written by Yoke van Dam
It’s a question more leaders should be asking. Because the cost of losing a star performer goes well beyond recruitment fees and onboarding weeks. It’s the institutional knowledge that walks out. The dip in team morale. The clients who notice the gap. That cost adds up fast.
So before we talk about retention strategies, let me ask you something first.
What does a star performer actually look like in your business?
When I ask leaders this question, the answers are always similar. Motivated. Willing to learn. Good attitude. Goes the extra mile. Has great energy. Believes in what they do.
And then I ask the follow-up: have you ever calculated the cost of losing one?
So what do you do to keep them?
Start with empathy — and mean it.
I teach leaders to approach their one-on-ones like a tour guide. Not a performance manager. A tour guide asks: ” Where are you now? Where do you want to go? What have you tried? What do you need?
When I encourage leaders to ask their star performers about personal goals — not just KPIs — I often get pushback. “Yoke, why do I need to know about their personal goals?” And my answer is always the same: if you don’t know what makes them tick, you’ll never reach their heart. People don’t make decisions from their logical brain. They make them from their emotional brain. If you’re not connecting to what truly matters to them, you won’t get their real buy-in.
I worked at a Magazine years ago. Our annual incentive was a trip to Mauritius. Everyone was excited. It did nothing for me — I wanted Italy, Greece, and France. Had they given me the same rand value and let me choose, I would have run through walls for that target. One size does not fit all. Find out what actually lights your people up.
Show them their progress.
Dan Ariely — who wrote Predictably Irrational — ran a study with two groups of students building Lego Bionicles. One group could see their completed Bionicles accumulating under the table. The other group had theirs broken apart and handed back to them each time. (Eish).
What would motivate you more? Getting your work shredded into pieces? Or seeing the progress as you are going along?
Mind-altering insight… People need to see that their work matters and that it’s going somewhere.
And yet, so often your team might be working an entire week or month, even into the weekend, on finalising a project or presentation. But you only told them on Monday that the project had been cancelled? In a moment, all of that work is rendered worthless, and with that, their morale.
So what is my advice?
Make progress visible. Put it on a wall. Create a visual tracker.
If things change, let the team know quickly.
At one company I worked at, we had a group target, and if we got it, we could buy a breadmaker for our team. An incentive we as a team came up with.
We stuck pictures of a breadmaker all over the office. Every R5,000 sale meant peeling off one piece of paper. When the wall was clear, the breadmaker arrived — and we made wonderful bread. Simple. Effective. People love to see the finish line getting closer.
Connect them to the bigger purpose.
JFK once visited NASA and stopped to chat with a janitor. He asked him what he did. The janitor looked him in the eye and said: “Mr. President, I’m here to help put a man on the moon.”
Does your team know why they come to work beyond their job description? Does the receptionist know how her warmth sets the tone for every client relationship? Does the junior account manager understand how his follow-through protects the company’s reputation?
When I interviewed Margaret Hirsch during the KZN unrest, she was in Springfield with a broom, cleaning up. She told me: “Yoke, we could close the store — but we’re feeding breadwinners who each support eight to ten people in the wider community.” That’s purpose. That’s why people stay.
Stop multitasking when your people are talking.
M. Scott Peck wrote in The Road Less Travelled that you cannot truly listen to anyone while doing anything else at the same time. And he’s right. When you’re in a one-on-one with your team member, are you actually present? Or are you half-reading an email, waiting for a notification, already thinking about what you want to say next?
Real listening — the kind that makes someone feel genuinely heard — changes everything. It costs nothing. And it’s rarer than you think.
Invest in their growth.
The old question goes: “What if we train them and they leave?” Bill Gates reportedly answered it best: “What if you don’t — and they stay?”
Give your people the tools, skills, and development they need to be great. Not just for your business — for their lives. When people feel that you’re genuinely invested in them, they invest back.
And if after all of that, someone still chooses to leave — send them off well. Because, as Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you did and what you said. But they will never forget how you made them feel.
That feeling travels. It shapes your reputation with future staff, future clients, and future partners.
Which of these techniques will you try out to make your team feel valued?