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Practice 1: Hire People Like a Casting Director
Highly effective leaders hire smart; they hire the right people and put them in the right positions. They choose people for key positions as carefully as a casting director. Recruit, hire, and promote people who fit the culture and brand and empower them to act their part well. Only the right people (talented individuals who do great work) are your greatest assets. Fire the job misfits, and take corrective measures with underperformers. Set high standards, and never compromise them in hiring. Hire slowly and fire fast. Leave a position open until you find the right person who is also the right fit for the job.
Roger Makes His First Hiring Decision
Roger, newly appointed supervisor of maintenance for a luxury hotel in Hawaii, was replacing a retiring HVAC mechanic. He was inundated with applications and, with the help of the hotel's administrative director, narrowed the selection to two job candidates. Both candidates had strong academic and technical credentials, both came highly recommended, and both had positive work attitudes. One of the candidates was an older more experienced man, the other a younger man about Roger's age.
Which candidate did Roger select?
He went with the older man because, frankly, he feared that the younger man would be a competitor for his own position, and that factor alone forced Roger's hand.
As it turned out, the older man was promoted into Roger's job before the year was out because the hotel's maintenance function had started to slide, and that was an intolerable condition in a luxury hotel. Roger was demoted.
Hands-On Advice: Hire the very best people you can.
Their strength is your strength. Had Roger adhered to that position he might still be holding his supervisor's job.
Casting: Hire Smart
As a leader, surround yourself with the best and brightest people you can find. Don't be afraid to hire people who are stronger, smarter, and have better skills than you. Leadership is not about egos; it's about having people you can count on in a crunch. Believe me, crunch time happens all too frequently, the higher the caliber of the people you've hired, the better your chances for success.
So many companies suffer from a dearth of good people. There's a war for high performers, as there always has been and always will be. This means it's often difficult to fill many key positions. As a leader, you can never compromise. Set high standards, and never deviate from them. Once you compromise, you diminish the level of talent on your team, and morale will suffer.
With a shortage of talented people, many companies fall victim to the fog-the-mirror approach to hiring. They basically hold up a mirror, and if a job applicant can fog it by breathing, he's hired. This is no way to hire. Even in challenging times, you want to recruit and hire the best people out there. If you can't find a highly talented person to fill the job, leave the position unfilled. It's a far better solution than plugging a mediocre worker into an important slot.
Casting directors never deliberately compromise; a movie's key players often spell the difference between success and failure of the movie, and casting directors recognize that. For example, visualize George Clooney playing the role of Tony Soprano in HBO's hit series The Sopranos. Doesn't really hit home, does it?
Attract the Best People
Make your life easier, and make your company more successful. Smart leaders don't recruit the best people, they attract them. Why? Because it makes their lives easier and their companies more successful. How do they do it? They have a clear purpose for existing (PFE), and they live it and tell the world about it.…And the best people come to them.
The success of attraction is based on two principles. The first is a basic tenet of life: Like attracts like. In any animal or human culture, subgroups are composed of individuals with similar characteristics. A leader who defines his company's PFE is saying, in essence, “We are zebras. If you, too, are a zebra, come join us.”
The second principle is that the best and the brightest people seek more than just a paycheck from a job; they seek fulfillment of their own PFE. They seek companies whose PFE supports their own. In certain industries, labor shortages will likely occur again later this year. The repercussions will be felt in lost opportunity costs as companies can't find qualified talent to serve their customers or to fill open positions. Total costs to replace a skilled manager can exceed 150 percent of the person's salary. With over 50 percent of salaried people planning on moving as jobs become available, this cost will be substantial for many companies. Thus, the opportunity to attract the best people, as well as keeping the right people, becomes more relevant.
Take Three Key Steps
To attract the best candidates, follow three key steps.
- Clarify your PFE. What is your PFE? Why was the organization formed? What unique function does it serve? Make sure the PFE is deeply imbedded in the culture, codified in writing, clearly articulated, and widely distributed. An example of a PFE that is clear and impactful is that of Merck & Co., a global pharmaceutical company. Its PFE is as follows: “Our business is preserving and improving human life. All of our actions must be measured by our success in achieving this goal.”
- Tell the world your PFE. When you have a clear PFE, articulate it. Place it conspicuously in all your marketing materials, internal documents, websites, and communications with buyers, suppliers, customers, placement offices, and partners. Make sure that when people hear the name of your company, they know what your PFE is. Your PFE will have an impact on the people who interact with you. Those who have a personal PFE that is similar to yours and who can fulfill their PFE by helping you fulfill your PFE will be attracted to you.
- Fulfill your PFE. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.” To attract the best people, you must live up to your PFE. Exhibiting actions incongruent with the PFE will damage your credibility and decrease the attraction. For organizations that live the PFE they create, every action makes the attraction that much stronger for potential candidates.
By following these three steps, you approach hiring in a new way. Creating awareness about your PFE and then interviewing people attracted to the company will become the norm. Once you start taking these three steps, if you have to work hard to recruit someone, you are likely trying to get the wrong person. Make your life easier, and make your company more successful. Don't recruit the best people…attract them.
Pat's Hiring Policy Fails
Pat was the VP of a successful pharmaceutical company. As the company grew, she continually sought to fill critical positions to keep up with staffing demands. Pat always had trouble finding good people to join her team. In fact, over two years, the company had a revolving door of staffers. Morale was low, turnover was high, and the CEO was at his wit's end with Pat. You see, Pat was hiring to fill vacancies, not hiring to find the best employees. We can compare her ineffective approach to sports, where players try not to lose, instead of playing to win—a terrible strategy. Pat thought that placing warm bodies in open positions was her main goal. What she didn't realize was that all she got was exactly that: bodies.
When I coached Pat, I explained that this was no way to run a business unit and that her company was paying a huge price for her mistakes. The hardworking employees who stayed suffered from low morale as colleagues came and went. As they witnessed high turnover, their psychological state was damaged, and their productivity dropped.
After I worked with Pat, she finally understood that warm bodies alone would never cut it. She needed to find the right people for each of the positions that needed to be filled.
Hire for Attitude
Why is hiring the right people with the right attitude so important? Ninety-five percent of a company's success is based on its workforce. Of course, finding those people can prove challenging. We often hire on the basis of an impressive resume or a recommendation from a friend or colleague. In doing so, we may forget attitude.
People with great attitudes make great workers, as long as they have the necessary skill set for the job. But just having great skills doesn't guarantee success. You need that winning combo of core skills and a positive attitude. Skills can always be taught. A negative attitude is unlikely to morph into a positive one, no matter how much prodding a leader does.
If you hire positive people, their attitude becomes contagious, lifting the skills and mindsets of all around them. Conversely, if you hire people with great skills and lousy attitudes, other team members will feel deflated.
In our current economic environment, be patient; wait until the right candidate, with the proper skills set and attitudes, comes along. The cost of a bad hire can be steep, in terms of money wasted on salary and training, as well as the damage inflicted on morale.
The person you hire should also be a team player, as so much of the work performed in today's org...
