How to get the best people faster

One way is to filter out the wrong people faster.

I recall having someone who wasn’t right for a position for years.  Once they left, it created an opening. 

In that opening, we had the opportunity to put someone better.

We could have created that opening much sooner.

This is not an excuse for rushing the hiring process.  But doing the job is the ultimate job interview.  You see exactly how the person fits and performs.  Hopefully, you have the right person for the job.  But, if you find they aren’t right, make the opening to find someone who is perfect and will help your group get to where they want to go.

Don’t wait years.  Do it now.

Zoom out

When is the last time you mentally rose 2000 feet above your business and took stock of what was happening?

Take ten minutes now and do that.

What is going on?  What are your goals for the next year?  Where do you ultimately want to take this business?

What is going well?  What is not going well?

What is in the way of you getting where you want to go?

What is your job – what have you been doing in it?  How has that affected the organization?

What choices do your customers have in the marketplace and how does your offering stack up?

What can you do so they like your company best?

Who on your team is doing very well?  

Who is not going to help you get where you want to go?

What are the most important changes to make to unlock momentum toward your goals?

Now go back in there and make the most important things happen.

Make your job smaller

When we start a business we are chef, cook and bottle washer.  We are doing a lot – because there is nobody else to do these things.  Progress is slow.  We try to do better by working lots of hours.  We may love it in the beginning, but over time we realize that we only have so many hours in a day.  If “freedom” was one reason we started a business, we realize we are a slave instead.

As we grow, we need to get the right people to join our team.  We need to cut off chunks of our job and get others to do them.  To grow fast, we need to keep doing this – making our job smaller until we are doing only the vital most important tasks – and doing them really well.

The vital things we may hold onto at the end may be –

Resource and capital allocation

Strategic marketing

Positioning the company in the marketplace

Recruiting

Innovation

Make your job smaller.  Empower others to do most of what you are doing now, and focus on the big things that will move the needle tomorrow.

How to delegate like a pro

First –

Think it through. What needs to be done, why, and how does the task fit into the larger goals.

Delegate to the right person for the task – someone who is suited to get that job done.

If you are a leader with department managers, don’t undermine your managers by going around them and delegating large tasks to their team.  Create clarity with your managers on big goals, and have them delegate well to their teams.

How to delegate well – 

Tell them the purpose of the task and why it is important.

Tell them the result or action necessary.

Tell them the time frame.

If they don’t know, tell them what resources they can use.

Tell them when/how to report progress and what to do when it is done.

Ask questions, and invite them to ask questions.

Thank them!

Your attitude is important.  Be empowering, grateful, and believe in them!

When they complete the task, thank them.  If they mess it up, do not get mad – coach them and make them better.

How to mess up delegation

Your approach makes all the difference.  Many leaders think they are delegating, but they are just telling people what to do.  They are allocating; poorly.

Dumb delgation – “Do this.”

Intimidating delegation – “Do this by 2 pm.”

Devaluing delegation – “I don’t have time to show you…just stay busy until I get to you.”

Confusing delegation – “Go there and help them for now.”

Disempowering delegation – “Do this.  No, like this.  Never mind, I’ll do it myself.”

Hollowing delegation – “You aren’t good enough to do that.  Just do what I tell you.”

There are the tactics of a leader or manager who has to ride their people all the time, who feels overwhelmed and can’t take time off, and has high employee turnover.  They are the techniques of a losing manager.

Getting the most out of you

I’m sitting here on a beautiful Sunday morning writing Think Daily’s before I start my day.  Today I am outside on the back porch.  Sometimes I am in the family room in the comfy chair.  Some days I am in the living room.  Some days I am in the finished room in the attic or the dining room.

In any case, I am alone in quiet.

Today, the enemy is noise.  It often disguises itself as urgency, and gets us reacting all the time.  We are a puppet to urgency, or the perception of urgency.  

To do our best work, we need to get the best out of our minds. 

We need to do one thing at a time without distraction for a part of our day.

From our inner world, comes our outer world.  

Learn to use your mind to carry you through problems, challenges, and to the goals and life you really want.

If you only focus on the outer world to get there, you are missing the source and will always struggle.

It’s in you. 

Tap it.

Personality Styles in business

As a leader, we hire people and put them in positions in our company.  Think about who you have in a given department – the manager and the team members.  If you look at it through the lens of the Personality Styles we have been talking about, you can understand why the department has the culture it does.  

