Great Doesn't Happen By Accident... Indoctrination

What Does It Take To Build And Develop A Truly Great Team?  Part 4 of a series…

So here we are in part 4 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 train almost anyone pretty much any skills that might be needed, however we cannot teach qualities…   Qualities are the things that make our best people “clone worthy”.

We’ve also talked about using the “ketchup question” when hiring for customer service, and the need to determine the default customer service level of your applicant. If you haven’t already, you can read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

So… we’ve interviewed our applicant by making them comfortable, and getting to know them through an in depth conversation, where we asked questions to find the behaviors that describe the Leadership qualities we are hiring for. 

And, we’ve decided to hire the person siting in front of us.

Now what?  Well…

In order to build a truly great team, we cannot allow our great new hire to simply adapt to the team as it stands.  We will simply end up with yet another mediocre team member. 

First step: Before I leave the room I will spend another 45 to 60 minutes with my new hire.  Yup… another hour to make sure that I get them off on the right foot invested now will pay off in more ways than you will believe.

Remember, great does not happen by accident.  We are not satisfied with the standards of behavior, or the culture of our current team (if you are, good for you!  Keep up the great work!), and it is going to take hard work and tough decisions in order to affect the change that needs to happen.  You can do this, and you need to start today… right here and right now. 

You will invest the time and energy to get this new hire fired up.  You need them to come onto your team with a full understanding of the new standards you will be holding the team to.  You need to indoctrinate them with your excitement about what the team is going to be like, how excited you are to have them on your team, the important role they will play in achieving the goals of the team, and how interested you are in helping them achieve their goals (you just got done talking to them for an hour… you better be able to talk in depth about their goals!).

Some people will state that they don’t like the word indoctrinate… and that’s OK.  You don’t have to use that word if it makes you feel uncomfortable.  And…

Think of the best, strongest, and highest performing teams you can.  Perhaps the Navy Seals come to mind?  I grew up in the town that borders West Point… that comes to my mind (and where I hope our 17 year old will go)…  Now, do those teams welcome and train their newest team members?  Is there coffee, nice music playing in the background while we talk about how we like our team members to treat each other with the same respect you would like to be shown?   Not so much…

What kind of process is it? I’ll give you a hint… it’s indoctrination.  Before anyone is brought onto the team they are told that it will be a difficult job, that it will be hard work, that you’re your teammates will be committed to excellence, and that you will be expected to uphold the highest standards of behavior and performance. 

I don’t believe that there is any way to maintain that level of performance without some form of indoctrination.  You don’t have to agree, and has what you’ve been doing gotten you a great team?  Is there a reason you can’t have a team that functions at an incredibly high level?  This process of hiring for qualities and indoctrinating every one of my new hires worked wonderfully for me, and that’s why I’m suggesting you take a chance and go for great!

Whatever you choose to call it, if you want to achieve and maintain a very high level of performance, you will have to instill your new hire with the values and beliefs of your team.  Make sure they understand how much you value having them on the team, and that you are looking forward to them using their experience and knowledge to help the team improve everything it does.

This is not something that you can delegate, nor can it be left to someone who does not even work on your team.  You, and only you (because you are the team Leader) can instill your new hires with your excitement about the future of the team, your passion for the success of the team, the rewards that come from achieving the goals of the team, and what the future can/will hold for your new hire.  If you feel you have found a great addition to the team, make sure they really understand how excited you are about having them on the team, and how they will be a key player in helping the team achieve it’s goals.

If you do this right, your new hire will come in for his or her first day of work with more motivation that anyone currently on your team.  And as long as you continue to stay involved in their work and development, you can help them maintain that level of engagement.   

I believe that team member engagement is all about our relationship with the person to whom we report.  So you are starting to build that strong, trusting relationship the day you decide to hire them!

Since we are transparent, we make sure our new hire understands that we are a team in transition. 

That means they might work with team members who are not upholding the expectations we just discussed, or acting in a manor consistent with the culture we described, and that does not mean it is OK for our new hire to do anything other than meet or exceed those expectations. 

We will explain that we are working on changing/improving the culture of the team, that we have some team members who may not be a good fit on this team, and that we are working hard to change their behavior of get then off the team.

It is imperative that we are honest and transparent from our very first encounter with each and every great new hire.  We may not have always been as honest and transparent as we should have been in the past, and the only way to develop a truly great team is by making a commitment to honestly and transparency moving forward.

I wrote a post about how and why I indoctrinate (you can read it here) and your indoctrination process should be personal, and fit your workplace.  I honed this process hiring and developing great teams for Whole Foods Market… a fast paced retail environment where standards are high and so are customer expectations.  You should indoctrinate your new hires with your ideals, your team’s values, and your hopes for their future.  Tell them everything you would want to hear if you had made it onto a team that had very high standards, and happy to have you join them.

That’s probably long enough for today (too long by many standards), and I feel that too often posts and articles are too short to effectively help us really understand how to achieve the results talked about in the post.  So… I write until I feel I’ve said enough to actually help you.  I know this will mean some people won’t read them, and that’s OK.

