Begin With Selection Of The Right People

Selecting the Right People - Many people believe that there is an art to finding top talent.  According to Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the first and most important step in finding the right people is to get rid of the wrong ones.  This takes a holistic approach to managing HR.  From the selection side only, there is a process that you will need to follow in order to get the right team members through the door.  Obviously, the best way to begin is by being the right company.  Your reputation will precede you.  If you are not the kind of company that values performance and can demonstrate that by eliminating non-performers and rewarding performers, then you will have a lot of trouble attracting performers.  The 6-step process that will help you succeed is...

1. Define What You Want
2. Make The Process Objective
3. Create and Match to Success Patterns
4. Use Situational and Group Interviewing
5. Use Background, Credit, Sex Offender, and Other Checks
6. Make A Conditional Offer of Employment

1. Define What You Want - When managers describe what makes a person a top performer on the job, their amount of experience or where they worked almost never comes up.  The characteristics of a great employee are listed as... integrity, work ethic, reliability, teamwork, communication, style, mission focus, not having to worry when they are on the job, and things of this nature.  The next question I ask managers after they describe what a great employee is like would be...  Where are those things on your application?  The answer is that they are not on the application, anywhere.  We try to deduce those things by looking at the number of jobs, etc.
2.  Make the Process Objective - The first and most important word here is "Process."  Most organizations either have no process or one that could only be loosely defined as a process.  A process is a set way of doing things in order to create consistency.  Objective means that it is done in a way that takes out the emotional response for the purpose of simply getting the best data for decision-making.  An example would be that where I reside, Texas, the handshake and looking someone in the eye are considered viable ways to judge someone's integrity, work ethic, commitment, etc.  I have heard numerous times that when you shake a man, or woman's hand, you can tell what kind of person they really are.  Reality check... You can only tell a lot about a person's handshake by shaking their hand.  According to SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management), two-thirds of all hiring decisions are made in 4.3 minutes or less.  Most managers that I have spoken with say that they know in the first 10 to 20 seconds of meeting a person what they are going to think of them.  If that is the case, there really is a problem.  That means we spend the next 20 or so minutes convincing ourselves that we were right.  The process, defined in the six steps here, is one that looks at people for what they bring to the business, not for whether they are like the interviewer.
3.  Create Success Patterns and Match Candidates to Them - A success pattern is a way to match the psychology of the individual to the metrics of proven success within an organization.  The way that you accomplish this is by assessing three or more successful people in the same job, team, etc.  By evaluating existing top performers, you will be able to pick up on the success characteristics that are consistent.  Once you have a pattern for a position, you will be able to match people up to that pattern to find out where they match and where there are gaps.  You then decide if you are willing to invest in the person where the gaps exist in order to make them successful, or if you prefer to keep looking for that "right" candidate.  Assessments like the Pro-Screen (for non-managers), the Management Profiler (for supervisors and key positions), the SMARTS (for sales, marketing, and promotional positions), and the Dealer SMARTS (for car sales) are examples of tools that can have success patterns built in order to do better hiring.  The Healthy Workforce and the Nurse Retention Tool are examples of tools that have industry benchmarks/success patterns built for them.  The key is that with the patterns built, you have the greatest likelihood of finding great people who can and will perform the way that other successful people have.
4.  Use Situational and Group Interviewing - A situational interview is one that is conducted for the purposes of seeing how an individual will respond when facing situations that actually exist within your organization.  It might be explaining a scenario where a client is upset and asking... "In this situation, what would be your response?"  Or, "In this situation, what would you do to make the outcomes positive?"  You are looking for behavioral patterns that they would exhibit.  The easiest way to use realistic situations would be to ask your staff to write down difficult or challenging situations that they have dealt with, leaving out names and other identifying information.  The group aspect would be that you involve the potential future peers of the candidate to ask questions and give their take on the candidate.  This accomplishes a couple of things.  First, it gives the team a voice in who they work side by side with.  Second, it gives the team buy-in with who gets hired, unless of course, you as the leader do not listen to them.  Not listening as the leader always proves destructive to morale and counterproductive to performance.  It is ideal to use a rating sheet so that each person gets to give input on the candidate rating them from 1 to 10 on each area that is important to the job.  You then tally and average the scores so that you have objective interview data to back up your psychometric evaluations.
5.  Use Background, Credit, Sex Offender, and Other Checks -  Background checks of various types will help to ensure that what the potential hire says about themselves is actually true.  The media has exposed time and time again that people will lie to get a job.  Obviously, not everyone is telling a lie when they interview and/or fill out an application.  However, Harvard Business indicated in a study of ethics in job applicants, that as much as 80% of resumes have information that has been stretched or is a complete lie.  Background checks are important because you need to be sure that any potential employee will be an asset, not a liability for your organization.  One example of this would be an employee that was hired to work in a restaurant that was across the street from a junior high school.  This assistant manager had been convicted of statutory rape and the court had ordered that he was not to be within 200 yards of any school.  He was across the street.  After being hired, he admitted (30 days later) that he lied about not being convicted of a crime on the application and resigned.  Had a background check been done, that conviction would have surfaced.  By doing these checks, you as a business, are taking the necessary precautions to keep your customers and employees as safe as possible.
6. Make A Conditional Offer of Employment - The conditional offer of employment is a one-page bullet point paper that indicates the expectations of the potential hire by the organization.  It is different than what is spelled out in the employee handbook.  This offer is given to the candidate with the following stipulations...  They are to take the offer with them and if they are willing and able to commit to all, not some, of the statements on the sheet, then they will be hired.  They can bring it back up to 48 hours later, but they cannot sign it right then.  It would include things like...  A commitment to be to work on time every time, a commitment to work with a positive attitude, a commitment to complete work when assigned and on time, and then seek more ways to help the company succeed.  It can be anything that is really important to the leadership of the company or that particular department.  This sheet gives you some accountability for the way the employee will work.  It also tends to set strong expectations right up front.  Without expectations, they are guaranteed to let you down.  Don't skip this part.  It is very important!

