New Gallup information states “at a managerial level, organisations fail to pick high-talent candidates 82% of the time."
We’re all used to stats but this must be one of the most shocking in its field. I can see readers of the report open mouthed in surprise and horror.
But why are we really surprised?
If you ask your family, your friends, anyone, what they really think of their manager how many times does anyone say anything like “they’re really good”, “they’ve helped me develop into what I want to be” or “we have regular, good quality 1:1s”?
Let’s be honest, hardly ever.
So why is that?
The answer is that most organisations don’t use any sort of objective process to recruit their managers and leaders. You can be a great salesperson on a Friday and be an out of depth sales manager on the Monday because someone thinks because you can sell you can manage.
It’s been going on for ever, the fundamental refusal to accept that to effectively manage a team of people you need time, your own development, talent and most importantly, the attitude for it.
If we accept it’s all gone horribly wrong as the Gallup survey now evidences the question is, how do we find the right management material?
- Do you know what a good manager looks like before you start recruiting? Do you use job descriptions, competencies and role profiles? As with everything, if you don’t know what your aiming at you’re unlikely to get there.
- What type of culture do you want? A positive one where people want to work for you and progress or a negative one where people are motivated by fear of failure - and all the good people leave?
- Have a look at any company’s staff turnover, if it’s big they’ve got a management problem and no-one wants to stay around.
- Are you a company that operates on unconscious bias, that is if the boss likes you you’re okay but if you’re a different personality type or get great results in a different way you’re not considered as valuable? Only smart companies deliberately recruit different types of people to enrich the overall environment.
- Here’s the big one, do you use any external help to recruit your managers? Using assessment centres run by external specialist companies, will objectively source you potential employees who can evidence their suitability for the role. This includes assessing cognitive ability (mathematical for example), assessing against the competencies of the role by using situational interviewing techniques (where candidates can’t ‘cheat’ with their examples) and assessing attitude and aspiration through a variety of psychometric tools. Well, that’s a lot of words so what does it mean? It means every candidate gets a fair crack of the whip and the report that is received by the employer is objective and consistently scored against the pre-defined competencies of the role. Your decision making suddenly becomes clearer and simpler.
Companies who operate using assessment centres invariably do better in identifying and recruiting talent. What they do with that talent is, of course, another matter.
How many managers receive development to help them become better leaders?
Very few, it’s the first cost to be struck off the balance sheet when times get tough. “Management Development, we’ll leave that for this year” is a typical board meeting comment where the big boss doesn’t see the value.
The reverse of that is in companies, small, medium and large, where there is a genuine buy in at the top to the value of quality management and leadership, they do much better in so many areas.
It’s definitely time for change...
During the last year there has been a surprising number of new companies forming who are growing disproportionately fast. Many of these companies are started by relatively young entrepreneurs and what we are seeing is more of an appreciation now of the value of using external expertise for functions such as employee development and recruitment, than we’ve seen before.
Just as working in a city centre office is being replaced by more flexible work locations, there’s a real chance that the new growth from the hugely difficult last twelve months, realises that to recruit, develop and retain top quality staff is what it’s all about going forward.
By Peter Thorp, a senior coach at alterniq inspired growth.
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