Wolf Gugler Executive Search

Category: Management Tools

  • Leadership Wins With Trust

    Want to win in a leadership role? Learn to trust your team, peers and business partners. When delegating responsibility, the most powerful and motivating words you can utter are, “I trust you.” Research shows that organizations and leaders that are trusted have lower employee turnover, higher revenue growth and greater profitability. So how do you get started?

    First, talk to team members about specific job responsibilities and how each person goes about getting things done. Listen with sincere interest. Ask questions and show you support them. Then ensure your team’s interests are aligned with the company’s goals.

    Now it’s time to build deeper trust by engaging more personally. Pay attention to the special talents and quirks of individuals and give honest, thorough and frequent feedback. Early constructive discussions on difficult issues work best. Talk periodically to each person about career goals, and don’t assume they’re the same as what you remember from a conversation two years ago. When it comes to career growth you are the most important person in the loop.

    Your most important trust-building skill as a leader of people is communication. Keep no secrets. Be honest and upfront. Speak frequently about the issues and values that are most important. If there are black clouds on the horizon, be sure to do the talking before rumors beat you to it. Trusted leaders always communicate ahead of the grapevine.

    All of your words and actions are observed, so do what you say. When you make a commitment, follow through. If something comes up that prevents you from honoring your word, explain the situation so your team understands the circumstances. When you are open about issues, people understand, but if you ignore or bury the topic, people will become distrustful.

    Start with “I trust you” and watch the faces on your team light up. Your stars will rise — and so will your wins.

    Joe Scarlett is the retired CEO of Tractor Supply Co. He can be reached at [email protected].

  • What is Mentoring, Anyway?

    Staying marketable, and being successful in the workplace usually involves developing your skills through the help of a Mentor. Dictionary.com defines a mentor as “A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.” Sounds like what everyone wants/needs, but what is it that  a mentor has to offer you?

    A mentor can be a valuable sounding board to hear about your workplace issues or concerns. He/she can also assist you in your career development, as people learn best on the job with constructive feedback and coaching (our executive search experience denotes that this, in fact, is a major reason for employee dissatisfaction and turnover). The mentor helps people learn to accept feedback in a positive manner, knowing it is intended to be of benefit to them. By mentoring, we help guide that person’s successful movement within our company. The “reward” may be nothing other than a warm fuzzy feeling in knowing the “mentee” is better off for having undertaken this step.

    Mentoring makes the transfer of knowledge happen by intention, not by chance. It is the key to generating both new and renewed strength in a company. Looking at it from the company’s viewpoint:

    •  As a mentor, you’ll help people set up a process to help develop themselves, aside from any company assistance they may receive…and increase their motivation as a result.
    • It will spur you to evaluate your team’s bench strength, and help in identifying what’s necessary for succession planning, aside from the benefits the Employee receives.
    • You may also enable an employee to develop beyond the point they feel they’re capable of, improving their self-esteem and loyalty to the company.

    You can go about this by putting people into ambitious projects intended to “stretch” them. These could involve cross-functional duties as well as the work discipline they know best. Let them know you don’t expect them to know everything going in, but hope they’ll learn more through the process.

    The process must include clear communication of duties and expectations, but just as important is a regular formal feedback process. Reviewing their progress regularly will  help to solidify their learning and also help to plan the next advancement steps. This should take place in a written action plan that both parties can access. Ask them what they feel they have done well, and what can be improved to make them buy into the process and self-accountability will develop. It’s a proven fact that people are harder on  themselves in self-evaluation, so you should also have the opportunity to affirm their strengths.

    Feedback from others (even peers and subordinates) can help; done anonymously, it becomes a powerful 360-degree feedback tool. Organizations such as GE are famed for using this process, where all executives are trained to act as mentors so that each division has mentors available for all employees (new hires to division heads). From the individual’s standpoint, you should first identify a mentor by thinking about the various  people you know; they may be work colleagues, trusted friends, family, teachers, etc. One can have multiple mentors too; different perspectives can only add to the developmental mix. You may have already expressed an interest to them to understand how you are doing at work.

    • You’ll first have to ask them if they can commit to the time required. This is a serious exercise for both parties, so there is no use beginning something both sides can’t live up to
    • Be clear with them as to what kind of assistance or advice you are looking for; assuming you already have a Boss, and that is not the intended role here 
    • Talk regularly; thankfully, with the age of technology, this may take place with a combination of personal meetings, emails or phone calls
    • Make efficient use of time, providing them with an update since the last meeting

    Don’t forget to thank your mentor for taking the time to help you; this is for your benefit, not theirs. If you found them helpful, let others know as well. Good luck!

