“Dave, you are not the messiah of wayward sales people.”  My boss had a way of being direct – sometimes with a sting.  She knew me and my desire to help others.  I didn’t like the delivery, but she was right.

The problem was, once again, I was hanging on too tight to someone who was not making the grade.  He was not meant to be in sales, and I refused to accept it.

This is a repost from April 2013

Good Person – Bad Hire

As I look back at the people I hired through the years, some turned out great and some were train wrecks.  The reasons for the hiring mistakes were as varied as the people involved.

I have written a few blogs about these experiences:

Review Hiring Blogs Here

I am a big believer in hiring people of high character.  Though I got better at finding people of high character, I still made some bad hires.

Hiring In Four Categories

I can categorize my good hires and poor hires into 4 groups.

Wrong Person, Right Job:  These are the people with the gifts for the job, but without the character.  They can deceive everyone around them with a smile on their face.  The good news is, sooner or later these people were exposed.  The bad news is I subjected my company, my team and myself to their ugliness.

Wrong Person, Wrong Job:  Admittedly, I rarely missed in this way.  But fortunately when I did, their lack of character and competence were exposed quickly.  This type of person usually makes it easy on the leader to get rid of them.

Right Person, Wrong Job:  This type of mismatch was painful.  A high character person who was just a bad fit.  These are the people I wanted to save because I truly liked them, and what they stood for.

Right Person, Right Job:  These are the people I look back on with pride.  Not only were they wildly successful, they were also a joy to work with because they were in their sweet spot.

Good To Great

Jim Collins in his book Good To Great, says the first task is getting the right person on the bus.  The second task is getting them in the right seat.

A good person can be a bad salesperson (or a bad accountant, marketer, engineer, etc.).  There have been times when I’ve witnessed good people be treated poorly by a leader because they were in the wrong job.

This is un-called for when the leader was the one who put them there.  If this is the situation, the leader should do everything possible to get that person in the right seat!

In my case, instead of trying to save this person’s sales career, I worked to get him in the right seat.  I was able to help him find a position that suited his talents and gifts perfectly.

That person is now working for a major corporation and running a department that is only peripherally associated with sales.  Years after the fact, I received a great email from this former sales person thanking me for helping him realize he was sitting in the wrong seat on the bus.

A Final Note

Sometimes people outgrow a job, or the job outgrows them.  In these cases, it is still the leader’s responsibility to move that person towards what they are best suited for at this point in their lives. 

It is wrong for them and for my organization to keep them there because it used to be the right place for them.  It may not be an easy conversation, and it may meet with resistance.

But, it is my job as a leader to make that happen for them and for my team.  These tough conversations are why they pay leaders the medium bucks.

The Bottom Line

I had to learn that good people can be bad at their jobs.  As their leader, it was my responsibility to get them into the right role so they could flourish.

Sometimes that role was not with me or even within my company.  The sooner I quit trying to save them and turn them into something they were not, the sooner I could truly be the leader they needed at that moment and find where they belonged.

Question:

Do you know of someone you work with who is mismatched for the job they are in?