What Happened To The Person I Hired?
It had been 12 months since I hired Tracy. During the interview process she wowed me with her passion and drive to succeed. I wasn’t just moderately hopeful for her. I thought she would be doing my job some day!
But 12 months later, that person was nowhere to be found. Tracy turned out to be very average – average work ethic, average skills, and average results. She did her job and that was about it. I rarely saw the passion and drive that made me hire her.
The Slide To Mediocrity
I don’t think any of us try to hire average people. But unfortunately, Tracy is not an unfamiliar scenario for those of us responsible for hiring.
The Slide To Mediocrity
We interview a person with a good record and huge potential. Then we offer them the job.
They are excited and promise us we won’t be sorry. Their first day is full of wide-eyed enthusiasm and ideas. But, it doesn’t last.
Mediocrity takes over. They perform some tasks with excellence, but others are sub-par. When we are with them, we see flashes of that potential we hired. But, when we are not there, they operate below that potential.
Four Ways To Prevent The Slide
I didn’t do these things with Tracy. I should have but I didn’t. As I grew and analyzed how my new hires performed, I became very deliberate in my approach to preventing the slide I saw in Tracy.
This is how I did it with Kathy, another new hire:
1. Time Up Front
I led teams for more than 15 years. I truly believe my most dramatic impact on Kathy’s success occurred in those crucial first weeks and months she was on the job.
I was able to establish rapport and trust. I was able to fold her into the culture I wanted my team to have. I was able to be there when she stumbled and put her back on track.
2. Choose A Mentor
I was very careful with whom my new hires spent their time. I didn’t always assign the most senior person to be the mentor.
I carefully looked at the initiative, the culture buy-in, and the teaching ability of a person. Whether that person was with me 1 year or 10 didn’t matter.
In Kathy’s case, I picked someone who had been with me for 18 months but embodied all I wanted Kathy to be. I wanted the best example of what good looked like to be her mentor.
3. Situational Leadership
This is Ken Blanchard’s concept of matching my leadership style to the competence and commitment level of an individual to the task at hand.
In this case, Kathy was an Enthusiastic Beginner who didn’t know what she didn’t know. She needed a lot of direction, as do most new hires.
When new hires are made to “learn it on your own” the chance of sliding to mediocrity increases. Delegating to this person is a big mistake. But, that’s what I did with Tracy.
The best case scenario without direction was delayed productivity. What’s happened and was most likely was mediocrity. The worst case scenario was having to fire her and begin the hiring process again.
Kathy on the other hand, got up to speed quickly. She appreciated the detailed directions early on. As time went on, she needed less and less guidance from me. She remained motivated and became highly competent.
4. Encourage Mistakes
New hires need to know mistakes are okay. If each time Kathy made a mistake, I clipped her wings, she would never fly.
Mistakes are where learning happens. If the mistakes had not been treated like learning opportunities, she would likely always choose the safest route.
Mediocrity is often the result of the fear of failure. Tracy was scared of failure because I had a poor reaction to it. As her leader, I needed to dispel that fear if I expected to ever see her take flight.
Revelation
I was the reason Kathy flew and Tracy stayed grounded. They both had great potential and both were highly motivated early on.
As a leader, when someone fails to take flight, I must pause and look for my role in their failure. It may be too late to help them, but I can always be a better leader for the next person I hire.
The Bottom Line:
As Tracy’s and Kathy’s hiring manager, my work was not done at the end of the interview process. In fact, it was just ramping up.
Why would I spend all that time finding the best candidate possible and then leave her success to chance? Was I lazy? Was I unprepared? Maybe yes to both.
The right start was critical for Kathy realizing her potential. The time and effort I spent up front went a long way in reducing the time I spent on re-motivating her later.
The overall time spent with each woman may have turned out to be the same in the end. But I liked spending time with Kathy when she was motivated and excited about the job.
Pulling Tracy out of mediocrity was a drag. Why? Tracy never recovered. I believe that was my fault. I can’t save all people from mediocrity, but I can be proactive in keeping it at bay.
Question:
When have you seen a high potential hire slide into mediocrity?