You need Thinkers in accounting for example, but some maybe Thinker/Relaters and some are Thinker/Directors.  Maybe your next hire you need a Thinker who has some Director in them to take charge and drive projects through to completion or to speed things up.

Maybe you have a department that has a flat culture and you need to hire a Socializer to liven things up.  But then again, the Socializer may be rejected because they are “out there, loud and disruptive” according to the rest of the team.

Years ago I had a Sales Manager who was a Relater – a real pussycat.  Everyone loved him.  But over time they realized they could ignore him and he wouldn’t discipline them.  He just could not have hard conversations because he avoided conflict and looked for the good in every situation – to a fault.  Eventually, he lost all influence with the sales team.

So I had to let him go and I hired the opposite – a Director.  He was a hard driving guy who had principles and stuck to them.  He expected performance and discipline and he got it.  At first the big change was actually welcomed by the team.  They liked how he stood for something and felt he would lead them to greater heights.  He did – for a while.  But then the same problem (but opposite) crept in.  They began to resent his rigid take-no-prisoners style.  He lost his credibility and thus his ability to influence the team.

Why did these two guys fail?  No behavioral flexibility.  They were rigid.  While their styles were necessary and good at the beginning, they weren’t treating people differently based on THEIR styles.  Over time, they lost them.  

As a leader, you have to be very flexible.  You have to know what touch is needed now.  You have to get rapport sometimes.  Other times you have to LEAD the team to a different mindset than they have now.  If you just match everyone all the time, you can never lead them to a better place by drawing them out of their comfort zones.

It’s like a bank account with people.  Make deposits as often as you can, so that when you need to make a withdrawal, you have credit.

In sales, you work to get rapport so that when it comes time to close the sale, you can change you body language and voice, and they follow you.  You sit up straighter and your voice goes from more enthusiastic during the presentation to low and slow when you ask the closing question with confidence.

Leadership is influence.  Connecting with a wide variety of people allows you to influence them – because they are open to it.

How to get along with different personality styles.

So here’s the key – match their body language and voice.  That’s it.  

No analyzing them to figure out what style they are – that takes too long and by that time you may have mismatched them and lost rapport.

Rapport is an unconcious agreement – “I like this person, they are like me.”  Yes, people like others who are like them.

Rapport is trust plus comfort.  They trust you and are comfortable with you.  Wouldn’t you want to work with someone like that?

So when you meet someone that you want to get rapport with, you match their body language.  If they are sitting up straight, you do too. If they have their arms or legs crossed, you do too.  If they are smiling, you do too.  Match their face.  

If they use their hands and arms while talking, you do too.  If their body is still while they talk, you are too.

There is an old experiment I recall where if you match someone’s body position exactly, you can tell what they are thinking.  But we don’t have to go that far.  Be authentic.  Don’t be weird or obvious about it.  Be natural.  

If you have roughly the same body language, then they change gears and sit up and start using their hands more, you follow them and do the same within 30 seconds.  

Now, before you say this is not going to work, imagine that the other person uses open body language and is upright and animated, and you are sitting back with your arms folded.  That’s a mismatch and the other person is likely to think something is wrong or you are just not their kind of person.  No rapport.  It won’t be long before they decide they do not want to work with you. Right?

Ok, here’s the second part.

Match their voice.  

There is a lot of dimensions of your voice.  Speed – how fast they talk.  Volume – how loud they talk.  Tone – it makes a big difference HOW you say things.  Inflection – do you use a lot of it to punctuate ideas or to be exciting, or not?  The words you use – if they say “I definitely want to do this”, then you could say “we can definitely do that for you” instead of “I think we can get that done”. 

Matching their voice is not something you need to think about much, you just say things like they are saying them.  

By matching their body language and voice, other people will say “hey, this person gets me, is like me, and I can work with this person.

Now it is true, that you may not feel comfortable changing your body language and voice.  But if YOU want to get rapport with them, then YOU have to be flexible.  Don’t expect them to be flexible.  This is the point.

The key to getting along with others is BEHAVIORAL FLEXIBILITY.  Some people do this naturally, and it is more difficult for others who have avoided it for a long time and whenever they can.

What personality style are you?

How flexible are you in getting along with others?

Getting along with people who are not like you

We’ve been talking about the four different personality styles.  Now while there are classic achetypes who fit on in category perfectly, most of us are blends.  For example I am a Director/Thinker.  But I can be a Relater if I am with kids or family, or a Socializer if I am at a party with people I know.  

You could be mostly a Relater, and partially a Socializer (both open) and also be a Thinker when the situation requires it, but have a hard time being or getting along with Directors.

