Insights to Growth

Strong Teams Spark Success

How effective is your communication with your direct reports?

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Even when we have 1:1 meetings, staff meetings, and real-time pinging through Slack and other instant messenger tools, I’ve never met an employee who said, “my leader over communicates to me.”

People generally believe that there’s more information to know. In fact, the statistics are pretty scary:

  • 60% of companies don’t have a long-term strategy for their internal communications (Workforce).
  • 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news (Trade Press Services).
  • 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of the company’s strategy (IBM).
  • 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures (Salesforce).
  • 33% of employees said a lack of open, honest communication has the most negative impact on employee morale (Recruiter).

A direct reports’ need for information and communication increases during time of change and turmoil whether internally or externally driven.

Like any personal relationship, our work relationships thrive or die on our ability to communicate clearly, establish trust, and create a welcoming environment for questions.

To dig further into a manager’s role and the importance of their connection to employees, I found the book by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter, It’s the Manager: Gallup finds the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success, to have substantial research and insights. 

Effective communication with our direct reports is a top priority if we want highly engaged team members. I would enjoy knowing what you find to be helpful in communicating with your direct reports. Get in touch!

Do you have a hiring bias for industry knowledge?

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If so, then is your hiring bias founded on facts or can you teach industry knowledge in a short amount of time?

The Challenge

I challenge my clients to look at this, because when you limit yourself to candidates with “X” amount of experience in your industry, you really shrink the available pool of candidates.

I understand that there are truly places where you must know the industry because of regulations, compliance, certifications, or laws, but there are many cases where you might be able to find great candidates and train them. A great resource to understand this bias and many more can be found in Howard Ross’ book Everyday Bias.

The Advantages

Think of the advantages of being able to train a person “fresh” and being able to put your organization’s spin on the industry, so the person starts with a clean slate and without baggage from prior organizations.

We know from Peter Drucker that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” so really, what you want to do is hire for talent, skills, and interest. If the industry knowledge can be taught, then you should focus on culture fit though talent. One of my favorite books is Bet on Talent: How to Create a Remarkable Culture That Wins the Hearts of Customers by Dee Ann Turner.

My Insights

In the past, I was asked to lead a sales team that was in the green industry. The company had historically hired people who had experience in horticulture, agriculture, or viniculture for sales roles. They were convinced that the person must have green industry experience, but the turn-over for the sales role was 40-50% annually.

Why? Well, people who like plants and grapes generally are not people lovers, they are plant lovers. So instead, we determined what skills and talent were for these roles. Once we made a change, we had top sales performers who came from teaching, hospitality, retail, property management and more. This shift was caused by hiring for talent and training for industry.

I believe that we need to seriously take a look at the advantage of attracting talent with transferable skills from outside our industries and rid ourselves from any hiring bias we may have. We can increase our candidate pool and the chance of finding the BEST talent for the role.

Have you had any success with going outside of your industry? Share your story in the comments below or get in touch with me for further support.

Do you invest time in your employees?

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With the many demands of leadership roles, executives struggle to protect the time needed to develop and nurture their direct reports.

As executives, we get caught up in reports, staff meetings, and even customer calls. It’s not uncommon for time to go by, and we’ve not paid attention to our biggest asset—our people! 

Jim Collins, the author of Good To Great, is well known for exploring the relationship between a well-run company and the people on the team. Once of Collin’s core concepts is “Get the right people on the bus!” More directly, he clarifies: “People aren’t your biggest asset, the RIGHT people are your biggest asset.” 

How do you find the right people?

As a leaders in our organizations we need to be involved in recruiting; it’s never “someone else’s job” to do recruiting. 

As people join your team, they need your advice and counsel. They need to hear your take on the company’s strategy and of course seek help from you on obstacles they encounter. 

To further put this into perspective, Jim Collins gives the statistic that in a new company, you need to put 60% of your effort into recruiting. As your team matures, this can back down to 20%.

So once we find the right people, how do we keep the right people?

They won’t thrive when they are running on autopilot, so remember that your direct reports really need you, your wisdom, your vision, your communication, and your attention.  

We need to make sure that our time allocation is appropriate to the level of maturity of the team – is it a new team, a well-oiled machine team, or a combination? One of my favorite resources on this topic is Patrick Lencioni in his book The 5 Dysfunctions of the Team. Keep this in mind as you plan out your week and reserve time for your teams.

How do we invest time in our people when working remotely?

If you are working remotely, which most of us are right now, here are some questions to help you gauge whether you are investing enough time or not. 

  • Have you built the culture of a “virtual open door?”
  • Do you feel like your direct reports proactively reach out to you?
  • Do you proactively reach out to them? 

If for one week you track the time you dedicated to spending with your direct reports that is just about THEM, how much time is this? 

I’d enjoy hearing about this so feel free to get in touch for further support or questions.

The Staggering Costs of a Bad Hire

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For most businesses 95% of the company’s value walks out the door every evening. Finding the right people is one cost, keeping people in their jobs is another, and when you need to terminate a “bad hire” employee, the dollars add up quickly.

A bad hire is defined a person who did not perform up to expectations and/or one who’s skills did not end up being a good fit for the role they were hired for. In a recent survey performed by Career Builder, 42% of companies reported that a bad hire cost them at least $25,000 in the past year, and 25% reported a loss of at least $50,000. FastCompany created a corresponding Infographic for the CareerBuilder survey.

Besides the direct costs of salary and benefits, bad-hire employees contribute to indirect costs in lost productivity/lost sales revenues, ill-will and disruption for customer facing roles, a drain on support teams and then you face the costs to recruit and hire a replacement employee. It’s no wonder hiring managers get a little cynical about finding good people when their attrition percentages increase.

In the aforementioned Career Builder survey, 21% of companies admitted that they hired poorly because they didn’t take the time to properly test and research the employee’s skills. I’ve sat with hiring managers who tell me that they are “on the fence” about a particular candidate and will “try them out for 90 days.”  This casual attitude makes me cringe as if I am hearing nails on a chalkboard.  If we extend an offer to a person we have a huge responsibility to be their biggest cheerleader, shepherd them within the company and give them every chance to do well. They should be a valued team member, not thought of in the same vein as a rent-to-own RV.

While many businesses may feel like they need to fill a position quickly, it ultimately pays off to take the time to fully vet applicants or wait until better talent is sourced. It will save a lot of money and stress in the long run, and make the company a happier and more productive place to work.

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