We will reap what we sow
Take an example of a seed that blooms into a particular plant or flower. Try as we may, we will never be able to get a different kind of plant than the one the seed is meant to be. If we get a sunflower seed, we will get a sunflower. We can give it the best care in the world and it can become the best sunflower we’ve ever seen, but it will be a sunflower. We won’t get a lily, nor a lotus.
Therefore, as arguably the most important skill of a crazy plant lady/manager, we need to be able to tell which types of plants we need in our garden. Each type of plant has its beauty and thrives in different environments. If we hire well, it will be a lot easier to get the team we need to succeed.
What about training and development?
As the late Intel’s CEO and legendary manager Andy Grove stated in his management gospel book High Output Management, a manager has 2 main duties, which are training and motivating the team. This is a must-do once we have a great team in place. However, as Einstein used to say, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” It would be a lot harder to train and motivate a carpenter to do a plumber’s job, just as hard as trying to get a tulip to look like a rose in a bouquet. Each of us is wired differently, so training and motivating only take us so far.
It’s better to hire someone who shares 90% of our values than to hire someone with 50% compatibility and then provide training. Probabilistically, hiring well is the best form of training and development we can provide.
Nature vs. Nurture
Another factor we have to take into account is the environmental factors that will affect how a plant/person grows. Take a monstera plant, which thrives in a tropical environment. These plants require moderately high temperatures, humidity, and sun. They thrive in tropical countries where the natural environments are best for them. If we take them to places like Mexico where it’s dried and hot, these plants may not survive without a lot of extra care. However, hot and dry environments are perfectly fine for cacti. We, humans, are the same. We each have different values and characteristics that allow us to thrive in certain environments and not others.
How do we hire better?
Asking this question is the first step to getting better at hiring. Once we know we can get better at hiring, we can begin by looking at our hiring process. It all begins with what we want in the team. The best way is to understand our company culture and what we value in our people. Questions such as:
- Do we want people who can grow with us, or need to be productive as soon as possible?
- What do we value the most? Honesty, expertise, tolerance for ambiguity, creativity, good people skills, self-starter, etc.?
- What don’t we want in our employees? Dishonesty, lack of experience, inattention to details, poor social skills, inability to work alone?
Once we have identified what our values are, we want a way to identify them in the candidates. How do we do this? By practice, practice, and practice. In Be So Good, They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport pointed out that one well-researched and proven way to get better at one thing is through “deliberate practice”. This is the method of practicing where we intentionally break a good-enough skill down to its smallest elements and master them through repetition and instantaneous feedback. We need to deliberately practice interviewing so that interviewers know how to look for the values that we have determined above.
For example, how do we know if someone is a self-starter? We can frame our questions to get our candidates to talk about their experiences and specifically look for hints or signs that they are self-starters. We don’t stop until we have a clear idea of “yes they are” or “no they are not” self-starters. Each interviewer will need to be trained and self-disciplined to look for predefined attributes in candidates.
Summary
We are similar to plants in how we grow and prosper. With the right environment, we will realize our full potential and contributions. It’s impossible to change who we are for work or to change the working environment to accommodate our styles. Therefore, it’s important to hire the right and best people who will thrive in our team. To do this, we will need to determine what we value the most and train the team to interview for them, deliberately.