hiring and managing senior staff - how to ensure a good 'fit' for your business

Hiring and managing senior staff

How to ensure a good ‘fit’ for your business

http://www.jpabusiness.com.au/

jpabusiness.com.au +61 2 6360 0360 2

Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3

Chapter 1: Take the emotion out of hiring .............................................................. 4 1. When assessing candidates for a senior role what is the difference between ‘fitness’ and ‘fit’? ................................................................................................................................................................... 4 2. What’s the first step in successfully recruiting a senior executive? .......................................... 4 3. What other things should a business owner or senior manager consider when assessing candidates for senior roles? ........................................................................................................ 5 4. How do you reduce the impact of emotion on the recruitment process? ............................... 6 5. As someone who regularly consults with larger companies, what could SMEs learn from these corporations’ attitudes towards hiring? ............................................................................ 7

Chapter 2: How to recruit effectively for important roles ....................................... 8 1. How do psychologists typically assess candidates for senior roles? ......................................... 8 2. What are some practical approaches I can adopt when interviewing job candidates? .. 8 3. Any other tips for conducting a successful recruitment process? .............................................. 9 4. Any ‘insider tricks’ we need to know about? .................................................................................... 10 5. How do we make sure the business and the new hire are aligned in terms of day-‐to-‐day operations such as how we communicate, who has accountability for certain tasks and so on? ..................................................................................................................................................................... 10 6. Setting up these structures and seeking recruitment support is time-‐consuming and expensive – why should I bother? .............................................................................................................. 11

Chapter 3: Resolving conflict with senior staff ....................................................... 12 1. If one of my senior people isn’t working out, how should I go about discovering why? 12 2. How should I structure a difficult conversation? ........................................................................... 12 3. What things could I consider if the senior staff member is exhibiting ‘unhelpful behaviours’? ........................................................................................................................................................ 13 4. Why should I bother coaching or developing a senior employee with a perceived ‘personality problem’? .................................................................................................................................... 14

Disclaimer: The information contained in this eBook is general in nature and should not be taken as personal, professional advice. Readers should make their own inquiries and

obtain independent advice before making any decisions or taking any action.




Introduction Comments by James Price JPAbusiness Pty Ltd

n this eBook we welcome Career Capital founder and organisational psychologist Kevin Belzycki.

Kevin founded Career Capital as a corporate psychology consultancy in 2001 and now works alongside a number of other psychologists in providing support to corporate clients across a range of industries, from agriculture to manufacturing to banking.

Career Capital’s services include:

• Assessment – advising on and helping to select middle to senior managers, including providing psychometric testing;

• Development – executive coaching to fulfil leaders’ potential, team coaching to improve team dynamics, career transition support and conflict management;

• Human capital consulting – supporting businesses in developing their own selection and performance coaching systems.

According to Kevin, most Career Capital clients have a minimum of 200-300 staff, but the principles of successful hiring and staff development which he and his team share with corporate clients are equally relevant to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Basically, the two fundamental roles performed by Career Capital are:

• helping businesses get the right fit when hiring people, and • helping businesses get the best out of the people they’ve hired

through coaching.

These are goals all employers aspire to.

I



http://www.careercapital.com.au/


Chapter 1: Take the emotion out of hiring Comments by Kevin Belzycki Career Capital

1. When assessing candidates for a senior role what is the difference between ‘fitness’ and ‘fit’?

By fitness we’re referring to whether they have the base leadership capabilities needed to do the job.

By fit we’re referring to how they fit in with the organisation’s culture.

2. What’s the first step in successfully recruiting a senior executive?

The most important thing is to first develop a blueprint of what success looks like in terms of the new hire.

So the starting point is determining exactly ‘what is the hiring organisation looking for?’

In developing the success blueprint, business owners need to sit down with the other key stakeholders in the business and work out what they expect from the role. (‘Stakeholders’ are key people this role will impact upon.)




It is also important to identify the key behaviours that are important in the role, as well as the key measures of success and, overall, what excellence will look like in the role.

3. What other things should a business owner or senior manager consider when assessing candidates for senior roles?

From a business owner’s perspective, a key part of minimising the risk in recruitment is making sure they have a structured recruitment process.

