Hiring to Fail

It has been more often than I care to count that I have watched happy successful producers become irritable, unstable, and unhappy supervisors. When you build a team and promote managers it is critical to really understand your people’s strengths and weaknesses to always set them up for success. In today’s pressure to climb the ladder, we can lose who we are and what we excel at, and for those not courageous enough to recognize that for themselves and step out of that role and back into something that better suites them, it can mean extreme stress and self-worth analysis.

So what is really the problem? It certainly is not their intelligence or technical acumen, so why do successful people struggle when promoted into supervision? First off, managing people is very different than managing a project or program. The elements of projects and programs are typically objective, whereas with people you really have to focus on the subjective aspects. Highly specialized technicians can get easily frustrated with that shift and may even start to micro-manage their team. Secondly, there is usually not much training around how to make that shift. So people, once revered for their expertise, can find themselves confused and a bit lost at a higher level where the focus is on a team vice a product. This can lead to self doubt on their own ability and even kill the team morale who may then become unsure of the supervisors capabilities as well.

The churn in a team’s dynamic that this creates can last anywhere from weeks to years and negatively impact profits and productivity over time as things fester. Many organizations whose employees indicate poor morale or culture may have fallen victim to this exact scenario. It is not always easy to see during the day-to-day as the new managers will often hide their struggles out of fear or pride.

So how to you tackle this upfront to prevent these kinds of issues from plague-ing your organization? First, double check your interview questions. If the resumes and referrals were good enough on the technical level to garner an interview, spend more interview time on understanding their peoples skills and how they would tackle HR issues. Things like that may give you a better picture of how they will adapt to moving from the do-er to the director of doing. Second, ensure you meet with managers regularly and give them adequate understanding of your expectations as well as their left and right lateral limits to freely operate before needing your input. Empowering them to act sets an example for them to do with the team they manage as well. Finally, give them access to all the various kinds of training, HR, coaching, team-building, etc to ensure they have all the tools they need to succeed. A solid technician with a good set of tools for the job at hand will never disappoint.

Following these few simple tips can help ensure you are setting up your first line level supervisors and above for maximum success. Their success individually equals company success holistically!