maximum efficiency.

Overcome it: There is a certain degree of risk in putting inexperienced employees in key roles, but management can mitigate the effects of risk through certain interventions. For instance, making available a peer support group, assigning a mentor, creating a feedback loop, providing reading materials can help to reduce the learning curve for the employees.

2. Stretch assignments create “jack of all trades, masters of none”

Concern: While it is probably true that stretch assignments can build more generalists at your workplace, it is not necessarily a bad thing. When you think about a leader, you think of someone who has experience in different job roles. A good leader is someone who would understand all aspects of a business rather than someone who rose up the ranks doing only a single job role.Was Steve Jobs a better programmer than top coders at Apple? No, but he had a broad range of skills and saw the unseen interconnectedness. 

Overcome it: Managers designing stretch assignments should try to ensure that sufficient depth is achieved in executing the tasks. Another way is to build up specialisation tracks so that employees can develop a more well-rounded skills set in better defined career paths.

3. Stretch assignments have no real purpose

Concern: Some critics view stretch assignments with little impact on the business’s bottom line and is just a way for top performers to showcase their talents and skills, while others believe that it is used to punish mediocre performers.

Overcome it: Stretch assignments must be implemented with a careful focus on its connection to positive outcomes that have an impact on the company’s bottom line. It must not be designed to be a solo effort that has no link to business impact or strategy.

4. Stretch assignments are not scalable.

Concern: If the company wants to develop leadership skills in 10 high potential employees, it is much easier to send all 10 of them to a leadership skills workshop rather than create 10 different stretch assignments.

Overcome it: Stretch assignments are not meant to replace formal training programmes, but to complement them. Training may come and go, hence companies need to leverage on developmental opportunities presented in the daily work environment to add value to their learning and perhaps allow them to transfer their learning to workplace situations.

5. Stretch assignments add stress to the employee

Concern: Employees may feel overwhelmed by the demands of the stretch assignment and develop feelings of stress. These feelings can interfere with the employees’ ability to cope with the new role. Rather than feel motivated, the employees may feel a sense of desperation and defeat.

Overcome it: In order to reduce the impact of a steep learning curve for the employees, support programmes must be in place to complement the stretch assignments. For instance, ensuring the frequent availability of feedback, providing a mentor, creating a peer support group for all employees involved in stretch assignments are some ways to mitigate the risk of feeling overloaded. Learning should remain challenging yet achievable.