     Last, why not share a mentoring success story with us? Maybe your part-time protégé displayed the potential to succeed, and with your help has gone on to bigger and better. Maybe you attribute your own success to someone who helped you move forward in your own career. Let us know how mentoring affected you. Email us at [email protected].

     

  • Is What You See What You Get?

    How Do You Do a Background Check?

    As Employers, we’re all happy when it appears we’ve interviewed the “ideal” candidate for a position vacancy. He/she is knowledgeable, presents well, and appears to have the correct mix of skills, aptitude and attitude. Reality dictates some applicants are better at interviewing than their current occupation; worse still, background checks may uncover traits or instances where they could actually do harm to your business and reputation. They may also litigate if hired and then “unjustly” terminated. You must establish careful methods of screening applicants and monitoring existing employees. There are several items that you can institute in your company’s hiring practices to reduce the likelihood of this occurring. Here are some preventative steps to take in order to avoid negligent hiring and retention:

    • Every applicant should be required to fill out an employment application that requires the candidate to list employment and educational history. You should review the history to check for gaps of time that suggest that the candidate has had a problem that may not be indicated on the application, such as unemployment or worse yet, incarceration. You can then ask the candidate follow-up questions about any gaps to get further information about him or her before making a hiring decision.
    • The employment application should also require the candidate to list professional references and their relationship to them. He or she should be required to sign a release as part of the application, giving you permission to contact both references and former employers to obtain additional information about them. Finally, the application should contain an affirmation clause that is signed by the applicant stating that the information given on the application is true and correct.
    • CCH (www.cch.com), the tax and legal publication source, recommends when hiring employees for jobs in which the safety of third parties is particularly at issue, you may wish to inquire into the criminal history of the job applicant on the application. It is a violation of federal law to ask about the arrest records of potential employees. You may, however, ask the applicant about whether they have any prior convictions. If you do that, you must be able to show that the disclosure of prior convictions was related to the job in question and was not used simply to bar employment of persons with a criminal conviction.
    • Conduct personal interviews of prospective employees. That gives you the opportunity to follow up on information received in the job application, ask questions not covered in the application, and have another chance to get information from candidates that show whether they will be competent and safe employees. A personal interview also allows you to make your own assessment of a job candidate’s character. Pay attention not only to their verbal answers, but body language; did they hesitate or shift uneasily in their chairs when asked about performance or gaps in employment? Are they able to maintain eye contact during this time? Sometimes the unconscious can be an indicator that further probing is necessary.
    • Next, you should check references and contact former employers to ensure that there is no information about the candidate’s background that the candidate did not disclose. If a job candidate has a history of attitude issues or other behavior that would make him or her disruptive to your organization, references and former employers are likely to know about it. When contacting references and former employers, you should specifically inquire about the candidate’s honesty and reliability, as well as whether he or she has any traits that would make him or her unfit as an employee, such as anger management problems.

    Once an employee has been hired, you must still take care to monitor his/her fit with your other employees. For example, any allegation of misconduct by an employee should be thoroughly investigated. Your corrective action will depend on the seriousness of the employee’s conduct. If the conduct was inappropriate, but not necessarily serious, it may be enough for you to simply discipline the employee.

    Additionally, if an employee seeks to change positions or take on new job responsibilities, you should reevaluate his or her suitability for the new position and duties sought. If they are not currently suitable, develop a constructive plan of development that will allow them to work towards that goal.

    Last, you must document all disciplinary measures taken, including the dates that each measure was taken. Keep job applications and personal interview notes with the employee’s personnel file. You should take notes of all conversations with references and former employees, and they should also be included in the personnel file. In addition, all discipline or other corrective actions should be documented in detail and filed with the rest of their information. That documentation can be used to demonstrate the care you took to ensure that employees hired and retained were safe and competent to the best of your knowledge. It is the employee’s right to view their file if they so request.

    Negligent hiring and retention are potential liability sources for us as Employers. As we are in control of much of this, it is up to us to select and retain employees who are safe and competent to do the job and work with other people. By establishing a process of evaluating potential employees and monitoring existing employees, we can create a better workforce while avoiding liability for negligent hiring and retention.

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