They need to consider:

• Have they got a clear success blueprint for what they’re looking for?

• What are the key steps in the recruitment process to help them make the most effective decision?

• Does each step of that process have a clear structure and related selection criteria?

Having structure in place and sticking to it will really assist in reducing the biases that might otherwise influence the owner or senior manager when making recruitment decisions.

For instance, they might fall into the trap of employing someone who just presents well at interview, or overlooking someone who may not impact as well in the interview, but has a lot of substance in practice.

It’s not about ignoring their intuition, but having a structured process for gathering objective information, which they can then use to inform their intuitions.




4. How do you reduce the impact of emotion on the recruitment process?

A successful selection process needs to minimise risk and reduce the potential impact of decision-making biases.

Ways to minimise risk:

• Aim for objectivity – This is important for everyone involved in the recruitment process, including psychologists! We practise what we preach, so we have highly structured processes to try and reduce decision-making biases inherent in any selection process.

• Seek support from key internal stakeholders and external advisors – Utilise internal or external advisors to help provide more objectivity. For senior executive appointments, it it is often beneficial to have an external trusted advisor involved in the process.

• Use psychometric assessments – Don’t be reluctant to incorporate psychological assessment into the recruitment processes – it’s not magic, but it will add value to the process.

The more lenses you can look at a new hire through – internal stakeholders, your own intuitions, psychological assessment, the eyes of a trusted external advisor – the more you will be in a position to make an informed and more objective decision.




5. As someone who regularly consults with larger companies, what could SMEs learn from these corporations’ attitudes towards hiring?

Keeping in mind that medium to large corporations are often better resourced in terms of their human resources staff, what they tend to do well is have more structure in their recruitment processes.

We tend to find that smaller businesses are often more fluid in their approach to recruitment.

One of the roles we play at Career Capital is to offer training to organisations to help their own people learn to recruit more effectively, and even on occasion, assist them in designing in-house selection processes.




Chapter 2: How to recruit effectively for important roles Comments by Kevin Belzycki Career Capital

1. How do psychologists typically assess candidates for senior roles?

From our perspective as psychologists, we want to understand the leader’s problem-solving skills; to assess their ability to understand new concepts and analyse and interpret business information.

We want to understand who they are as people and their leadership preferences and behaviours.

And, finally, we want to understand their awareness of key management and leadership concepts, such as managing projects or people.

2. What are some practical approaches I can adopt when interviewing job candidates?

A lot of research suggests past behaviour is one of the better predictors of future behaviour.

So business owners might want to use a behavioural interview, which asks candidates questions about their previous achievements and, more importantly, how they went about delivering those achievements.

Most behavioural interview questions follow the approach of:

“Tell me about a time when …”




The job of the interviewer is to ask relevant follow-up probes that help them understand how the candidate went about handling the situation – the interviewer almost wants to feel as if they were a ‘fly on the wall’, observing the situation.

There is little point asking these sorts of questions if you have not identified the sort of behaviours you’re looking for in the role. That comes back to having a success blueprint.

3. Any other tips for conducting a successful recruitment process?

Be honest with yourself about your business culture.

Try not to be too rose-tinted about your business culture – know what your culture is like in practice and what sort of person will fit in.

For instance, a large regional business recruited a candidate, who had been very successful in their industry, into one of the most senior roles in their organisation.

The candidate was very capable and had a lot of relevant experience, but they had quite an aloof style.

The workforce culture was down-to-earth and collaborative, and they soon disengaged from the new leader.

The company unfortunately had to let the new leader go shortly after hiring them.

In retrospect, the hiring managers felt they had not given enough weight in the recruitment process to how the candidate was going to fit in with their culture.




4. Any ‘insider tricks’ we need to know about?

One of the keys to successful recruitment is to ensure good fundamentals:

• Know what you’re looking for;

• Have a good process and structure;

• Ensure you get a broad, well-rounded assessment of the candidate’s capabilities, and not just from the interview.

As long as you’re running a structured, well-rounded process and you’re clear on what you’re looking for, those steps will help to minimise hiring risks.

