18 posts tagged “human resources”

How do you find someone that is ‘right’ for your organisation? How quickly will a potential recruit make a positive contribution? How will they fit with the existing team? Will they be committed to the organisation for a number of years or will they quickly move on in search of more money?

These questions are in the mind of many managers when they recruit a new person but how can they be answered?

Too many managers see a candidate and make a judgement on gut instinct. They are easily persuaded (or not!) by the first impressions a candidate makes. However, if the right person can have a considerable impact on an organisation’s success, (and by inference the wrong person could be disastrous!), why would you hire on a hunch? Surely it makes more sense to invest in a formal process. In addition, one has to question why a candidate would want to take job on the basis of an informal chat, the best candidates know that it is important that they understand the role, what will be expected of them and that the organisation they plan to work for has a professional approach in everything they do. These things would not be demonstrated by a cosy chat in a restaurant.

However, that doesn’t mean that gut feeling and instinct should be totally excluded from the process. For example, if an organisation advertises a position, there are a number of hurdles that have to be first overcome before an interview can even take place. For example:

· The right person or persons need to see the advert.

· The advert needs to excite them enough for them to want to respond.

· They then have to respond in a manner that ensures the HR department or recruitment consultants shortlist them.

So how can managers use their instinct to improve the recruitment process? Essentially, managers should always be on the lookout for potential new recruits. As people we are always meeting others either informally (on planes, trains, social events), or formally at business meetings and networking events. It is during these interactions that gut feel and instinct can work best.

By meeting potential candidates outside of a formal process, you can really get a feel for what motivates them and what makes them tick, and make an initial judgement about whether or not they are the right sort of person for your organisation. Once they become interested in what you have to offer, then a more formal ‘assessment’ process can be engaged. For more in depth advice on your recruitment processes and how to improve them why not look at developingpeople.co.uk

Ultimately the answer to the question ‘what benefits can I expect from developing my managers?’ lies in the answer to two other questions:

1) What is the business/organization striving to achieve?

2) How do managers need to think and act for the organization to achieve its goals?

Management development can only help to improve an organization’s performance if the development activities are directed in the right way and aimed at achieving a measurable change. For example, the outcomes required from the development activities may be around:

· Developing managers with more impact and influence to increase sales revenues.

· Improving the performance management skills of managers to improve the productivity of staff to increase capacity or reduce costs.

It should also be remembered that there are a range of less tangible business benefits associated with development activities. For example, investment in training and development is often seen by individuals as a sign of being valued by the company as well helping to create a positive business and professional image. Businesses that are seen to invest in staff development will not only find it easier to recruit quality personnel, but also enjoy lower rates of staff turnover.

However, it is important to recognize that individual development is not just about going on a course. While training courses will enable a manager to address a specific skills gap, there are other alternatives to consider, for example:

· Secondments into other roles within other teams or departments can also improve business understanding and team focus.

· Coaching.

· Mentoring

· Project work

· Research

· Networking

· Reading (this list is not exhaustive!)

Whatever the reason for investing in management development, the impact on individual performance and the company's bottom line should always be measured and evaluated to ensure that the investment has been worthwhile and the full benefits gained.

There is a big difference between having a talent, for example, being able to do mental arithmetic and being considered as “talent” by an organisation. This is because the definition of talent has two aspects to it. Firstly, a talented employee can only be talented if they apply their “talents” in a useful way, and secondly talent has to be considered in the context of an organisation. For example, a doctor may be a talented surgeon but put him/her in a garage and they will probably struggle to repair a vehicle that has broken down.

Context is therefore a key part of defining and subsequently identifying talent. Some organisations use the criteria “being capable of working at two grades above their current role” as a simple means of defining and identifying talent, while others use more complex means.

Whatever definition an organisation chooses to use, it is vital that it has a system in place to identify and develop talented staff for its own future success. With declining birth rates, there will be a huge shortage of people to replace current management roles within the next 20 years. To protect themselves, organisations must have a clear strategy of finding and developing the replacements for their key managers. Those that fail to do this will ultimately not survive.

