You Cannot Build A Successful Organization With Unsuccessful Workers
Don’t let miscommunication undermine performance
Welcome to the Gazebo! Grab a cup and join me for some tips to help you succeed at the intersection of management, communication, and technology.
This Week’s Summary:
Managers don’t intentionally hire poor employees.
Workers don’t intentionally take jobs expecting to fail.
Nobody wants an unhappy work situation and yet they are common.
Mismatched expectations from miscommunication may be the cause.
Consistent employee performance helps business continuity.
Why would you hire someone to work for you if you didn’t need them? You wouldn’t. Why would you pay someone to work for you who can’t do the job? You wouldn’t. Why would someone accept a job that they know they cannot do? Most wouldn’t. You work hard to hire the right person for a job and yet often find yourself with an underperforming, unhappy employee, and missed deadlines. How does that happen? Misunderstood expectations may be the culprit.
Image created by Ed Paulson using Copilot in Windows.
Think back on your own work experience for a moment. Were you lazy and did the minimum (or less) to get by or did you show up at work desiring to do a great job? Speaking for myself, and most of the people I have known over the years, the majority took pride in their work and wanted to be happy with their jobs. Flipping it around, how many managers set out to create a work environment where everyone underperformed and was so unhappy that they were continually looking for their next job? Not any of the managers I have ever met.
And yet, based on a May 2023 Pew Research Study1, only about 50% of workers are “extremely or very satisfied” with their job. There must be a disconnect somewhere.
I suggest that the disconnect between the work environment managers and employees want to have and common work reality is caused by mismatched manager-employee expectations due to a breakdown in communication.
Let me explain.
Why do you hire someone? Because you need a person to do something you cannot do with current resources, either from lack of time, or skill, or knowledge, or experience. This is usually a “good news problem”2 because the demands of your growing business require an expanding workforce to continue growing. A growing business is usually a sign of a healthy business with a bright future.
Any time a new person is interviewed and hired, bosses and workers start their new working lives together with the best of intentions. Hopefully, there is a strong match between the manager’s expectations and the employee’s understanding and ability to fulfill those expectations. If not, a troubling reality will start to set in.
For example, assume that you asked your new employee to complete a task that you thought simple given their background, only to find out, to your surprise, that he had never done that before. Now what? You say something like, “OK. Find someone who can help you with that” and move on (you have other things to do and after all – it is their job) only to find out later that he didn’t know where to find someone to help him and was too embarrassed to ask for help, so nothing got done. Weeks later you find out that your initial “simple” task is still not accomplished, and your frustration grows, along with the nugget of a suspicion that you might have hired the wrong person for the job.
That suspicion, if not monitored, can become a communication filter through which your employee’s future work will be perceived. The slightest lack of performance on their part may reinforce your belief that you hired the wrong person and if that perception continues to be reinforced, it can become self-fulfilling. If you start to perceive more disappointments than successes with your employee, then he may now face an uphill battle proving he was the right person for the job. When it gets to this point it is usually hard to turn the situation around, which is unfortunate for all involved. Nobody is winning at this point.
Image created by Ed Paulson using Copilot in Windows.
From the employee viewpoint, he may start to feel like he is under unreasonably heightened scrutiny which may affect his performance along with his stress level and job satisfaction. His perceptions are shifting as well and become a filter through which he will interpret the manager’s future actions. Can you see where this is going if it continues down the same path? A common eventuality is for the manager to start to lose faith in the employee and the employee to start to feel like he is in the wrong job, working for the wrong boss, which may shift his attention from his current responsibilities to finding a new job. After all, he probably cannot afford to lose his income stream. This may cause more problems at work which will reinforce the already doubtful manager’s perception, and the downward spiral continues.
How did we get to this negative situation when everyone was so optimistic on the first day at work? Let’s go back to the hiring process and the initial expectations developed on both sides. Ask yourself this:
What was specifically listed in the job posting?
What was specifically discussed in the interviews?
What types of questions were asked between all parties?
How did you as the manager ensure that the employee clearly understood specifically what you expected from him?
How did you verify that he understood your expectations?
Did you ask him what he was looking for in his work and career?
Did you ask him if he believed that he was right for the job or if there were mismatches?
Did you believe him when he said he could do the job and did his education and experience reinforce that belief?
Did you check his references to ensure that his resume accurately reflected his potential to successfully do the job you wanted?
Let’s go back to my initial premise that a manager does not want to have underperforming and unhappy employees, and employees want to enjoy their work and be perceived by their manager as solid performers. If true, then our manager would not have hired someone she believed could not do the job and our employee would not have taken the job if he believed he could not successfully accomplish it.
A breakdown in communication would have caused this hiring mismatch to happen and open communication up front would have put it on the table for further discussion.
To help avoid these troubling situations, I suggest that you add a few simple steps to your hiring process. The first two you should do for all positions in your company, by the way.
Clearly determine specifically how you will determine if the person working in your open job position will have successfully accomplished his work. You will likely have a number of criteria included here.
Select the metrics you will use to measure performance and ensure that you have the before and after hiring baseline measurements for performance comparison. Look for a numeric (objective) way to measure performance.
Include this simple statement and question in the interview: “At the end of the day I will be evaluating your performance based on how well you accomplished <objective 1>, <objective 2>, with <level of supervision/independence>, etc. within <timeframe>. How do you feel about that and your ability to successfully meet those expectations?” Fill in the <brackets > with whatever fits your situation.
Get clarification from them about their confidence level with meeting your expectations and why they feel they are the right person to do the job.
Ask them, “What concerns do you have about successfully meeting my expectations?” and if they have concerns ask them “What additional support would you need to have to help you successfully meet them?”
Ask them if they have any questions or concerns about you or the job.
Interviews are a lot like first dates, and everyone wants to give a good impression. But there is a huge difference between dating and interviewing in that after the job offer is given and accepted, you and they will be “living” together and dependent upon each other to fulfill each other’s part of the employer/employee agreement. Dating is far less permanent. If the second date doesn’t work out, you don’t go out again. It is not so simple to replace an employee.
John Chambers, the successful former President and CEO of Cisco Systems, says this about acquiring a company: “It takes courage to walk away from a deal. You can get quite caught up in winning an acquisition and lose sight of what will make it successful.”3 It is the same when hiring.
The more time you spend up front ensuring expectation clarity for both sides in the hiring process, the more likely you are to find the right fit between your new hire and your company. Everyone wins when that happens.
Image created by Ed Paulson using Copilot in Windows.
So, what happened to my promise from the last post to discuss business continuity and resilience? This is the first part. It is difficult to ensure business continuity if you do not have the right people in the right jobs consistently and successfully performing their required tasks. Hiring is an important first step in that process. The management bonus from this week is that the same communication concepts presented can be applied to all jobs and employees within your organization.
It is much easier, less expensive, and less risky to keep a good employee than to have to hire a new one.
Plus, as you develop more experienced employees on your team, you also build resilience. That is a topic for a future post.
Have a great week and thanks for stopping by! ☮
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A “good news problem” is one caused by an overabundance of something great! Figuring out how to spend your lottery winnings would be a good news problem.
From “Inside Cisco” by Ed Paulson. ISBN: 0471414255, p. 32.