Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager

How to Put the Science of Management to Work for You

Gary P. Latham

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey International
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781473676978
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473691094
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Over the past decade, the call for evidence-based management has been on the rise. Managers have become increasingly skeptical of advice that is based soley on anecdotes, otherwise known as the "art of management"; they demand, instead, proof that the management practices espoused by the authors in the field are truly effective. Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager delivers the goods, covering a wide range of critical management skills, such as hiring, inspiring, training, developing, motivating and coaching. Readers are rewarded with a thorough understanding of how to put the science of management to work for themselves and their organizations. An organizational psychologist by training and experience, author Gary Latham brings a unique perspective to the art-versus-science debate as he underscores the critical role that empirical research plays in successfully hiring and managing employees. Latham advocates using the "situational" interview style in the hiring process over the "free-flowing" one, for example, as it's proven more effective in assessing a candidate's skills and aptitude. Written in an accessible, conversational style, Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager draws upon 50 years of management research, and provides front-line managers with key lessons and tips to help them put research to everyday use on the job. From hiring and training to supervising and appraising, managers and leaders will learn proven techniques for achieving high performance from their employees.

It’s an understatement to say that hiring the right employees is integral to executing strategy effectively. In fact, as Larry Bossidy, retired CEO of AlliedSignal, says, “In the race, you bet on people, not strategies.”¹ Without the right people, any strategy—no matter how promising or well-designed—will be rendered useless. With the right people, however, goals get met, strategy gets executed, and organizations soar.

For example, in the service industry, it isn’t the CEO’s vision that brings repeat business—it’s the friendliness and helpfulness of the wait staff, desk agents, and parking valets. Bob Ford, a management professor at the University of Central Florida, is fond of saying that at the moment a service is delivered, that one person, that single server, is the organization for the customer. If the car rental clerk loses your reservation, you don’t just blame that clerk, you conclude that the entire company is, at best, mediocre. If that car rental clerk is working for you, then people may conclude that you too accept mediocrity. Consequently, you must pick winners—the kind of people who are able to take decisive action consistent with your team’s vision and goals. These high performers are the ones who do great work despite the ambiguity, complexity, and chaos inherent in organizational life.

This chapter focuses on evidence-based methods for selecting high-performing employees who are best suited to the needs of your team. On the basis of empirical research, I recommend four hiring tools, all of which are reliable and valid:²

• Situational interviews (SI)

• Patterned behavioral description interviews (PBDI)

• Job simulations

• Realistic job previews

The first three tools are useful in predicting which job applicants will perform at high levels and which will not. The fourth enables people who are offered a job to decide if it is right for them. Managers who adopt these four tools will select winners.

There are two additional tools I am often asked about—cognitive ability tests and personality tests. They do have some uses, which I explain later, but are less easy to adopt as they require the assistance of a psychologist to administer and score them. I also want to say a few words about emotional intelligence.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK, IN BRIEF

The most commonly used interview technique in organizations today—a free-flowing conversation, or what researchers call an unstructured interview—is, ironically, the least effective. The unstructured interview often goes something like this:

“Tell me about yourself.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“How much do you know about our organization?”

“Why are you interested in this job opening?”

“Do you have any questions for me?”

If you correlate how people perform in an unstructured interview with how they perform on the job, you’ll realize you might as well resort to astrology charts.

Many studies, including one in the Journal of Occupational Psychology, show that the correlation between how people are assessed in an unstructured interview and how they are assessed on the job is very low.³ This is because in an unstructured interview for a given job

• Different applicants are typically asked different questions

• The questions are often not directly related to the job

• Interviewers are often unable to agree among themselves what constitutes a great response versus a not-so-great response

If you were to sit in on any hiring panel in the midst of debating possibly acceptable candidates—whether in the banking world, the healthcare industry, or the automotive industry—you would find that the difference of opinion on what constitutes great answers (and great candidates) as revealed by the unstructured interview is tremendous. Hence, the unstructured interview is not very effective for selecting winners. Even though it’s a favorite in most organizations, you don’t want to use this interview technique—you have much better alternatives.

WHAT WORKS, IN BRIEF

So throw out the unstructured job interview and replace it with the following research-supported tools for hiring top performers. This combination of tools represents the very best of what research shows about making good hiring decisions.

The situational interview, as the name implies, presents people with situations they will encounter on the job. Hence it is extremely effective at predicting how people will perform in given situations. What people say they will do on the job and how they actually behave on the job turn out to have a significant correlation.

Research has also shown that the patterned behavioral interview, where you ask applicants how they behaved in the past, is a good predictor of how they will behave in the future. This is because a person’s past behavior predicts future behavior.