Now Let's Retain Your Top Performers

As businesses strive to run leaner and meaner, they soon realize that meaner does not always equal leaner.  The reality is that our businesses are based on the productivity of our people, not just a great concept that we have taken to market.  The old days of… build a better mousetrap and the customers will beat a path to your door are gone.  Did you realize that if you compare a low performing manager to a top-performing manager, there is a 96% difference in their productive output in the workplace?  Even at the entry-level, there is right at a 40% difference in productive output from a top performer to a bottom performer.  If you couple those staggering facts with the reality that the four generations each bring with them their own unique set of values and those values often clash, you have the recipe for stress at work.  No matter how you look at the situation, we still need people, and we still need them to perform.  The better they perform, the easier it is on us as leaders to do what we are supposed to do.

Each of us can look at our workplace and see that we have some people that we are so thankful that we have and some that we wish we had never met.  The goal of any top-performing business is to keep all the good and eliminate the bad.  This would be like pruning off the bad parts of your business.  But how do you know which ones are good and which are bad?  If you are like most managers and leaders, you can look at certain people and describe what it is that they bring to the table that makes them great.  They are, for example, honest, hard-working, loyal, reliable, committed to the success of the organization, believe in personal development, and you feel calm when they are on duty/working.  You look at the bad ones and they are… well, pretty much the opposite of the previous description.  But how did the good ones get good?  Someone at some time in their life invested in them.  They were exposed to what all of those positive qualities were in one way or another.  They either had great mentors or saw what bad was and ran the other way.  And as a result, you and your organization benefit!