Over the past thirty years businesses have had to continuously improve what they do and reduce how much it costs them to do it. The result of this is that many large businesses have much flatter organisation structures, with managers who have much broader roles and many more demands on their time, than previously.

Because of this, managers sometimes want to hand over Talent Management to ‘specialists’ in HR. If this is combined with a Chief Executive who believes that Talent Management is an HR agenda, responsibility can soon slip away from line managers and managing talent becomes a ‘tick box’ activity.

While HR have an important role to play, active Talent Management needs an engaged Chief Executive with line managers who are prepared to take the long term view about the skills the business needs in the future and those who are best placed to meet them.

HR needs to provide the appropriate processes and frameworks to enable Talent Management to work effectively, but it is line management, who are ultimately responsible for identifying, nurturing and developing talent. After all, as a line manager, do you not want a say in who your successor will be?

Recruiting the right person can have a dramatic effect on your business, as can recruiting someone unsuitable who could cause real issues. So how can you improve your chances of employing the right person when recruiting staff?

1. Make up a detailed Job Description.

• What does the job entail?
• What sort of candidate you are looking for?
• What is the main purpose of the job?
• What will be their areas of responsibility?
• What are the key tasks?
• How many people will they supervise?

2. Draw up a Person Specification

· What knowledge, skills and experience will this person need?

· What level of education will be required?

Remember that these must only be of importance to the job and must be equally applied regardless of age, sex, race or disability.

3. Salary

To help you decide on the correct Salary for the job, bear in mind pay scales, grades, the current market situation and bonuses, such as a car etc.

4. Advertising the job

· Choose where you wish to advertise the job; local or national newspapers, consultants, job centre etc.

· Make sure that the application form is clear and straightforward.

5. Shortlist

The task of coming up with a shortlist of prospective employee’s should be done by two or more people; this should include the person who will be the new employee’s immediate line manager. You should compare the applicants against your Job Description and Person specification.

6. The Interview

· Prepare a list of initial questions. Open ended questions will encourage them to start talking and also avoid unwanted ‘yes or no’ answers.

· Carefully review each application and make a note of any extra questions or queries you wish to ask an individual person. However, avoid asking questions not related to the job as some may be taken as potentially discriminatory (for example their plans for starting a family etc).

· Ensure that there will be no interruptions during the interviews.

It is vital therefore to ensure that managers who are involved in selection and recruitment have been trained and can demonstrate the necessary skills. Recruiting the right person will help your team and organisation flourish, selecting the wrong one can cause real issues.

Firstly the personal chemistry between the two parties is key to establishing the right relationship. This is not about friendship (although it could be) but more about trust, empathy, rapport, respect and understanding.

Secondly and most importantly, successful coaching depends mainly on the attitude; willingness, circumstances, timing and desire of the coaching subject themselves. They may not have all of these factors in place and proactively know that coaching is what they want and need right from the start. People don’t just wake up one morning and think “Ah, what I need now is a series of coaching sessions/good dose of coaching”! It usually takes some other form of stimulus to bring coaching forward in their consciousness as a potential development solution for them.

Other factors that are sometimes important factors for the coachee when making their choice of coach can be:- gender – do they want a person of the same or opposite sex, age – do they want a person who is older, the same age or younger than them, (although this would be an unusual choice), experience – do they want someone with experience from their type of organisation, functional specialism, marketplace, or approach –do they want someone who is more or less directive, conventional or unconventional, or who has specialist skills e.g. NLP Practitioner, acting & drama, psychotherapy, occupational psychology, or specialist knowledge eg Finance, Marketing, Education, H.R. etc.

