Over the past several decades managers have had to adapt to a stark reality: Individuals with unique talent can profoundly affect the value—and even the nature—of the work their organizations produce. A film studio can make a movie with or without Julia Roberts, but it won’t be the same movie. The Green Bay Packers can play football without quarterback Aaron Rodgers—but they will have to run a different offense. If a pharmaceutical company loses its star scientist, it will have to change its research program. If a hedge fund loses its investment guru, it will need to alter its approach to investing.

As the knowledge economy has taken over the business world, people with rare expertise and skills have become powerful—be they corporate executives, research scientists, money managers, artists, athletes, or celebrities. At the same time, technology and innovation have modernized the capital markets, making funding much easier to get and further shifting power from capital to talent. And while the earnings of talent in many domains have skyrocketed over the past four decades, nothing has matched topflight managers’ ability to extract value: Steve Ballmer made the vast majority of his $96 billion fortune by being Bill Gates’s first business manager. Eric Schmidt’s $24 billion net worth came from taking the reins of Google for a decade, and Meg Whitman’s $5 billion from serving as eBay’s CEO for 10 years.

Such eye-popping numbers have given rise to the belief that star performers are deeply motivated by compensation and that big monetary rewards are key to their recruitment and retention. There is a grain of truth to that. I’ve met plenty of CEOs who pump up the perceived value of their companies to inflate their stock-based compensation; activist hedge-fund managers who destroy companies for short-term gain; investment bankers who, in the pursuit of big fees, persuade their clients to make unwise acquisitions; and consultants who sell their clients work that they don’t need.

Yet that’s not whom I’m talking about here. None of those me-first people have the ability or the motivation to make their organizations or teams great for a sustained period. I can say with confidence that in my 40 years of working with people who truly are in the upper echelon of talent, I haven’t met a single one who is solely or even highly motivated by compensation. And that brings me to something managers need to know: Feeling special is more important to talent than compensation is. As I will show in this article, when it comes to managing star employees, the secret to success is making them feel like valued individuals—not like members of a group, no matter how elite.

I’ll begin with the story of Giles.

Giles’s Paternity Leave

Thirty years ago, when I was co-running the strategy consulting boutique Monitor Group, Giles was one of a dozen or so most senior members of the firm—what we called global account managers (GAMs)—and a rising star among them. He approached me to ask for paternity leave for his first child, now a fairly standard request but a bit more unusual back then. I readily replied, “Sure, Giles. You’re a GAM. At your level you can do pretty much whatever you want. Take as much time as you need.”

He said, “OK” and walked off, looking sullen. I was surprised. He had asked for something, and I had given it to him without quibbling or conditions. What was his problem? Then it dawned on me. Giles didn’t want to be treated like a member of a group—even if it was the exalted Monitor GAMs. He wanted to be treated like an individual. He wanted to hear “We care about you and what you need. If paternity leave is particularly important to you, we support you 100%.”

In her series Dog Vogue Sophie Gamand explored the world of dog fashion. Working with New York City pet couturiers Anthony Rubio and Dawn Deisler, Gamand captured the mighty spirit of dog models who strut the city’s runways in glamorous outfits.

The result would have been the same—unrestricted paternity leave—but the emotional impact would have been very different: Giles would have felt special, uniquely special.

Since that incident, I have seen the same dynamic again and again. It was because he needed to feel special that basketball icon Michael Jordan famously had his own rules—to the chagrin of some of his teammates. People like him spend their lives striving to be unique. They perform over and above other people. They prepare more; they work harder. They hold themselves to higher standards. They accept the additional pressure that comes with that territory. And that’s why Giles was upset. It was jarring at a very deep level to have worked so hard to stand out from everyone else and then get treated like just another GAM—even though that was a position that many top MBAs dreamed of getting.

People like Giles aren’t simply doing a job for you. They create outcomes that wouldn’t be possible if they disappeared. You can’t pigeonhole them into a category and expect to keep them happy. You have to create unique categories for them, even if that means adapting the rest of the organization. If you don’t, you and your star will both suffer, as the case of the football star Aaron Rodgers vividly illustrates.

The Sad Story of Aaron Rodgers

After a stellar 17-year career with the iconic Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers has established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play in the National Football League. At the time of this writing he already had the fifth-most touchdown passes in history. His career passer rating, the most comprehensive measure of quarterback effectiveness, was the highest in league history for any quarterback with five years or more of starting play. He had led the Packers in 2011 to their first Super Bowl win in 14 years and been named the Super Bowl MVP. He’d been the NFL’s MVP three times—tying for the second most often in league history—including during the 2020 season.

The Packers have twice made Rodgers the highest-paid player in the NFL, first with a five-year extension for $110 million (covering 2015 to 2019) and then with a four-year extension for $134 million (covering 2020 to 2023). Compensation was not an issue. And Rodgers reciprocated by being the superstar face of the franchise.

But at the NFL draft in April 2020, the Packers’ general manager, Brian Gutekunst, traded up to be in a position to pick the quarterback Jordan Love, a potential successor to Rodgers, instead of selecting a wide receiver who would provide more offensive power to Rodgers. According to all involved, Gutekunst never spoke about his plans with Rodgers in advance. That year the Packers didn’t draft a single wide receiver, and the sports media kept asking Rodgers about the shallowness of his wide receiver cadre. In a September 3, 2020, interview he expressed enthusiasm for his four top receivers, including Jake Kumerow. On September 4, Gutekunst cut Kumerow, who was immediately picked up by the Buffalo Bills. When asked two months later about the prospect of the Packers’ picking up a wide receiver at the trade deadline, Rodgers responded: “I truly understand my role. I’m not going to [advocate] for anybody. Last time I [advocated] for a player, he ended up going to Buffalo.”

Rodgers went on to have an MVP season and led the Packers to the National Football Conference championship game. But during it his coach chose not to try for a game-tying touchdown with 2:09 remaining on the clock—a decision that sent Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the Super Bowl, which they won.