I have never met a high performer who thinks it is fair to give high performers and low performers the same rewards. Low performers love to be treated the same as high performers. But it's never true the other way around.

Every boss worth his or her salt wants to get more work and better work out of every employee. For your part, you are doing your best to succeed and you are trying to earn more of what you need and want. If you do more work and better work, then you deserve more rewards. By definition, those who do less work or lower quality work deserve less. When you earn more, you should get more. When you earn less, you should get less. Right? That's only fair.

You understand that no boss can do everything for everybody. And why would any boss ever want to? You need to understand clearly exactly who gets rewarded, how, and why. You need to know what performance is required of you to earn any special recognition or rewards you are hoping to earn. You need to know exactly how and why you are earning your rewards -- whatever they may be -- and exactly what you need to do in order to earn more (or less).

You want to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with every boss who has any influence or authority over your work conditions and rewards: "Tell me what you need from me every step of the way. What can I do to exceed expectations, to go the extra mile, to step up, to stand out, and be more valuable? Do you want me to arrive early? Stay late? Do you see how I am focused and working hard every minute I'm here? What deadlines do you want me to beat? How can I take exactly the right amount of initiative without overstepping my bounds? Tell me what you need. Because there are a lot of things I need and want and I want to earn that stuff with my performance. I want to earn by getting tons of work done very well very fast all day long." That is the message you should be delivering to any boss with any influence or authority over your rewards.

Here's the number one rule when it comes to earning more: Be valuable!

If you want to have real leverage with any boss, you have to make your boss want to keep you happy. You have to build a reputation for doing great work every day by doing great work every day. If you are patient and let your value accrue, it will usually pay off.

Here's the corollary: If you want to earn truly exceptional rewards, sometimes you have to be willing to sacrifice, to suffer, and do nothing but eat, drink, breathe, and dream the work. That's how you really set yourself apart and earn the truly exceptional rewards.