In practice and in my experience most new coachees are not provided with and don’t seek out a long or broad list of potential coaches to choose from. More often they meet or talk with their sponsor who has some personal knowledge of me or one of my colleague coaches and who recommends that they might like to meet with me to discuss the prospect of them being coached. They may be given a choice of two or three coaches known to sponsor but this usually comes with a personal recommendation. In my organisation, we would usually offer potential new coachees a choice of coach, unless we have been recommended individually. If we are asked by a coachee about who else we have who might be able to coach them and do they have a choice in this then we will offer them one or two alternative coaches. In practice this matter of choice rarely occurs. Quite often the sponsor or coachee themselves suggests to us that we will know best who is likely to be the best fit coach for the new coachee. This choice of coachee is largely based on trust, judgement and respect – initially from the sponsor that it is the right timing and circumstance for the potential coachee to be coached. Then that I or we are the right coaches for them. Then from the new coachee that they feel that they can trust us and that we can probably be the right coach for them. This decision is established and confirmed or not at the first meeting and initial coaching sessions.

So is there a coach out there for everyone? Maybe yes in theory – but only if they are WILLING, as a coachee, to take responsibility, are open minded, able to be honest with themselves and with their coach – and are prepared to search for their answers largely from inside – from their own resources.

Some people are not interested in the concept of opening up their minds to new possibilities and options and do not want to disclose and share their circumstances, thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, issues and plans with a relative stranger working as a new coach with them. Some people are not ready for this yet. Some people don’t have the desire and motivation to put themselves into this coaching relationship. Some doubt or mistrust the process or worry about confidentiality leaks.
For many people they have never had the coaching process suggested to them as a possible option, or haven’t reached the stage in their personal or career development when it felt appropriate for them.

Being a successful leader with valuable leadership skills can a be difficult role to maintain. Success can be a step towards stress and burnout as the pressure of being a high achiever drives us to try even harder. Here are a few ideas to help maintain balance and survive your own success.

1. Learn to relax. Give yourself a break and take time out to relax and enjoy your success – you deserve it!

2. Know your limitations. It’s important to remember that success doesn’t mean perfection. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and trying to be good at everything can water down your impact.

3. Don’t be paralysed by indecision. Decisions lead to consequences and action, but not making decisions will lead to inactivity and organisation paralysis.

4. Give yourself a pat on the back. Leading a team can be a lonely experience and so it’s important to validate yourself. Note down your achievements and read them whenever you can to reinforce successful behaviour.

5. Learn to fail. At some point you will take a “fall” – this is inevitable. However, have confidence in your abilities, learn from it and move on.

6. Be a mentor. Establish yourself as a coach or mentor to others. Some may be jealous of your success as a leader, but by helping them to achieve will reduce their negativity towards you.

7. Don’t micro manage. Your success as a leader will not last if you over control your team’s tasks. It is vital to trust other people to do what you used to do. Delegate and give them freedom to achieve.

8. Have a laugh. A sense of humour is very important, particularly in difficult or stressful times. Being able to smile lifts others and shows your self deprecating style.

Maintaining success as a leader is difficult, but achievable by following these few simple tips. If you wish to find out more about how to be a successful leader try the following books:

• The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner.
• Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters by Jeffery Somerfield and Andrew Ward.

Do you wish to improve your leadership and creative thinking skills? Do you or your organisation struggle to come up with new or innovative approaches? If so try out some of the following development ideas listed below. The list is not meant to be exhaustive but if put into practise they will enable you to improve your creative thinking and leadership capability.

· Regularly practice brainteasers to help you get into the habit of challenging your assumptions.

· Approach problems with open mindedness. Use questions such as why, what, where, when, and how when approaching problems.

· Believe you are an innovative person.

· Create time for you and your team to think creatively and in an innovative way. Consider going off site away from day to day distractions and interruptions.

· Critically look at your personal behaviour. How do you promote creativity? Do you use creative techniques in your meetings, such as Brainstorming techniques, 6 Thinking Hats, etc?

· Do you create an environment that encourages rather than criticises new ideas? Think about the last idea a team member came to you with.

- Did you agree with it?

- Did you support it or were you critical?

- What happened to the idea?

Use the insights in to your own behaviour to identify improvements and make a plan.

· In what ways can you reward creativity and innovation in your team? Identify 3 different ways and action them.

