Today I am going to depart from the usual subjects that I post on (namely Crypto / Personal Stories / Fiction) and pull something out of my professional profile as a tutor / coach and trainer.
So strap in and come along for the ride with me.
One of the bugbears of growing an organisation is recruiting / hiring effectively. A good friend of mine has described the whole recruitment process as 50/50 at best and I often say that during an interview you can get a good person on a bad day or a bad person on a good day. Let's be honest it is very easy to be slick, but the challenge is maintaining that level of quality throughout. My business depends on this as I tender for training contracts. Initially I run a very high quality module about communication, but then like I say what I provide has to go beyond that. Failure to do so results in disappointment and reputational damage.
Several months ago I acquired a new client who had been profoundly disappointed with the training she had been receiving and so she opted to try me out instead. Her initial response was very positive as I ran that first module with her, but we finished that months ago and we are in the midst of the real work, beyond the initial "selling process" and to my knowledge she is still extremely satisfied.
So this begs the question when we are looking for a high quality individual what are the intrinsic qualities we should be looking for that go beyond that person's hard skills (that being the relevant formal qualifications)?
Jack Welch describes his approach for general recruitment as the 4Es and the P framework, which I will briefly outline for you in a moment but before that he describes what he calls the litmus test for all high quality recruits. This is the measure, three characteristics, that is an absolute prerequisite for any individual.
Integrity - put simply does the external behaviour match the inner character. I recall on one of my favourite TV programmes, Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud talking about differing approaches to historical architectual restoration. In Britain the approach is that the method and materials must be as authentic as possible or when that is not possible there must be a clear divide between the new and old (often demonstrated through a glass connecting corridor) whereas in Italy the approach is very much to ensure that the external finish looks right, whatever rubbish is used as a filler. No criticism of the Italian approach, but if this were a person, the former has integrity and the latter is full of crap!
Intelligence - this should not be confused with education. While education is of immense value what underpins it all is an intelligence that is conveyed through all aspects of life. One of the most intelligent people I know is my dad. If you were to look at his paper qualifications there is nothing that stands out to mark him as being remarkable, but to know him and know his character is to see a person who readily applies what I would call "natural intelligence" to day to day situations and problem solving. This is real intelligence at work.
Maturity - some might label this as emotional intelligence. While emotions are highly relevant they emanate from our primitive brain and they serve as an early warning system in many cases or guide our intuition (as does our stomach funnily enough with it having more nerve cells than anywhere else apart from our brains - hence the term "gut feeling") they can also be highly unreliable unless contextualised. Maturity is what contextualises things. It is the ability to take an emotional step back and look at the big picture, to define an approach that is not driven by our emotions. Emotions are a signpost that should not be ignored but we shouldn't entirely trust them either.
So back to the 4Es and the P...
E - Energy - this is a positive power that burns internally, an energy and enthusiasm to drive things forward, that will not be deflected. It has to be genuine because alternatively a person who "fakes it to make it" will inevitably burn out as such a level of energy will ultimately become unsustainable.
E - Energise - the ability to motivate and drive those around you. Back in my formative years I was under the leadership of a great guy called Ady, and he would often discuss a plan of action with us and such was his energy - as illustrated above - that even in the midst of him sharing I was like "Ady shut up! Ady stop talking!" but not because of a lack of personal quality on his part - it was more a case of Ady, please stop and let us get on with it. I don't think I was alone in this thinking. That is what to energise means at its most effective. You could even argue that, given the scientific rule that energy cannot be destroyed, only converted, that this is exactly what Ady was doing - somehow converting his own positive energy into an energy that was engaging and driving the rest of us.
E - Edge - the ability to make the right decisions under pressure. What can happen is that some individuals can procrastinate or be like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Barrack Obama once said that if you are 51% sure of something you should go for it as moments of 100% certainty are extremely rare. This is where your "gut" comes into play and your primitive brain can be a guiding light - but remember it must always remain within context as I spelt out above. Of course this opens the door to mistakes, but with maturity and experience these mistakes will become less prevalent - and remember to err is human!
E - Execute - Jack Welch didn't used to have this quality on the framework which he used to for obvious reasons call the 3Es and the P, but he noticed that while his boxes were being ticked that somehow something was missing. Somehow projects weren't being delivered and it raised questions about the individual's skills in that most crucial of all aspects - the final outcome. No deliverables makes all of the above completely irrelevant. I am reminded of a voluntary project that my brother was heading up in the early 90s. He was passionate about the work, in fact it could be said it was his baby, and there was no lack of hard work on his part, however his communication style was often brusque and abrasive and thus he often found himself working with a tiny handful of volunteers and the project very much was stuck in the mud and going nowhere fast. Fortunately, one of his most enthusiastic volunteers recognised what was going on and took the project by the horns in that he took over all of the direct communication with a wider body of people and he set some deadlines. He demonstrated both the ability to energise and the ability to execute as suddenly the project took on a new life and was delivered in a short span of time.
P - Passion - a passionate person is a passionate person, or so Jack Welch's logic goes. If a person is passionate about anything that same passion will carry over into their professional lives. You may have noticed recently my passion for Lincoln City (!) and overall my general passion for writing (as well as my frustrations with managing my "trigger finger") among other things? It naturally follows that I will bring the same level of passion to all of the wider aspects of my life. Energy is an engine and Passion is the fuel.
If you can find these qualities in somebody who you are looking to employ you are not going to go far wrong!
As always stay safe and well my friends.
ENDNOTE: The latter part of this article is based on Jack Welch's approach to recruitment as explained in his book Winning, with my own examples provided.