So, what are the skills that people must have in order to be successful in business and in life?  If relationships have always been the key to success, then it would stand to reason that people must be good at relations.  The concepts and definitions of connectedness have changed over the years, but relations are still at the center of any connection.  The three key concepts to understand are diversity, communication, and motivation.  We have to truly understand what diversity is and what it is not.  For younger generations, diversity has little to do with skin color or gender.  It has everything to do with value sets.  A diverse workforce brings ideas from every angle to the table and explores all styles of interaction before deciding what is right.  It is more open to beliefs and more embracing of style differences.  Therefore, it is critical to study diversity from a generational perspective.  Communication is about how we connect, why we engage, and what outcomes we are seeking.  As you look at communication, you realize that the majority of what we do in communicating is “listen.”  Yet, our training throughout our formal education centered around scripting messages, not receiving them.  The best leaders are great listeners.  The worst ones have to have their ideas only and nobody else is allowed to contribute, except to say “wow boss, you really are smart.”  (Pause to remove brown from the nose of said employee.)  Since we were not taught the critical aspects of successful business communication, it stands to reason that NOW would be a good time to get started.  The third aspect of relating is to learn how to motivate yourself as well as others.  This is a little tricky since all motivation is intrinsic (internal).  The key to great motivation is exhibiting the behaviors as a leader that create the right environment for your teams.  If the environment is right, then the decision to BE motivated is much easier for your employees to make.  That is the trick!  You have to understand the theories of motivation, what the different generations respond to, and how to turn the theories into behavior sets.  The second category of developing your teams is to focus on priority management.  The three keys to great priority management are… personal goal setting, group decision making, and time management.  Personal goal setting is the process of creating a measurable life plan that prompts you to take action and ties individual, departmental, and organizational goals together in order to achieve the desired outcome.  Most people simply look at their businesses and go… “I sure would like to do better next year.”  This does not give you targets, measurements, or motivation for that matter.  When annual goals are set, there should be mile markers placed along the way, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and so on to ensure that you are always on the right track.  The art of group decision making requires a separation of ego and process.  Unfortunately, most managers and leaders go into meetings saying that they have had a brilliant idea that is revolutionary and one of a kind, and then they ask their employees what they think of their amazing idea.  Well………. If you are the employee and your boss tells you that they had a great idea, what would you say?  A few would disagree or argue if they did not like it, but most would agree reluctantly and then discuss their real feelings in the break room after the formal meeting.  The conversation afterward would go something like this. 

         Can you believe that idea?  That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

         Yeah, and they think we like it.  What a moron.  I would love to disagree but I would not want the wrath of Mr. “I can’t be wrong” to come down on me.

         Me either.  Oh well, another failed idea to hand on the wall of shame for our boss..  I sure am glad it wasn’t my idea.

To make great decisions, positive conflict is a must.  One way to spur that on is to come in with… I had an idea, but I really want to flesh it out with you guys.  I need a devil’s advocate here to help me see all the parts of the idea that might go wrong or that could cause problems.  Who can I count on to help me spot all the holes?  Using this approach will make it comfortable for the teams to say what they are really thinking.  The side benefit is that you really do get better ideas as a result of the process.  Time management, the third skill in this area is a little deceptive by the title.  You really can’t manage time.  You can only manage what you put into your time.  It is more like life management.  Think about your day and imagine all of the things that happen on a normal day that eat up your time without creating business success for you and/or your organization.  Now, think about the limited number of things that you do on a daily basis that can and do bring you and the organization success.  The key is knowing how to categorize things as they come up and then doing the important, results-producing activities first.

