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Warning: This is a 12-Step Program.
You're overtired and cranky. You've crashed on the couch so you don't wake your S.O. Dark is REALLY dark at 4AM, but you finally got the presentation slides right or the invoices out or the truck fixed. Life is good. Time for a couple of hours of shut-eye, right? Maybe not. You keep thinking, “I can't keep doing this. Whaddamygonnado?” You already know the answer: Get with The Program.
Whether new or familiar, the hiring process requires you to confront certain gremlins: “I do it better, faster, bigger, more carefully, more thoroughly…” Or, basically, “I don't share very well.” So, take a deep breath, consider the following guidelines, hire the staff you need, and let them become your best asset.
- Recruit an advisory board – Especially if your business is small and/or if you've been a single performer for a long time. It will introduce objectivity and expose you to other MOs and working styles. To make the employer/ee “thang” work, you must be able to articulate what you need. Let your advisors help you construct (yes, construct) a position that meets that goal and provides a real, positive opportunity .
- Scope out each job and job category – Carefully record its processes, responsibilities, and relationships in the organization. Write a detailed description for each job, including both the ideal attributes and basic requirements. Make sure that there are recognizable distinctions between various job categories and individual roles. Use your advisory board if you have trouble doing these things.
- Hiring is in your gut, too – You know what you need, objectively, but you also have to listen to your intuition. Prod that sensitive side to let it out. You are hiring skills, yes, but consider the potential relationships - yours with your employee, the employee with your clients, and the employee with other employees. And, you must be able to let your new hire do the things you hired him or her to do.
- Share your vision and your expectations – Be up front. As the communicator, it is your obligation to spell these out in a concrete and approachable way. Most of us need to see important messages in many forms, all the time. As your business evolves, so must the messages. Make sure your staff sees and absorbs changes as they occur.
- What do you mean you can't teach? – Sure you can. You transmit your beliefs about your work, product, service, and customers with an earnestness that is unmistakable and memorable. Teaching step-by-step processes are also something you can work out, with the help of others if need be.
- Once trained, forever tuned? – Training employees does not absolve you of responsibility and your employees don't want it to. They want you to be an active observer, continually teaching. Be a cheerleader. Correct miss-steps quietly. Consider, for instance, setting up a signal for you to know when your employee needs help with a customer.
- Be a good example – Is “Do as I say, not as I do” genetically imprinted in us all? Practice “silent mentoring” by setting the tone for the varieties of customer interactions, and in how you care for your staff, your office, public spaces, and your community.
- Construct an incentives plan – Not just $$; include follow-through. According to Roy Podell, former President of Global Odysseys, an incentive travel group, too many incentive programs are heavy on the front end, but die on the vine because no one keeps score. Set up campaigns that reward the little things as well as the big. And make sure rewards go out!
- Let your employees see you screw up – TQM be damned; perfect is impossible. Set the bar high, but remember every job has a learning curve and everyone has a bad day once in a while. Your staff watches you closely. Your very humanity will be read positively. If you can, use the occasion to underscore a point. Consider the following:
- Mistakes are the stealth teacher – You can't train for every contingency, or be onsite every hour. That's why you hire good people. Encourage experimentation. Yes, we know you've spent years honing your services strategy… Most mistakes aren't fatal. The freedom to try different tacks keeps employees interested and creative - and around for the long term. Learn from someone else's original thinking and curb your instincts to be a firefighter.
- Don't shoot until you know the whole story – In our zeal to fix or prevent problems we are often quick to judge and act. Employer-employee relations and the litigiousness of the times dictate that care and consideration overrule impulsivity. Even without the threat of a suit, the way you handle a dicey situation has a huge impact on your staff - maintain an office climate that encourages risk-taking along with adherence to policy. And keep good notes
- Build in measurable criteria – A good job description includes mechanisms by which you can assess your employees. Small organizations present more informal opportunities to evaluate performance and set or reset expectations than larger firms. Larger firms need to keep an eye out for such opportunities. In any case, evaluation criteria must be clear and you must ensure that employees understand them.
Now get out of the way. Don't abdicate responsibility. Watch, check in often, moderate, give feedback, keep tuning your organization. You set the tone. When an organization “works,” the credit goes both ways. When it doesn't, the blame also goes both ways, and the larger responsibility is yours. Cut your losses and fix it. Your knowledge and experience are invaluable as long as you communicate them. Oh, and do what you hired your staff to let you do - get your own work done.
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Joan Perkins is the founder of Gambit Group, a marketing strategies and communications, corporate communications, PR, and events planning practice in the Boston area. She has authored award-winning client profiles and success stories for AT&T's Adelie Corporation and Alta Vista Marketspace, and managed internal consulting groups at MIT and Textron Systems doing newsletters, promotional materials, and technical writing. Joan has extensive experience teaching writing, internal communications skills, marketing communications, and presentation techniques at MIT, Bentley College, The Boston Architectural Center, and in various corporate venues.
© 2000, Gambit Group
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