Let’s consider the factors you’ll need to look for to find the right person for your team.
Imagine that you’re a sports coach and you need a new player on the team. Would you walk up to someone in the street and say, ‘I want you to come and play for my team. I’ll train you to become the best player in the country’? Sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? You’d obviously go and watch players in other teams. On the other hand, you might decide to find some young player that you could develop for your team. So you’d spend some time watching the kids in school.
What are you looking for when you’re watching these kids or more established players? Is it experience of the game, or perhaps an all-round knowledge of how it should be played, or even just a good all-round player? All of these would be good to have but what you’re really looking for is – talent!
You’re looking for that gift or flair or capacity to achieve your outcomes. If you’re looking for a goalkeeper, then you’re looking for someone with that extra something that keeps the opposition from scoring. If you’re looking for a shooter or a winger or a quarterback then it’s the same story – you’re looking for talent.
It doesn’t really matter how long they’ve been a player or What you’re really looking for is
–talent!
whether they have a great knowledge of the game, you just need them to produce results.
It’s no different when you’re picking someone new for your team – you’re looking for talent.
• The talent to strip down an engine and rebuild it in record time.
• The talent to make other people feel at ease.
• The talent to produce reports that are clear and easy to read.
It comes back to outcomes again; I can’t emphasise this enough. Be absolutely clear what you need this person to do – keep in the fore- front of your mind the outcomes you’ll ultimately be judged on.
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963, British author) I was having a cup of coffee with Mike, a friend of mine, in a local coffee shop. We were discussing the young lady who was serving us. ‘I don’t like her approach,’ says Mike. ‘She’s not very friendly.’ Now if I was to give this young lady the benefit of the doubt, I’d probably say she was a bit shy and had difficulty com- municating with people. She just wanted to take our order and serve it when it was ready.
I asked Mike, ‘What would you do if it was your coffee shop?
What sort of person would you employ as a server?’ ‘Oh, I’d look for a girl with a bit of experience as a server, someone who looks clean and tidy and who’s a nice pleasant person.’
I told Mike what I’d look for: ‘Someone who would make the customers want to buy some more coffee or food, who’d make the customer want to come back and who’d probably recom- mend my coffee shop to other people.’
Now you may think that Mike and I are saying the same thing – the characteristics that he’s looking for will bring the results I’m looking for. Yes, that may happen but I suspect that the server in this coffee shop displayed all of these characteristics when she
was interviewed for the job. However, she wasn’t going to cause Mike or I to return to this coffee shop or recommend it to others.
I also suspect that the owner of this coffee shop doesn’t take as much care as they should when employing a server. There’s prob- ably the attitude from the owner that this isn’t a very prestigious job or one that pays very well, so you can’t be too fussy in who you employ.
I’m fed up with the saying, ‘If you pay peanuts you’ll get mon- keys.’ Low wages does not always equate to poor or mediocre performance. Remember what I said in Chapter 2 about chang- ing our thinking. This is what I’m talking about.
I’ve been served by people in bars, restaurants and coffee shops who had all the characteristics that I described earlier – they made me want to spend more money, they made me want to come back and they certainly caused me to recommend to others. These people are out there; your job is to find them.
Intelligence won’t do it
One of the programs that was installed in my brain as I grew up was that ‘intelligent’ people could do almost anything due to the fact that they had the capacity to learn. The education system when I was young was based on the understanding that if you left school with a whole raft of qualifications, any job was open to you. If you wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, pilot, engineer or architect, all you needed was these school qualifications and you could go on to learn anything.
Sadly, many people who did train to be doctors didn’t turn out to be very good doctors, as with lawyers, pilots or any other job you care to mention. When I was an apprentice engineer I can remember working with young engineering college graduates.
Some of them were very good, they had a talent for engineering and it was really apparent. However, there were others who, if truth be told, were pretty hopeless. Their intelligence had helped
them learn enough information to qualify for a degree in engi- neering but they just didn’t have the talent.
I mentioned earlier about the college graduate that I appointed as a sales person. I fell into the trap of not thinking but reacting to my programming and believing that because he was ‘intelli- gent’ he could learn to sell. He had the capacity to learn all about our products but he didn’t have the talent to persuade others, or to go out and find customers.
I was also stupid enough to believe I could teach him. However, as I said in Chapter 2, you can’t make people what their not.
You can teach people skills and give them knowledge. However, if they don’t have the talent, their perform- ance will suffer.
The motivational manager looks for
intelligence, but more importantly he looks for talent to achieve the outcomes.
Experience won’t do it either
A job applicant’s previous work experience is often used to judge whether or not they have the capacity to do the new job.
Many managers go through the CV discussing each previous job with the applicant. The applicant then goes on to tell the man- ager how clever they are and how successful they were in all their previous jobs.
It’s almost a case of: ‘Have you worked in our industry before?’ –
‘Yes, I have lots of experience in your industry’ – ‘Great, can you start on Monday?’.
I’ve been in the situation of interviewing someone for a sales job and they have several similar jobs on their CV. I’ve often asked myself, ‘Who on earth employed this person in a sales job? I have no confidence in their ability whatsoever.’
You can teach people skills and give them knowledge. However, if
they don’t have the talent, their performance will suffer.
Put your customer hat on for a moment and think about the people you’ve dealt with in the past who were pretty hopeless. The sales people, the plumbers, the maintenance engineers, or the customer service people on the end of the phone. When these people were interviewed for their job, they probably discussed with the inter- viewer their experience, how good they were in their current job and all their previous jobs. However, based on your interactions with them, I bet you’d have something to add to that discussion.
Experience shouldn’t be ignored, but it’s not a reliable indicator as to whether someone can give you the outcomes you want.
I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.
John Wooden (1910–, American basketball coach)