Category: General

Last week, we discussed how leaders might be limiting hiring pools and therefore potential competitive advantage by being too stringent on the hard and fastskills required for a job.

I think one of the main reasons we do this as leaders is because we don’t want to take the time to train people.

We hire people, assume they are up to speed on day one (and we make this assumption because they met our requirement of five years of experience in such and such), and then we throw them into the fire and expect them not to burn.

Want people to succeed long term with your organization? Here are some ideas for doing so:

Set up a training plan for them before they arrive. Connecting them to the people they need to learn from in order to do their job well and communicate to these trainers that their most important responsibility during that period is getting the new hire trained.

Allow time for training. And that doesn’t mean a day.

Document processes and procedures that are critical to the job and share with new hires. Set up a time after they have reviewed them to be able to ask questions.

Use the model: I show you how to do it, you ask questions while I’m doing it, then you show me how to do it. Retained knowledge and ability to apply that knowledge is best assessed by whether or not someone can teach it back to you.

Be available.

Remember, real leaders make more leaders. This can’t be done without a leader taking training and development seriously. Meaning, it is his or her top priority.

How specific are your job postings? You post a job and that job has specific knowledge, skills and/or abilities that the person needs. These things can be acquired in a variety of ways. Some postings are very specific on requirements, while others are vague and open to interpretation. I’ve seen many that require at least five years of experience in a specific role before a candidate will even be considered. And the truth of the matter is, more times than not specific requirements aren’t even validated as needed. It just sounds good.

While I echo Ben Eubank’s advice to job seekers from his post Be Able to Do the Job, especially the emphasis on candidates not lying about their experience or knowledge, I wonder if as leaders we are limiting our hiring pool and potential competitive advantage through people by being too restrictive in the requirements advertised in job postings.

You see, hard and fast skills are much easier to ask for in a job posting. It’s easier to say five years of experience in accounting or a degree in accounting, than it is to ask and assess for things that are “fuzzy” like motivational characteristics or ability to get along with others.

Are we missing out on people who have the will (desire and appropriate personality) to do the job at the sacrifice of just finding people who have the hard and fast skills? In my opinion, will is much harder to assess and quantify, but much more valuable in the long run.

Are your job postings too restrictive?

Check back next week to see the real reason I think most people hiring for skill over will…

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Selection 101: Skill vs. Will

Call them “ah-ha” moments or moments of clarity, but everyone at some point or another has a great idea pop into their mind. Many of these ideas could be the source of helping you live your mission (see Power of 3 Worksheet), create career satisfaction, and be of source of helping others, but how often do we listen to that voice in our heads?

YouTube came about because three college guys wanted a simple way to share videos online with their friends. They sold YouTube to Google for $1.6 billion a year later. Not to mention, it was selected as the invention of the Year by Time magazine.

Dave Ramsey has become the go-to name in family financial planning. He writes in his book Entreleadership that he was sitting around one morning writing some goals down and came up with the idea to“Develop a high-touch support group concept that is a seminar and counseling.” This became Financial Peace University which has now helped millions of people live debt free.

A friend of mine was struggling with where to store a ladder in his garage so that it was out of the way. He thought other people might have the same problem too. He came up with a simple device to store a ladder overhead in a garage or on a ceiling that included a simple way to get it down. His idea was patented and is now being sold through a third party company that gets it in big name retailers.

How to Capitalize on Your Ideas?

1. Keep a Notebook Handy

The first place to start with these ideas is actually getting them down on paper.

2. Find a Need and Fill It

Notice anything in common with all three of the examples? They all were people who saw a need and their idea found a way to meet that need. The focus became on helping others do something easier or live better lives.

3. ACT!

I would imagine that on average, most people have about three ideas fleet through their mind in a week. Some may be good, some may be bad, but what’s a shame is that the majority of these ideas are not written down, much less acted upon. They are simply forgotten. After you’ve taken the step to write down you ideas, revisit them weekly and determine where you need to act. Get input from others, do some research, but act on what you feel like can meet a need and help you live your mission.

What’s the idea have you been mulling over that you need to act on?

If you’re a goal-oriented person, having someone to keep you accountable for your personal and professional goals may seem trivial. Why would you do that if you are able to keep yourself accountable for your own goals?

However, the best way to keep yourself on track with goals and actually make the journey through your goals more meaningful is to have some partners in crime to keep you on track no matter how focused and motivated you are.

That’s why the Power of 3 Worksheet points to establishing three accountability partners to help you live your mission.

An example may be helpful to illustrate the value of accountability partners. You may have seen when I went pubic with my goals at the beginning of the year (Go Public with Your Goals) that my first goal for 2013 is to maximize my mornings.

Maximizing my mornings wasn’t going so well after the newness of New Year’s resolution time wore off around the end of January. But, with a friend and neighbor of mine, we committed to running the Nashville half-marathon in April. Because of her schedule and mine, this required 5:30 am training runs. There was no other time to do it. Two to three mornings a week, we rose before the sun to get that training run in. If she had not been waiting on me those mornings, I doubt my feet would have hit the floor. This sprung into action my whole day, and helped me maximize my morning time in the ways that I had sought to at the beginning of the year, but wasn’t quite able to do on my own.

You see, establishing an accountability partner isn’t a process where you necessarily have to go up to someone as ask, “I need your help, will you be my accountability partner?” Oftentimes, accountability partners come in the form of friends and family or professional colleagues that help keep you on track, and they may not even know they are serving this purpose.

Even though the half-marathon is long over, we still meet 2-3 times a week for that 5:30 am run, and my mornings and days have gone a lot better because she is waiting on me bright and early. This doesn’t take into account the time we get to spend talking while we run which, through her listening and wise council, keeps me accountable and grounded in many other ways. My dad has also served this purpose on morning runs for many years as well, and he joins us often.

Accountability partners are valuable for the habits and behaviors they can help you create. But more importantly, they are valuable because of the relationship. Nothing gets done, or anything of true meaning really gets done, in my opinion, without lasting relationships.

Who keeps you accountable?

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Do you have a better half?

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