5. How do we make sure the business and the new hire are aligned in terms of day-to-day operations such as how we communicate, who has accountability for certain tasks and so on?

It usually comes down to having a frank conversation about topics like:

• How decisions tend to be made in practice;

• How much autonomy and decision-making authority the organisation plans to give the new leader in their role;

• How the communication processes – both informal and formal – operate in the business;

• What topics the new leader needs to communicate about with key stakeholders to avoid surprises.

Get all that out in the open as early as realistically possible.

This can be very important in SMEs because it is not uncommon for SMEs to operate with less formal communication and decision-making processes.




6. Setting up these structures and seeking recruitment support is time-consuming and expensive – why should I bother?

A senior executive who does not work out can cost an organisation many times their annual salary package in direct and indirect business costs.

Also, research further shows the difference between an above-average and an average performer is significant in terms of the profit impact for an organisation.

Everyone intuitively understands that senior executives who don’t work out, or who are even just marginal performers, are hugely costly to a SME in terms of disruption, distraction and overall cost.




Chapter 3: Resolving conflict with senior staff Comments by Kevin Belzycki Career Capital

1. If one of my senior people isn’t working out, how should I go about discovering why?

One of the most important things – and this is something a lot of businesses struggle with – is to start with a frank and honest conversation, rather than making assumptions about why an executive is behaving in a particular way.

2. How should I structure a difficult conversation?

If the business owner or senior manager is not used to having frank and transparent conversations on a regular basis, it can be helpful to have a basic process for how to structure these difficult conversations.

For instance:

• Clearly and concisely express what the issue is;

• Provide some evidence for why this is an issue and how it is impacting on the business;

• Ask for the manager’s feedback and thoughts on the issue;

• Agree on a series of actions for addressing the issue.




3. What things could I consider if the senior staff member is exhibiting ‘unhelpful behaviours’?

When a conflict or issue arises, business owners sometimes assume something is amiss in terms of the personality of the individual involved.

They might, at times, attribute issues to the individual specifically, rather than stepping back and thinking: “What are the issues within my business that might be contributing?”

They could also ask themselves: “How am I contributing to this issue in terms of my own leadership style?”

Career Capital case study: conflict resolution

We’ve been invited to investigate a number of instances of conflict between senior executives and we find that people often primarily attribute the conflict to personality traits of the person they are having issues with.

What we have found, however, in a number of these situations, is that the problem has arisen due to a whole combination of factors.

For example, a large corporate was having a real issue getting a number of its teams to communicate effectively. This conflict was significant and was undermining the ability of this part of the organisation to function effectively.

When we were first briefed, the conflict was presented to us as being mainly about the people involved.

However, after meetings with all the key individuals, it was clear the primary cause of the conflict related to the lack of role and process clarity between the teams, and that became the area to focus on to successfully resolve the conflict.




4. Why should I bother coaching or developing a senior employee with a perceived ‘personality problem’?

We often get referred for coaching people who are very good at the technical aspects of their job. These people are often functional specialists, who are considered highly knowledgeable and skilful, but are potentially not getting along as well as they could with their colleagues.

What we find is that if we can work with them to create moderate but noticeable shifts in their behaviour, that can make an important difference to their overall performance and how they are perceived by others.

The focus, however, is not usually about fundamentally changing people’s personalities.

Career Capital case study: behavioural coaching

We ran a coaching program for a technical leader in an industrial company, who was struggling to get along with colleagues.

This individual had been working for the company for a long time and was considered an industry expert.

However, the leader rarely listened to others, tended to speak over them and tended not to take account of others’ opinions or ideas.

After six months of coaching and internal business support, the feedback from the business was really positive about the changes in the leader’s behaviour. Colleagues were better able to appreciate the leader’s technical skills, without the leader’s interpersonal issues significantly reducing their overall effectiveness.

If you would like to learn more about the services offered by Career Capital, visit www.careercapital.com.au

For business advisory services, including mentoring, you can contact the team at JPAbusiness.




http://www.careercapital.com.au/

hiring and managing senior staff - how to ensure a good 'fit' for your business

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