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eTreat™ is a weekly digital newsletter
provided to you by JobDig. Our goal is to deliver the information
you need to hire and keep great talent.
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Supporting Employees
By Bob Nelson
We’ve all heard how important it is to empower
employees --- give them responsibility to accomplish specific tasks
and goals. (read more...)
Don't hire people just because you like them
By Nick Corcodilos
Do I like you? Managers often hire people
mainly because they like them — and it's one of the most
common hiring goofs. Don't fall prey to it. Don’t hire people
because you like them. (read more...)
When the Golden Rule Doesn't Work
By Marshall Goldsmith
Treating others the way we want to be treated may not work – they aren’t us! (read more...)
Supporting Employees (^ top)
By Bob Nelson
We’ve all heard how important it is to empower
employees --- give them responsibility to accomplish specific tasks
and goals. But, the best --- and most effective --- managers go a
step further, understanding how critical it is to support
their employees by acting as continuing resources to help guide
them on their way. If you don’t provide your employees with
the support they need, they may decide you don’t care,
thereby lowering their trust and respect for you and possibly
engaging in activities that are counterproductive to what the
organization hopes to achieve.
Here are a number of ways that you can and should support your
employees:
Have frequent, personal contact with each of your
employees. Your employees won’t feel that thee have your
support if you don’t interact with them on a frequent
basis.
Recognize the true potential of your employees. Take time
to assess and help further develop your employees’ skills and
interests, hopes and dreams while correcting any shortfalls that
they may have.
Act on employee ideas and suggestions. It’s one thing
to ask employees for their ideas and suggestions; it’s
another thing altogether to put those ideas and suggestions to use
in your organization. Doing so not only can make your organization
more effective, but also clearly demonstrates your support to you
employees.
Take time to ask employees what they really think about their
jobs and about the leadership they receive from you and other
managers. Learning that employees are unhappy in their jobs or
with their management team is of little use after an employee
quits. It is critically important to get candid feedback from
employees about their jobs and then to act on it whenever it is in
the best interests of the organization.
Respect your employees, and treat them as valuable members of
your team. Employees know when you don’t respect them or
consider their opinions to be of value to the organization, and
they will act accordingly when confronted with that
realization.
Involve employees in making decisions that directly affect
them. While not every decision should involve every employee,
you’ll get far better buy-in and engagement when you give
employees the opportunity to have an impact on those decisions that
directly affect them.
Studies show that the one person who has the most influence on an
employee is his or her boss. One of the main reasons talented
employees leave organizations is that they feel they are not being
supported by their managers. Don’t allow this to become the
reason that talented employees decide to leave your
organization.
Don't hire people just because
you like them (^ top)
By Nick Corcodilos
Do I like you? Managers often hire people mainly because they like
them — and it's one of the most common hiring goofs. Don't
fall prey to it. Don’t hire people because you like them.
If you’re a hiring manager, a smart candidate will go out of
his way to make you like him in an interview. It’s a very
smart interview tactic. There’s nothing wrong in this, unless
you let your affinity for the person dominate your hiring decision.
The trouble is, even smart managers overlook deficiencies in a
candidate's abilities when the person is likable. It's just human
nature.
Of course, managers will defend their hires. They'd never hire
based on likability. And I believed that, too, until a top
executive with an international telecommunications company made me
change my perspective. Buck Adams spent most of his time flying
around the world hiring people for his far-flung operations. On one
such flight he happened to read an article I wrote about hiring. As
soon as his jet landed he called me from the airport. “You
just made me realize something that’s so obvious: We hire
people because we like them. What a huge mistake! The only
reason to hire someone is because he proves he can do the
work!”
Does that sound obvious? Adams was embarrassed about just how
obvious the idea is — and proceeded to give me examples of
the hiring mistakes he had made. Even though he was a seasoned
executive, he had unconsciously given more weight to likability
than he did to a person's proven ability to do the job.
This simple distinction about your view of a candidate can have a
profound effect on your business. It’s obvious, but
it’s often overlooked, and it bears repeating. Don’t
hire people just because you like them; hire them because they
prove they can do the job.
When the Golden Rule Doesn't Work(^ top)
By Marshall Goldsmith
A lot of executives assume that their staff members should act exactly as they do -- and enjoy what they enjoy. You can't blame them. Most leaders feel great about themselves. If I were a successful boss, I would be tempted to populate my organization with clones of . . . me. How better to assure that things get done my way?
If only it worked. Leaders are especially prone to this mistake when it comes to their communication style. When I began working with Bob, the CEO of a successful company, I saw this problem play out before my eyes.
The feedback on Bob didn't quite add up. On the one hand, it said he often stifled open discussion. On the other, it said he was always changing his mind. These two characteristics are often mutually exclusive. People who discourage open discussion aren't usually people who are always changing their mind.
Things only made sense after Bob's chairman told me, "You have to understand, Bob is the world champion at debating with others and at arguing with himself. He was a star on one of the best college debating teams in the world."
Time and again, Bob's natural response with any new idea was to go into debate mode and try to shoot holes in it. Let's say Harry, three levels below Bob in the organization, expressed his opinion in a meeting. Bob would leap into the conversation and present the other side of the argument. Harry, considering his status, wasn't likely to be as quick as Bob and almost certainly not as good at debate. Bob just made Harry look very stupid in front of his colleagues. Harry's reaction to the debate was very simple: Quit expressing opinions that Bob may not want to hear. Even better, play it safe and quit expressing opinions at all. Bob thought he was debating; Harry felt like he'd been stepped on.
Bob compounded the problem by debating with himself as well. Someone would say, "Why don't we try this?" and Bob would approve. But a few days later, after he had enough time to debate his decision with himself, he'd change his mind, saying, "Maybe that wasn't such a good idea." In his head, he was open-minded. In his staff's collective brain, he was confusing the hell out of them.
My job was to make Bob see the problem, which I like to call the "golden-rule fallacy." He assumed that his people were just like him and, therefore, liked to be treated the same way he did.
When I told Bob about the feedback he had received, he quickly blurted out, "There must be some misunderstanding here! I love it when we can all take the gloves off and tell each other what we really think."
"That's nice. But they aren't you," I said.
"What's wrong with me expressing an opinion, and someone else expressing an opinion, and we have a healthy debate?" he asked.
True to form, Bob had lured me into a heated debate. I replied, "Well, yes, but you're the CEO -- and they aren't. You have advanced degrees and a big IQ -- and they may not. You were the star debater at your top university -- and they weren't. Their odds of beating you at this game are close to zero. So they opt not to play."
"What about Jim?" Bob countered. "The other day he and I had a heated disagreement. He told me what he thought about one of my plans in no uncertain terms. We had a real head-to-head discussion and ended up with a solution that was better than either one of us started with. Jim told me how much he appreciated my candor and how much fun it was to argue. How do you explain that?"
After laughing at Bob's animated version of his discussion, I replied, "Jim is a younger version of you! He has a great education; he's brilliant and quick. You don't intimidate him. Unfortunately for you, very few people in the world are like Jim, or for that matter, like you. If they were, your style would be perfect."
All of a sudden, the light bulb went on for Bob. He saw that he was operating under a bogus assumption about how to treat others. So he changed his behavior. He paid close attention to his debating urges and stifled them when they put his staff at a huge disadvantage. He routinely invited people to voice their opinions in meetings and thought once, twice, three times before challenging them. As a CEO, he started making clear decisions and quit causing confusion by publicly debating with himself. After 12 months, Bob's team perceived him as a better boss.
The golden rule doesn't always work in leadership. If you manage your people the way you'd want to be managed, you're forgetting: You're not managing you!
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