· Identify organisations that display excellence in innovation. Arrange visits for yourself and colleagues. Identify 3 actions you can implement in your organisation or function.

· Undertake a SWOT analysis of your function/organisation with your colleagues. Find at least one key recommendation to action.

· Allow yourself quiet time to think and reflect. Plan time in your diary and keep it.

· Read material different from the kind you usually read. Read biographies of great artists, scientists or engineers. What can you learn from them?

Alternatively, if the above ideas don’t give you what you need try reading one of the following books:

· Six Thinking Hats, or Lateral Thinking, by De Bono, Penguin, ISBN: 0140137793

· Learning Maps and Memory Skills: Powerful Techniques to Improve Your Brain Power, by Svantsesson.

· The Creative Edge by Miller.

· The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy.

· How to be Better at Creativity by Petty.

There are a number of circumstances when it is appropriate to train your managers in family groups which I described in my last article. Equally there are also other circumstances and factors which would lead you to organise your management training in mixed, cross-functional groups. These are the factors for you to consider:-
- the objectives and content of the programme eg how much is it aimed at one consistent message and theme that you want to get across consistently to all participants, regardless of functional specialism or level of responsibility and experience
- is it a specific skills programme eg presentation, negotiation skills where all of the participants are attending with this specific development need and could help and support each other
- is it a programme where you want managers with different backgrounds, experiences and responsibilities to share their experience, perspectives and ideas with each other
- are you aiming to increase cross-functional understanding and teamwork across different functions and departments and therefore by definition need mixed groups
- if it is a management skills programme about personal, leadership or management styles and it would inhibit participants to talk about their individual experiences and issues in front of peers who they work closely with ie where both openness and confidentiality is a key requirement of the course

All of these factors combined with the practicalities around availability, travel time and costs and getting an optimum and efficient number of participants need to weighed up when you decide whether to organise your management training in cross-functional or family groups.

Before answering this question we need to consider some other factors, for example, is personality an important factor, why would we need to know bout it, how can it be measured, what can it add to the coaching sessions?

1. Yes personality is often an important factor in coaching a person because it has an influence on a number of key aspects of a person such as their motives, their styles, their ways of responding, their ways of learning and most crucially their behaviors. It is also helpful to me as a coach to have some insight into a coachee's personality to help me to understand more about them as a whole person and to adjust my questions, style and challenge to them in a way that I judge to be most effective. It is also useful to set their personality alongside mine and to think about how my styles, personality and learned behaviors may need to be assessed and modified in order to bring out the best in both me and in the person that I am coaching.

2. Why do we need to know about it? Well there is no absolute rule in coaching that states that a coach must know and understand a personality in detail before they can start to coach them. But in my experience it is an important factor to understand about a person and therefore in most coaching situations I will make this assessment either intuitively or in a more scientific way.

3. How can personality be measured?
We can and do make assessments and judgments about a person intuitively, whether we like it or not. We infer things about them from what they say about themselves, from their language and use of it and from their body language and cues that we pick up using our senses.
We also get information about them from their goals and objectives for this coaching that they explain to us, compared to those set out by their sponsor and from the issues, barriers and potential actions and approaches that they explain to us.
We can also measure a personality more scientifically using one or more of the psychometric tests that are available on the market for BPS (British Psychological Society) Approved testers. The sorts of personality profiles that I sometimes use when coaching people are the following, depending upon the objectives and needs of the individual coachee:-
16pf, Myers Briggs, Team Management Systems Roles, Belbin Team roles, Schein's Career Anchors. I would only use any one or two of these profiles with the open agreement of the coachee and I would give, explain the reasons for its use and go through the details of this profile and its mechanics, advantages and limitations to the coachee.

4. So in summary the understanding of a coachee's personality has a number of benefit's for both the coach and coachee's point of view and very few disadvantages - providing that the coachee readily give their agreement to it, that it has a purpose linked to the coachee's goal and objectives and that appropriate confidentiality and professionalism is adopted with respect to the use of any psychometric profiles involved.