In part 5 we’ll talk about the next steps in building a great team, like the next steps in our new hire’s work life, moving those who are holding the team back off the team, and how to change the culture of our team.

Great Doesn't Happen By Accident... part 3

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. 

Great Doesn’t Happen By Accident… It Takes A Carefully Planned And Ruthless Assault On “Good”

What Does It Take To Build And Develop A Truly Great Team?  Part 2 of a series…

So here we are back with part 2 of this series.  We are starting with hiring hourly team members, everyone from no experience/entry level to Store Team Leaders.  When hiring for this level we are hiring almost exclusively for Leadership qualities.  This is because those qualities are the things that make people clone worthy, as opposed to skills.  We can easily train for pretty much any skills needed, however we cannot train qualities.  So let’s continue…

Before we get too far, we should talk for a minute about the actual interview.  I've seen it happen enough times that want to state very clearly that the interview process is no place for us to 'exert our authority', make sure 'they know who is in charge', or work to make the applicant uncomfortable to see how they react.  If you are doing these things you are doing it wrong, at least if you want to call yourself a Leader by any stretch of the imagination.  Interviewing with this attitude is pretty much guaranteed to give you mediocre workers who will do what they are told to do, and little more.  Mkay?

Hiring for qualities is a bit different from hiring for skills, as at least in my experience, the best way to determine what Leadership qualities our applicant has been developing is through conversation, rather than simply questions and answers...  I find "tell me about a time..." much less useful than getting my applicant comfortable enough to tell me all about the things in her life that she is proud of, where she puts her energy, what kinds of things frustrate her, and what gets her into a 'flow' state, to name just a few.  I believe that we all have Leadership qualities within us to one degree or another.  The key is finding the people who have been developing these qualities throughout their lives.

I know that a large percentage of our applicants have been interviewed many times now, so a good number of them know just what we want to hear.  If they are smart they probably have already thought about how to answer many of the questions they have heard before.  This is another reason why I prefer the conversational approach... it doesn't allow the applicants to stick with their 'script' or preformed answers.

I believe the best way to find Leadership qualities in others is to determine whether or not they show the behaviors that describe those qualities.  Qualities, by their very nature can be difficult to pin down, however I think we could easily come up with a list of behaviors that describe each quality or trait.  Read more about behaviors that describe Leadership qualities starting here.

For instance, I believe that the ability to hear and respond to feedback is on of the most important qualities a new hourly team member can have... In my experience it is perhaps the best indicator of future success, maybe because it means they are trainable, coachable, and humble.  So... how will we determine whether or not our applicant has this quality?

I try to get them to tell me all about their experience of school, trying to get into college/grad school, involvement in sports, or any other way they may have received feedback.  I don't ask specific enough questions to allow them to fall back on any prepared answers.  Since no one else ever asked them what they thought about their performance in that pick up game last weekend, how they responded to the feedback they got from their high school football coach, or the grade they got in that college class when they thought they deserved better, I generally get honest answers.

Any instance in our lives when we get feedback is fair game.  What makes you think you are a good driver?  On what do you base that opinion?  Do you follow the advice of the personal trainer at the gym, or do you think you know better?  What have you learned in your personal relationships?  I can easily give many examples of when I have hurt the feelings of people in my life, and how I reacted to that feedback.  Is that their problem?  What's my responsibility, if any?  These are all roads that out applicant has never been down in an interview, so we are likely to have an honest and genuine conversation.

I know you are all screaming at me... how about feedback from another job?  Of course this is appropriate, and can be very useful.  However, remember that our applicant has been asked about this many times already, so again, if they are smart they have learned what to say about feedback from work.  I also feel that my personal experience has some bearing here.  I've worked for, and with, some really poor bosses, and at work places where honest feedback was not the rule.  There are a lot of people out there who have been forced into the bottom, middle, or top third simply because that’s the way the company did things, so bosses had to come up with some reasons for assigning a person to this rung.  Because of the way this is set up, the feedback that many people get at work is often not honest feedback, with the intention of helping that person learn and grow.  If it happened to me, it happened to a lot of other people, so I feel we have to take feedback from past jobs with a grain of salt.

What about another quality before we call it a day?  How about self-responsibility?  Since we are already involved in a friendly, casual conversation with our applicant, we probably already have some example of something that didn't go as planned.  So we just need to find out a little more about the outcome... who was at fault?  Did our applicant have any part to play?  What about that feedback you got from your guidance counselor/coach/parents/friends/boss?  What did you learn from that?  How were you responsible for what happened? 

Have you been late for work or some other appointment?  What happened?  I need to hear the applicant take responsibility... yes the train was late... not your fault.  And… what, if anything did you do?  Did you start taking an earlier train since we know trains will be late?  Did you find alternatives, like friends you can call when the train is late?  These are simple examples of self-responsible behaviors.

To spell it out, I need to hear that our applicant, at least at some point recently, heard feedback and understood that the other person’s experience of them is that person’s reality.   To be coachable, the applicant needs to have changed their behavior in response to that feedback. For self-responsibility, I need to believe that our applicant takes responsibility for the things that happen in their lives; that their choices determine what happens (not everything that happens of course) and that they are responsible for the choices they make.  If I don't hear these things, I'll thank them for coming in and move onto my next applicant.  

