Ask…and Really Listen
By Jay Forte, Humanetrics, LLC
It is important to have a team of great people; after all, your people are your profits. But having the right people isn’t the full story. The more important task of the millennial manager is to understand employees well enough to know how to “cast” them in the right roles. That means that a truly successful millennial manager commits to spending the time getting to know his/her people; this is the only way to start the process of understanding their talents and skills and what they need, value and want from their job.
You can imagine that if an employee works in a job that is not in line with the way that he thinks or addresses some of the things that he loves, this employee is not likely to commit extra effort or to be fully engaged in his job. Today, employees need to be happy at work…it encourages their performance. And to find out how to help them be happy, we need to invest the time in getting to know them; this starts with the art of conversation.
Today’s economy is a “thinking” economy; most of the businesses in the US are now service-focused (much of manufacturing has moved off-shore). To be successful in service requires that each employee to be fully engaged and thinking as they greet, assess and respond to every customer event (because each customer event is unique). An employee who is not thinking, not engaged or not happy at work, may not put the appropriate amount of effort in the service event which can send the customer away. Not only is it bad for business, but think of how many other potential customers this “dissatisfied” customer will likely tell. Remember that word of mouth advertising is estimated to be 50 times more effective than paid advertising…and that also works in the negative.
Our employees are the face of our organization – they create the impression in the mind of the customer of who we are and how we care about customers. If we do not know the employee well, how can we put the right employee in front of the customer? And are we prepared for these consequences?
The solution is in the art of conversation; conversation is now a millennial manager skill. It is critical to become proficient in the art of asking powerful questions, listening well and then using the information to guide great decision-making. Only then will we become wiser about not only who to hire, but where to place each employee to drive service levels, performance and company profitability.
Build a repertoire of powerful “get to know you” questions – questions that address both work and personal perspectives. After all, the goal is to hire an employee who will remain with the company. That means that you will need to know not only what their interests and talents are, but whether they will fit into the personality of your team, can work with the personalities on the team and support the overall mission and vision of the company. The better we can match employees to both role and culture, the greater chance that performance will increase and employees will remain.
The following are strong work-related and personal questions that, when employees respond, you have a clearer sense of what they think, what they value and what they are interested in. Consider asking your existing employees these questions to see if they are well suited for their current roles and include them in your repertoire of questions to ask employment candidates:
1. What matters most to you in your work? What makes (or will make) you excited about work?
2. What does “work ethic” mean? What is your work ethic?
3. Presume you have no limits on time or spending, if you were in charge of the company for a day, what is the most urgent or important thing you would do? What makes it urgent or important?
4. Define the perfect job for you? What makes it (or would make it) perfect?
5. What two performance areas, roles or skills would you still like to develop? Why?
6. How to do you play to your strengths? How are these strengths obvious to others – what do they say about these strengths?
7. What are three things that motivate you to perform in work and three in life?
8. What would you do with a free afternoon? How do you like to spend your free time?
9. How do your friends describe you? What makes them think this? What personal qualities do you have that you are most proud of? Why?
10. Who is one of your heroes and what makes this person a hero for you?
The goal is not to ask all questions to all employees or candidates. It is to develop a profile of questions that give you the most information to be able to determine an employee’s or candidate’s fit into a role and into the company. These questions may be ideal or they may encourage you to create others that are more appropriate. Either way, you are investing the time to find out enough information about the employee or candidate to do a better job matching his talents, interests and values with his role. This match, this connection of employee to role, is the key to sustained employee engagement and performance. Ask.. then really listen; all the answers you need are in their responses.
Copyright © 2008 Humanetrics, LLC. All rights reserved.