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Greetings!

Hiring decisions are among the most important decisions made by managers. While selecting the right person to fill a new or established job opening is certainly not a guarantee that an organization will achieve the success its leaders envision, having the right person in a critical position can surely facilitate organizational success, sometimes dramatically increasing an organization's productivity. So, how do you know if you're hiring the "right" person for the job?

If you are a manager of people, your professional accomplishments are dependent on the effectiveness of the people who report to you. How do you deal when employees resist change?

Enjoy!

David Hildreth

BOOST Associates

How Do You Know You Are Working with the "Right" Employees?

Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Habits

Are you recruiting, hiring, retaining and developing the right employees for your company and are they positively engaged?

 

Data from a 2010 Gallop* poll showed that "world class" companies, those who actively initiate best practices in the area of talent management, have double the percentage of "engaged employees" as those companies who consider themselves "average" in their pursuit of best practices.

 

More importantly, in average companies the percentage of "actively disengaged employees," those who have negative attitudes and habits on the job, is more than double the number in "world class" companies.

 

Improved employee engagement leads to improved loyalty, reduced turnover, increased innovation, and higher customer loyalty, because workers feel the relationship they have with the company is more valuable than just a paycheck or a promotion.

 

More and more organizations are realizing how important it to recruit, hire, retain, and develop the "right person," making sure they are a fit with the culture of the company as well as possessing the necessary skills and capabilities.

 

The 2010 Gallop poll showed:

Percentage of Engaged Employees
World Class Company Average Company
67%Actively Engaged33%
26%Not Engaged49%
7%Actively Disengaged18%

 

Additional Gallop poll findings:

  • 30% of new employees make the decision to quit within the first 30-45 days
  • 32% of employees who have been in their current jobs less than six months are job searching
  • Employees are 58% more likely to be with a company after three years once completing an "Orientation/On Boarding" program after being hired

So, what if you had a more accurate, validated, scientific, methodical, and objective process to understand more about yourself, current employees, or when recruiting new folks to join your company which would help you and them understand three key areas:

  1. Decisions: How does one makes decisions and do people have any particular strengths, challenges or thought processes which affect their decision making?

  2. Motivation: What are the value drivers within someone which are the motivation behind their desire to achieve specific goals and perform at their best. Being fully aware of how these values and goals are aligned provide leaders the information necessary to individually motivate employees more specifically.

  3. Behavior and Communication: What are the various behavior and communication styles of the people in your company, or perspective new hires, and how can you use this knowledge to help the team be more effective?

"Advanced Insights," a strengths and behavior assessment profile can help you identify what talents and strengths the people of your company possess. Some of the benefits are:

  • Better alignment of people with their position, roles and responsibilities
  • Building more effective and diverse teams
  • Greater retention and engagement of employees at all levels
  • Developing specific career and development programs for individual employees
  • Leads to improved leadership development and succession planning
  • Leadership and motivation is more focused with greater results
  • There are many others

Most importantly, a more stable, highly engaged work force guided by very effective leadership, benefits the customer at the highest level, really adding to the customer's view of the "value proposition," creating a higher level of "customer loyalty" and company "sustainability"

 

How do you're employees measure up?
Ten Reasons People Resist Change

Change Ahead Leadership is about change, but what is a leader to do when faced with ubiquitous resistance? Resistance to change manifests itself in many ways, from foot-dragging and inertia to petty sabotage to outright rebellions. The best tool for leaders of change is to understand the predictable, universal sources of resistance in each situation and then strategize around them.  

 

Here are the ten I've found to be the most common:

Loss of control. Change interferes with autonomy and can make people feel that they've lost control over their territory. It's not just political, as in who has the power. Our sense of self-determination is often the first things to go when faced with a potential change coming from someone else. Smart leaders leave room for those affected by change to make choices. They invite others into the planning, giving them ownership.