Job simulations test applicants right now, in real time, to see what they can actually do. Simulations have also been backed by many research studies that show them to be effective in predicting job performance (that is, current behavior in a simulated environment predicts subsequent behavior in similar on-the-job situations). One kind of simulation, the assessment center simulation, has been successful in predicting the job promotions and salary progression of people over a twenty-five-year career.

Last, research has revealed the value of a realistic job preview.⁴ The preview is called realistic because you explain what will be great for an applicant if that person accepts your job offer, and you also explain what job incumbents have found not to be as great. No matter how good your other tools, candidates will always know things about themselves that your selection techniques will not identify. A realistic preview enables candidates to decide whether accepting a job offer is the right decision for them.

EFFECTIVE HIRING TOOLS IN PRACTICE

These first four tools provide a reliable and valid evidence-based package for identifying and then hiring high-performing employees. The following sections offer practical information on how to use these tools so that you can create a winning team.

The Situational Interview

The situational interview assesses an applicant’s intentions for dealing with situations likely to arise on the job.⁵ Given the clear relationship between intentions and subsequent behavior at work, the situational interview should be a staple of every evidence-based manager’s hiring practices.

A situational interview is structured so that every candidate answers the same job-related questions. In addition, a behavioral scoring guide made up of illustrative answers is used to assess each applicant’s answer to a question. This type of interview ensures that

• Managers get good job-related information from the candidates

• Managers have a frame of reference that helps them reliably assess the quality of an interviewee’s response

Most important, each question presents a dilemma, as shown below. It is this dilemma that “forces” applicants to state what they believe they would actually do on the job (that is, their intentions) rather than telling interviewers what they believe the interviewers are hoping to hear. The situational interview should be conducted by two or more people. The interview panel should include the responsible manager and someone from Human Resources.

For example, the Weyerhaeuser Company needed to staff a pulp mill. As staff psychologist, I held a focus group with supervisors to describe critical situations that hourly workers deal with in such a mill. We turned these situations into “What would you do in this situation?” questions, and we then generated answers that we agreed were highly acceptable, acceptable, or unacceptable. These illustrative answers became our scoring guide. We correlated the scores we gave job applicants’ responses to each situational question with the scores the successful applicants received one year later on the job. Eureka! What they said in the interview correlated with what they did on the job.

The dilemma in each question forces applicants to state what they would actually do on the job.

Creating a Situational Interview

To create a situational interview, take these three steps:

1. Conduct a job analysis.

2. Create situational interview questions that contain a dilemma.

3. Develop a scoring guide.

1. Conduct a job analysis. A job analysis identifies important situations that an applicant will likely encounter on the job. These situations typically revolve around your team’s vision, goals, and strategy. From this analysis, you will be able to develop a series of questions that will help you assess how a candidate will respond to a given challenge. For example, a job analysis for a purchasing manager position might reveal that a purchasing manager has to choose between competing suppliers, minimizing costs, and maximizing a department’s bottom line.

The best way to do a job analysis for developing a situational interview is to use the critical-incident technique, where managers interview job incumbents to identify the incidents that make the difference between highly effective and not-so-effective performers.⁶

This job analysis focuses on observable behaviors that job incumbents (the subject matter experts) have seen make the difference between a poor employee and an outstanding one. The critical incident technique allows you to ignore situations that occur routinely. It helps you zero in on situations that can have a significant impact on your team’s vision, goals, and strategy execution, such as dealing with an eleventh-hour maintenance issue on the production line or quickly finding a replacement for a team member who calls in sick.

2. Create situational interview questions that contain a dilemma. Once your job analysis identifies critical incidents, you can design a series of situational questions to assess how job candidates intend to handle such challenges. I typically recommend creating at least ten questions in total.

In the case of the job of purchasing manager, you might design questions that assess candidates’ technical knowledge, leadership ability, ethical behavior, and team-building skills. Bui...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Use the Right Tools to Hire High-Performing Employees
• Chapter 2: Inspire Your Employees to Execute Strategy
• Chapter 3: Develop and Train to Create a High-Performing Team
• Chapter 4: Motivate Your Employees to Be High Performers
• Chapter 5: Engage Your Employees
• Chapter 6: Ensure Your Career Success
• Chapter 7: Create a Psychologically Healthy Workplace
• Chapter 8: Instill Resilience in the Face of Setbacks
• Chapter 9: Make Good Decisions
• Chapter 10 : Appraise and Coach Your Employees to Be High Performers
• Chapter 11: Two Evidence-Based Managers in Action
• Notes
• References
• About the Author
• About SHRM
• Index