The third category that is critical to the success of a manager/leader is the Art of Thinking Clearly.  It is truly amazing the number of people in this world that don’t think for themselves.  They allow the world to think for them.  They enable others to take control of their, yes their life.  The three components that have to be mastered in order to think clearly are… problem-solving, ethics and values, and conflict resolution.  In learning to effectively solve problems, we first have to adopt the belief that all problems can be solved.  If the right system is applied, there is an answer for everything.  There is not always an easy answer though.  You see, complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers, and complex, sometimes difficult to understand, right answers.  We want to get to the RIGHT answer, not just the easy one.  Learning the five steps to follow in problem-solving puts you in a position of being able to solve any of your own problems, but also equips you to facilitate others in solving their problems.  Ethics and Values are talked about all the time in business.  There are a number of different “spins” on the subject, but there needs to be a true understanding of where people are coming from when they talk about ethics.  Each generation brings its own definitions to the table.  Whether you believe in “absolute” ethics, “legalistic” ethics, “situational” ethics, or “rational” ethics, each of us has some form or description of what right and wrong are when it comes to ethical behavior.  Truly ethical people understand ethics and more importantly understand the different behaviors that lead to the right interpretation of their ethical stance.  It is far worse for a company to espouse high morals and then behave otherwise than it is for them not to claim any values at all.  People are watching what leaders do, not what they say.  The third aspect of thinking clearly is the ability to resolve conflict effectively.  A rather large percentage of managers and leaders are uncomfortable, if not afraid, of conflict in the workplace.  That fear stems from the fact that most of us have had bad experiences with conflict and have seen the damage that it can do to relationships.  However, avoiding conflict will have a more devastating effect on an organization than intense conflict will.  Those who are good at conflict are skilled at describing the behaviors that are the problem.  By focusing on the behaviors, the other person is much less likely to be offended or upset.  The best of the best at conflict will also describe how they feel and what the effect was, from the behavior, on the organization as a whole.  The behavior, feeling, and effect, when presented in a concise confronting message, will solidify the stance of the confronter and will ensure that their message is logical, non-blameful, and to the point.  It makes all the difference in the world when it comes to getting people to listen.  This skill set will also create better relations because it breeds tactful honesty in the work environment.

The fourth category of critical development for management success centers around Building The Team.  There are three components to building a great team.  They are coaching, corrective employee counseling, and building effective teams.  Coaching is the on-going daily process of monitoring employee behaviors and keeping them on the right track.  Like conflict resolution, it focuses on behaviors that people are exhibiting, not on the person themselves.  As a coach, you are like the thermostat at the office.  The job of the thermostat is to keep things in the right zone (temperature).  If your employees begin to get cold (bad or non-productive behaviors), you turn up the heat and ask strategic questions to get them back on track.  If your employees get too hot (non-productive conflict, wrong focus, etc.) then you redirect them to get them back to where they need to be.  Coaching happens before behaviors get out of hand and as the first line of defense.  When you are good at coaching, you don’t have to do a lot of counseling or discipline.  The second skill-set in building the team is corrective employee counseling, or changing bad behaviors.  The art of changing behaviors can be tricky.  In order to do this in the most effective way possible, a manager will use the “attribution theory” to create the right levels of responsibility.  Here is the reality that we face.  People will only change the things that they believe are their responsibility to change and within their control to change.  Everything else is someone else’s fault.  Step one, then, is an admission of responsibility.  This is why Alcoholics Anonymous meetings begin with stating the person’s name and saying, “I’m an alcoholic.”  Without the admission and the embracing of responsibility, they will not choose change.  As a manager, you have to know what you want from others and how to get them to choose what you need them to choose.  The third aspect of building the team is effective team building.  Bruce Tuckman came up with the four stages of team development in 1965.  Much of the evolutionary development of teams has stemmed from that revelation by Tuckman.  We form, storm, norm, and then perform.  Well…. Most teams form and storm.  A few will norm and then perform.  When they do perform, it is magical!  Understanding the stages of development and how to move smoothly through each stage to true team performance equips managers and leaders to drive success at work.

The twelve skills in the four categories discussed above are what have proven repeatedly, in study after study, to bring success to managers and leaders at work.  You can have the position of a leader without having the respect of a leader.  If you truly want to succeed, you need to have both the position and the respect/relationship.  Build your skills and skills of your managers and leaders.  Ultimately, the people who stay in an organization are the ones that you have invested in.  Even if you do lose a few of those investments, rest easy knowing that you will get a tremendous amount more from your people by developing them, regardless of how long you have them.  Ironically, the more transferrable skills that you give them, the less likely they are to transfer them.