Excess uncertainty. If change feels like walking off a cliff blindfolded, then people will reject it. People will often prefer to remain mired in misery than to head toward an unknown. As the saying goes, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know." To overcome inertia requires a sense of safety as well as an inspiring vision. Leaders should create certainty of process, with clear, simple steps and timetables.
Surprise, surprise! Decisions imposed on people suddenly, with no time to get used to the idea or prepare for the consequences, are generally resisted. It's always easier to say No than to say Yes. Leaders should avoid the temptation to craft changes in secret and then announce them all at once. It's better to plant seeds - that is, to sprinkle hints of what might be coming and seek input.

Everything seems different. Change is meant to bring something different, but how different? We are creatures of habit. Routines become automatic, but change jolts us into consciousness, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. Too many differences can be distracting or confusing. Leaders should try to minimize the number of unrelated differences introduced by a central change. Wherever possible keep things familiar. Remain focused on the important things; avoid change for the sake of change.

Loss of face. By definition, change is a departure from the past. Those people associated with the last version - the one that didn't work or the one that's being superseded- are likely to be defensive about it. When change involves a big shift of strategic direction, the people responsible for the previous direction dread the perception that they must have been wrong. Leaders can help people maintain dignity by celebrating those elements of the past that are worth honoring, and making it clear that the world has changed. That makes it easier to let go and move on.

Concerns about competence. Can I do it? Change is resisted when it makes people feel stupid. They might express skepticism about whether the new software version will work or whether digital journalism is really an improvement, but down deep they are worried that their skills will be obsolete. Leaders should over-invest in structural reassurance, providing abundant information, education, training, mentors, and support systems. A period of overlap, running two systems simultaneously, helps ease transitions.

More work. Here is a universal challenge. Change is indeed more work. Those closest to the change in terms of designing and testing it are often overloaded, in part because of the inevitable unanticipated glitches in the middle of change, per "Kanter's Law" that "everything can look like a failure in the middle." Leaders should acknowledge the hard work of change by allowing some people to focus exclusively on it, or adding extra perks for participants (meals? valet parking? massages?). They should reward and recognize participants - and their families, too, who often make unseen sacrifices.

Ripple effects. Like tossing a pebble into a pond, change creates ripples, reaching distant spots in ever-widening circles. The ripples disrupt other departments, important customers, people well outside the venture or neighborhood, and they start to push back, rebelling against changes they had nothing to do with that interfere with their own activities. Leaders should enlarge the circle of stakeholders. They must consider all affected parties, however distant, and work with them to minimize disruption.

Past resentments. The ghosts of the past are always lying in wait to haunt us. As long as everything is steady state, they remain out of sight. But the minute you need cooperation for something new or different, the ghosts spring into action. Old wounds reopen, historic resentments are remembered - sometimes going back many generations. Leaders should consider gestures to heal the past before sailing into the future.

Sometimes the threat is real. Now we get to true pain and politics. Change is resisted because it can hurt. When new technologies displace old ones, jobs can be lost; prices can be cut; investments can be wiped out. The best thing leaders can do when the changes they seek pose significant threat is to be honest, transparent, fast, and fair. For example, one big layoff with strong transition assistance is better than successive waves of cuts.


Although leaders can't always make people feel comfortable with change, they can minimize discomfort. Diagnosing the sources of resistance is the first step toward good solutions. And feedback from resistors can even be helpful in improving the process of gaining acceptance for change.   

Are you or your co-workers with resisting change?

Article by ROSABETH MOSS KANTER

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a professor at Harvard Business School and the
author of Confidence and SuperCorp. Her 2011 HBR article, "How Great Companies Think Differently," won a McKinsey Award for best article.

 

I hope you have enjoyed what you've read! Please feel free to with a colleague or friend. We value your feedback, so please send any suggestions or comments to [email protected]. See you next month with special invitations to events, motivational quotes, and more useful articles and tips to help you on your path to success!

 

Sincerely,

 

David Hildreth
BOOST Associates
In This Issue
How Do You Know You Are Working with the "Right" Employees?
Ten Reasons People Resist Change
David Hildreth
David Hildreth

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"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."

 

~ Maya Angelou