No one style is better than another.  There are about equal numbers of each style among the population.  Isn’t that interesting.  We need each style.  We need Directors to lead and take charge of getting things done.  We need Socailizers to show us how to have fun and do jobs that require interacting with people.  We need Relaters to care for others, and we need Thinkers to figure things out and keep track of things.  

Did you ever wonder why you get along easily and comfortably with certain people, and have a hard time understanding or relating to others?  This is why.  Some people have personalities like yours, some are kind of like you, and some are opposite.

Other people have everything we want.  Love, money, things, business, opportunities – everything.  Those that can get along with the widest variety of people will have an easier time getting what they want, selling their ideas, and leading people.  Those that just stay with people they feel most comfortable with and avoid people that are not like them, will be more limited.

So how do you get along or connect with everyone?

Answer tomorrow!

Personality Clashes

Yesterday we talked about the four personality styles –

Director – likes to be in charge and get things done.   Self-contained and direct.

Socializer – likes attention and interacting with other people.  Open and Direct.

Relater – warm and caring and puts other people first.  Open and Indirect.

Thinker – quiet and likes analyzing and researching.  Self-contained and indirect.

Which one are you?

So let’s talk about these styles rubbing up against each other in the world.  

Of course, Socializers like other socializers.  Relaters like other relaters.  Thinkers like other thinkers.  They feel very comfortable with each other, hit it off quickly, and interact easily.  They get each other.  Directors, however, like other directors, can experience power struggles with each other, trying to take charge.

Let’s look at how different personality styles view each other when they meet or interact – 

Director meets Socializer – At least they are both Direct.  Meaning if they have something to say, they say it.  They will both call BS or say what they are thinking.  The difference is the Socializer will say all they are thinking and the Director will tell you things they think you need to know, and that’s all.  Directors are task-oriented, and if information does not relate to the task, it’s none of your business.  The Director appreciates the Socializer but wants them to be more serious, focused, and get to the point.  The Socializer likes the director but wishes they would loosen up a little and be more friendly and have some fun.

Thinker meets Relater – They are both indirect.  Neither likes conflict, so they are both amiable and comfortable with each other.  The Relater is caring and wishes the Thinker would consider the human side of the issues a bit more than just hard facts and logic.  The Thinker wishes the Relater would gather more real data and make decisions based on it.  They are both slow to make decisions, and neither uses lots of voice volume or body language, except that the Relater gives two-handed handshakes or hugs.

Socializer meets Thinker – The Socializer is open and direct – exactly opposite the self-contained and indirect Thinker.  The Socializer dominates the conversation, telling stories that the Thinker doesn’t care about, using lots of body language and inflection.  The Socializer is thinking, “Hello, is there a pulse? Let’s go!  We can just do this, that way, and have fun and move on.  Everything will be fine!”  The Thinker is not saying it, but they are thinking, “This person can’t take anything seriously, can’t focus on the facts, and is moving way too fast.”  These two just don’t jive.

Relater meets Director – The Relater is indirect and open, and the Director is the opposite – direct and self-contained.  They are not each other’s kind of people.  The Relater thinks the Director doesn’t care about people, is harsh, and wishes they would be more open and kind.  The Director thinks the Relater is wishy-washy, soft, and can’t make a decision.  They wish the Relater would focus on the task at hand, say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be done to accomplish it.

Director meets Thinker – At least they are both self-contained, giving information only when they think it is relevant to what they are trying to do.  But the Director is direct – if they have something to say, they say it.  The Thinker is indirect and waits until they fully understand the situation before they begin talking.  Neither likes small talk so they get along like that.  The Thinker is thinking the Director makes decisions too fast, and wishes they would slow down and dig into the data more.  The Director appreciates the data, but once they think they have enough they make a decision.  They want the Thinker to get the information faster and interpret it and make a clear decision based on it – right away!

Socializer meets Relater – They are both people people, but the Relater is about caring for others and the Socializer is about having fun with others.  The relater is open and indirect, and the Socializer is open and direct.  They will tell each other about their lives, but the Socializer will use more voice inflection and volume and talk about experiences, and the Relater will be more caring and tell about relationships.  The Relater thinks the Socializer is brave and lives out of their own comfort zone, albeit somewhat recklessly, and the Socializer thinks the Relater is warm, but more boring and cautious than they are.

Can you see yourself in here?  

What about you and your spouse?

Can you see how you feel one way and they feel another?

Let’s talk more about this tomorrow.