What Does It
Take To Build And Develop A Truly Great Team?
Part 3 of a series…
So here we
are in part 3 of this synopsis of my 70 or so post series, walking through
hiring the best hourly team members, indoctrinating them onto our team,
choosing the right apprentices, and changing the culture of our team from the
one that allowed us to be average to one that will not allow average people to
remain on the team. The original posts
can be found here
starting with hiring…
We’ve talked
about the importance of hiring for qualities rather than skills (remember, we
are hiring hourly team members, from no experience/entry level to Store Team
Leaders) since we can almost anyone pretty much any skills that might be
needed, however we cannot teach qualities…
If you are interested you can read part 1 and part 2.
Back to it…
You will
have to determine what, if any, qualities are particularly important in your
workplace. As I stated in the earlier, I
believe that teachability (the ability to hear feedback and change our behavior
accordingly), some level of self awareness, self responsibility, honesty, and
some level of emotional intelligence are perhaps the most important qualities
when hiring hourly team members, and I will not hire anyone in which I can’t
find some level of development.
Teachability
because they will be coachable, and able to hear feedback... Essential for developing our new hires into great team members, as well as our next apprentices.
Self-awareness
because if we are not aware of our own character, desires, and everything else
that is going on within us, we end up feeling that life happens to us, rather
than seeing much of what happens as a consequence of our choices.
Self-responsibility
because if we don’t own our actions and behaviors, we end up blaming everything
and everyone else for our problems. This
goes hand in hand with self-awareness.
Honesty
because, well we don’t want to hire anyone who is not honest or lacks
character. We need them to do the right
thing even when no one is looking.
Emotional
intelligence because I don’t believe we can develop honest, authentic
relationships unless we know what we are feeling. If we are not aware of our feelings, we can
end up driven by our feelings… out of control.
I’ve already
mentioned that every applicant I hire has to have a default standard of
customer service that is at least as high as my own, because it’s next to
impossible to get someone to consistently uphold a higher level of customer
service than the level they believe is the right level, at least without
constant supervision, and who has the time for that?
As I described
earlier, and starting here over 3 posts on my blog, I’ve identified behaviors that describe the qualities
I am looking for. Then during my
conversation with the applicant, I concentrate on finding those behaviors. I’m sure you can come up with many more
behaviors than the ones I listed… and then you just have to get your applicant
comfortable and talking all about themselves.
You keep listening for the behaviors that describe the qualities you
need.
For customer
service, I ask one question, and one question only. It is the ‘ketchup question’, and I talk
about it at length here. I may need to do a video of it, because after
teaching scores of people how to ask it, I’ve found that the delivery is incredibly
important. Once you get it down, it is
the only question you need to make sure your hires have a very high level of
customer service. Please don’t hesitate
to ask any questions you have about the ‘ketchup question’ or any of this.
So… since
this is a synopsis, I’ll skip ahead to the point where we’ve decided to hire
our applicant because they answered the ‘ketchup question’ the way we wanted,
and we are satisfied that they have developed the qualities we are looking for
enough so that we feel confident we can help them continue to work on their
Leadership qualities.
Next step,
indoctrination. Yup… next time in part 4.
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