I recently re-connected with my favorite TEC Speaker of all time, Ed Ryan, of MPR Inc. in Chicago. www.buildwiththebest.com. I hadn’t talked to Ed in a long time so I hiked on down to Park Ridge IL to see him.
Ed was my first TEC speaker in 1991. When he opened his TEC talk, he said, “As a Catholic priest, I was in the behavior modification business for 25 years. Now I am in the behavior selection business and I am a much happier person!”
That philosophy has stuck with me for my entire business career. As hard as I try to change adult behavior, I do not believe I have ever seen it happen. Ask my wife. She has been wholly unsuccessful in changing me too! Why not? Well… we don’t have the time or space to go into Lewis Goldberg’s “Big Five Taxonomy of Personality.” (Start with this link if you want to learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Goldberg.) So for now, please take my word for it – you can’t change personality or most behaviors. But despite this caveat, let’s talk about hiring and managing people to bring out the best!
I continue to see so many business leaders invest their personal time in energy in trying to coach bad behavior out of people. I’m sure that’s also part of our human nature and personality. And, of course, we all invest a lot of our time in self-improvement in an effort to be better leaders and managers. I consulted on this topic with professional leadership speaker and leadership development guru, Jack Altschuler. He said in order to have a really successful coaching session, you need to start with a really good individual.
Another Ed Ryanism: “You get hired for what you know, and you get fired for who you are.”
So if you can’t “coach out” bad behavior, what do you do?
You must, before the interview, and certainly before the hire, select the personality and behaviors that are right for your company and the job itself.
Here are my recommended steps for creating and maintaining the best culture in your organization:
1. Pre-employment screening. You MUST screen every candidate that you talk to about employment. There are lots of tools. As you may know, my preferred tool, by far is The Culture Index (CI) http://www.cindexinc.com/ I prefer the CI because they offer an unlimited use license to their customers and it’s the most simple yet accurate assessment tool I have used. Many people who use “Pay-Per-Test” instruments are reluctant to use them on every candidate. You’re guaranteed to waste a lot of time talking to the wrong people if you take this route.
By pre-screening everybody, you should be able to eliminate 50-70% of the resumes you receive without speaking to anybody. And you will be in a much better frame of mind to speak to more qualified candidates.
2. Behavioral selection interviewing. The key to behavioral selection interviewing is preparation and developing in advance the most important behavioral traits the candidate needs to possess in order to be successful in the role and the organization. MPR has an excellent set of tools for this. You also need a thorough interview process. You cannot interview too much.
3. Background checks. I am AMAZED at the number of folks who do little or no background or reference checking. I’ll hear excuses such as, “You can’t get the truth anyway, so why bother?” That’s insane. In Wisconsin, I start with CCAPS (Wisconsin Circuit Court Assess Program). Next stop are all the social media sites like Jigsaw and LinkedIn. I love to check the references that are NOT provided by the candidate. And before I make an offer, I’ll do the $100 background check at GoBackgrounds.com.
At the end of the interview I ask the ultimate question and then both listen to the answer and watch the body language: “Is there anything we have not talked about in your background that would embarrass me if I recommend you for this position ?” Depending on what you hear and see, you may need to do more due diligence on your candidate before you make your hiring decision.
So is coaching a total waste of time? Of course not! But please be realistic about what to expect. Better individuals will respond better to coaching. People in the right roles will respond better to the right coaching. People who are not depressed will respond better to positive coaching. But, C-players, in the wrong roles, who are not happy, WILL NOT respond to coaching.
And, as Dr. Sigmund Freud once said, “Behaviorally speaking, there is NO training after toilet training!” Actually, I said that, not Freud, but it sounds better when you think of Freud, with his thick Viennese accent saying this, no?
Enjoy the remainder of your summer! Packers season is only weeks away (and we know they are a team with the right players and the right coaching!!).