Self responsibility, teachability, honesty, some level of emotional intelligence, some level of self awareness, and feeling that quality work is it's own reward are some of my make or break qualities.  If I do not believe that my applicant is developing these qualities I will not hire them, no matter how skilled they might be.  Remember, this is just a quick synopsis… you can find my whole 16 part series on hiring, with a lot more detail, starting here.

Wow… this takes so long to discuss doesn’t it?  That has to be long enough (probably too long many will tell me) for today, and we’ll pick up next time with what to do once we decide to hire the person sitting in front of us.  No… if we want great we cannot simply shake their hand and send them off to have another person take over.  We need to indoctrinate them.  Yes… I understand that many of you don’t like that word, and all of its connotations.   And… I don’t believe that we can get ‘great’ by using the same process (welcoming and training, the same onboarding that gave you the average team you have) you’ve been using.  Great doesn’t happen by accident.  It takes a planned assault on Good.  Hey, that’s catchy… maybe I’ll use that for todays title huh?

What Does It Take To Build And Develop A Truly Great Team? Part 1 of a series…

A truly great team requires obsessively great hiring, a trusting, transparent Leader who strives to be a servant Leader, shared goals and values (best if developed by the team), a culture of ownership and responsibility, and a need for constant improvement.

I have been writing about hiring and training the best hourly team members, as well as how to change the team culture to enable the development of a truly great team on my blog for some time now.  It's been almost 100 posts in the making, and I imagine it can be daunting jumping into what is essentially a book on hiring and team development.

So... I thought we might shorten all of those posts into a much shorter series on hiring the best hourly team members; how and why to hire for Leadership qualities; honesty, trust and transparency as they relate to Leadership (servant Leadership in particular); developing team goals and values; developing/changing our team culture; and developing enough trust and ownership in that culture that will not only allow for constant improvement, but will demand it.

I've been hiring hourly team members, from entry level/no experience people to department Leaders and Store Team Leaders for 30 years now, and that is what I'm writing about.  When hiring executives, or other jobs where specific job skills, talents, and/or a specific educational background is needed, weed out the applicants without these mandatory requirements, and then follow the steps I outline below.  If you disagree, I'm sure you'll let me know

Hiring is arguably the most important thing we do.  You cannot have a great team without hiring great people.  If you don't have the team you want, the first thing you need to look at is your hiring.  In fact, if you don't have the team you want, and you have been doing the hiring, I'd suggest that you need to get someone who has a track record of hiring great people either take over your hiring, or retrain you on how to hire.  Yes it's hard to own up to that, and admit that we aren't good at hiring.  And... without great hiring we will never have that great team.

Too many of us have some notion that we cannot admit we are not that good at hiring… for some reason admitting that is a huge blow to our egos.  We are all very good at one or two things, OK at most things, and not so good at other things.  Build and play to your strengths, and find people who are very good at the jobs you are not so good at.  You can read my whole series about how to hire hourly team members for Leadership qualities starting here from earlier in this blog.  It will take some humility to fully accept that we need to unlearn our old ways of hiring in order to learn to hire for qualities.  And the payoff is simply amazing!

You will be hiring for attitude/qualities first, and any needed skills second (again, I'm talking about hiring hourly team members).  In fact, you should be hiring for every position based on Leadership qualities first, skills second.  If you are serious about developing a great team, you will need the best Leaders.  How many places have you worked where great Leaders are being developed?  Any?  So... you will have to grow your own, and hiring for Leadership qualities is the best way to start.  The hourly team members you are hiring today will be your Leadership team in the near future.

Your should read my post about Hiringfor what can't be trained, and in a nutshell... Think about the people who you would love to clone... they are probably really good at the skills of their job, and is that what makes them clone worthy?  Probably not... They are most likely clone worthy because of the qualities they possess... because of their attitude towards their work... that's what makes them great!  I can take the next person you see and train them how to do every task needed to run a grocery store (you can probably train the skills needed for your workplace), however I cannot train qualities.  We cannot train anyone to be self aware, to show self responsibility, to have courage, to extend trust, or to be honest... those cannot be trained, so we must hire for them, and I dare to say, at least for hourly team members, almost only for them!

The best way I have found to determine which people have the qualities we are looking for is through a long and friendly conversation, with some specific questions used to draw out our own make or break qualities. 

For instance, if your new hires will be dealing with your customers, it is imperative that their default level of customer service is at least as high as your expected level of service.  I have found it next to impossible to get people to consistently provide a higher level of customer service than they believe is the correct level, without constant supervision, and no one has the time for that.  So... we must hire people who already believe that our expected levels of service are the correct and only reasonable level of service.  Then, and only then, can we count on them to consistently deliver that level of service without any supervision.  I wrote a post specifically about hiring for customer service here.

Well, we knew this would be a series…  next time we’ll start to talk about just how we discover whether or not our applicant has been developing the qualities we’re looking for.