When? Right now.
I am that hire. I was brought on board to shake up the status-quo, get the hunter mentality thriving once again, coach the coachable and recommend staffing changes for the rest. I was to identify high potentials and work with them, mentor them and make them better. I was to review the inside/outside sale positions and create better synergy between these two development roles, building teams and outcome expectations.
The first month? Zero access to the C-Suite. Worse yet, my boss as it turns out, is a big part of the problem where he did not move to implement any part of what we talked about. Nothing is getting done as discussed, promises are broken, the meeting “next week” rarely is taken seriously and nobody wants to consider working together or trying anything new. I had to “learn through it”, as the onboarding was mostly a comedy show around the systems we have in place. I have no direct leadership access as discussed, promised and contracted.
Tenure based account ownership is not being challenged leaving the inmates run the asylum, production goals not enforced, and onboarding is not managed by anybody of competence. Nobody, even senior management, cares about the business beyond a single transaction and the C-Level, contrary to the interviewing process, is NOT on board. This or they just don’t see it as their current business model keeps generating the cash, although shrinking in margin. We are selling on price and price alone, playing the game of the commodity brokers, as opposed to improving our dialogue, brand and value to our customer’s organizations.
The culture is highly guarded by people who perform enough not to get fired with a VP/Dir in front of their name based on tenure, not a history of success. Nobody is breaking out, changing anything and it’s desired to remain that way in a strange, un-discussed manner.
So, next time you feel that you need to hire an employee to change things and improve your business who is ready to charge the mountain, bring those along who are willing and able and cut bait with the rest of them, make it more than simple lip-service in your job description and interviewing process. If you yourself, as the hiring manager or small business owner are change adverse, you can hire 100 new employees who are better than the rest and potentially you, and mediocrity is just around the corner, as culture triumphs change any day.
Employees thrive in environments where they can own their own successes through leadership, team building and creativity. Take that away, and you’re an old-fashioned top-down org chart spilling orders through the ranks as they are slowly dissolved down the chain of command, where mediocrity changes the dialogue at each level based on cultural guarding.
When your employees and company thrive on the status-quo and management buys into and protects this mentality, you’re in a dangerous business position.
May I use your words in future posts? Maybe all of them?
Whoever hired you should be your target to get things done. If that is not happening, you should quietly begin you search for the company best suited for you.
Good luck. I hate to hear about a motivated person getting kicked in the gut.
I agree with Brian , too many times the person who hired us are not motivated enough themselves to get the job done. It makes it hard on employees who are ready to make that shift towards bigger and better things! Your employer must have the long-term vision to grow and step out of their comfort zone. I have always been taught that you do not need a title to be a leader. We need people to stay in the trenches and dig out, so to speak. effective leadership is a must have in the business world. If the employees see the leadership lacking then their deserves tends to tank as well.
I am willing to cut bait and charge that mountain given the proper opportunity and a leader with a vision
The leader does have to be committed. Leadership takes time and commitment. If a leader is unwilling to lead someone during the critical early weeks and months on a job, we should never be surprised when they end up mired in mediocrity.
Hi, Dave;
I like your overall thoughts, but wonder about a couple of things-
Admit mistakes made and learn from them, certainly- but learning can as easily (and is much more fun!) be had from debriefing success. What’s more, this kind of learning experience may be shared with others without risk of embarrassment, making it a valuable lesson for more than one person.
Blanchard’s Situational Leadership is a fine model. If leading individuals is a principle interest, the general philosophy and ideas in Greenleaf’s book “Servant Leadership” is supported by thousands of years of cross cultural experience and writings, and keeps us from perceptual errors.
Blaming those we hire for their shortcomings is typical. Who hired and trained them? I’ve never met anyone who took a job intending to fail at it.
Additionally, a “failed” employee presents a learning opportunity for the manager, as you note above, and the organization. Assuming the individual is at fault removes an opportunity for the organization (and the manager) to improve.
The first place every leader needs to look is in the mirror.
“What did I do well?”
“What did I do poorly?”
“What did I miss?”
See the blog that follows this one that lays out some more after action questions a leader should ask.