| A common complaint is about employees who
repeatedly fail to follow through on specifically requested tasks. The reason for the lack
of follow through is often something like “not enough time, couldn’t get to
it.” I cringe when I hear business leaders admit they begrudgingly continue to
“accept” this excuse. (Accept is in quotations because they don't really accept
it, they became frustrated with it and want it to change as the status quo is unacceptable
and negatively impacts on business results.)
When I first heard this from a couple of my own clients, I
presumed that their employees just weren't committed to the job and helping the company
achieve its goals. I was told in both cases that was not an accurate assessment as these
employees were “good employees that were always on time for work, rarely took days
off and worked hard while on duty.”
I then said, “Then its just procrastination as they
are not comfortable doing what you are asking of them and they avoid it. They are
“yessing” you and always defaulting to activities they are more comfortable
performing, letting your priorities slip.”
The next day I received a call from one of these clients
saying, “You were right, she admitted to me she wasn’t comfortable making the
calls I was asking her to make." No kidding!
You can’t make pigs fly!
And you can’t have a receptionist, hired because of a
personality geared toward make people happy and liking your organization, make collection
calls or missed appointment reschedules. You can’t have a vet technician who prefers
to interact with animals over humans make outgoing phone calls for collections while also
struggling with challenging conversations with patients over billing and appointments.
In small businesses I realize it is imperative for people
to fill multiple roles and multi task. I get that. But if that is the job expectation, you
better invest more time in hiring the right person for that dual role.
Stop hiring the first person that has some of the skills
you determine are your highest priority and then try to squeeze in the other
responsibilities after they’re hired, or without full disclosure during the original
hiring process. This is bait and switch.
I coach my clients to paint the most challenging job
expectations as possible so that reality will never be as tough as articulated in the
meeting and have the employee sell themselves that they are a fit for contributing to that
type of work environment.
Quite simply, you must invest time on the front end of the
hiring process to:
1. Create a job description that includes specific
performance expectations and job outcomes and make it as comprehensive as possible for the
position you are looking to fill.
2. Develop specific behavior based questions of your
applicants in the interview process that are geared to generate answers that will let you
know how they would react to real life situations they may encounter in your work
environment.
3. Invest at least as much time in evaluating an
individual’s personality, attitude and beliefs around work ethic, personal and
professional growth and development, and working in teams, etc as you do investigating
their work experience and education.
Make sure you have people who are working in their areas of
strength 80% of the time if you want happy, productive employees.
Baseball teams do not have catchers playing center field,
or third basemen coming in as relief pitchers. In football, quarterbacks do not play
defensive line, and wide receivers do not kick field goals.
And, pushing a pig out an airplane door at 15,000 feet to
try and teach them to fly will just give you a dead pig when they hit the ground with a
loud “splat!” Trying to get employees to perform tasks they are not suited for
will cause them to fall just as flat!
Are you trying to make pigs fly in your hiring and employee
performance expectations? |
