Too often, new hires show up on the first day only to find their managers are woefully unprepared. There’s typically a fair amount of scrambling to pull together some sort of plan for the day, gather any training materials, and make sure the employee’s doing something. It’s not unusual for managers to be distracted by meetings, projects, and crises rather than focused on the employee. There’s a whole lot of making-it-up-as-you-go and not much thought as to what a lousy first impression this day might be making on the newest team member.

Instead of a smooth transition, most hires face a rocky first day that does little to confirm they make the right choice in taking this new job. Among the worst first-day offenses I see are:

• The manager who’s in a meeting or out of the office when the new employee arrives on Day One. Nothing says “I’m too busy to deal with you right now” like prior commitments, even though you certainly knew when your employee was supposed to show up.

• Nowhere to land. The first day is not the time to figure out where the person is going to sit and what he’ll need to get started. Why wouldn’t you have a work space already set up with a desk, necessary technology, and basic office supplies?

• Endless required reading. Handing your new hire a stack of manuals to review is not, I repeat NOT, the same thing as providing some actual training.

• Meetings, meetings, meetings. Having people sit in on meetings the first day is pretty useless. They won’t understand most of what’s being discussed, so they end up bored and isolated.

• Too many new faces. Certainly you want to introduce new hires to the people in their departments and those they’ll be working with most closely. But if your company is on the medium-to-larger side, it isn’t helpful to parade new employees around the building to meet anyone and everyone who’s available. All this practice does is overwhelm them and make them feel like they’ll never be able to remember anybody.

Avoiding these missteps will go a long way toward making new hires feel welcome and productive as opposed to a burden on the manager. And it’s helpful to keep in mind that the overall goal of a good onboarding process is actually pretty simple: From the minute the employee walks through the door on the first day, as many things as possible should make him or her glad to be there.

“It’s all about the managers. Get that right and you can make work better. Get it wrong and you’ll get skewered.” 

–Frank Roche, from the KnowHR blog

This is true for every company, big or small. No matter what you do to offer a stellar corporate culture, a fantastic work environment, or an awesome employment “experience”, it’s the quality of your managers that trumps everything. Great employees won’t work for lousy managers, at least not for long.

So why do so many companies get it wrong? Because selecting and developing a team of top-notch managers is a ton of work. First, you have to know what you’re looking for. You have to understand what personality traits, talents, and skills it takes to succeed as a manager. Not everyone is cut out for the role, and often people who are great “doers” can’t make the transition into being great managers. This means you sometimes have to tell strong performers that they simply aren’t a good fit for a management position, even if it’s what they really want to do. And you have to remember that if you promote someone just to make him happy, you risk making lots of people unhappy if he fails.

The next place a lot of companies get it wrong is by skimping on management training. Without it, first-time managers usually make lots of rookie mistakes. They miscommunicate, they make bad hires, they bungle performance reviews. They either come on too strong or not strong enough. Sometimes they lose good people while they’re learning through trial-and-error. Even experienced managers who already understand the “people” side of the job need to be educated in your company’s methods, policies, and expectations.

Lastly, a lot of companies are guilty of holding managers most accountable for tangible results: sales made, deadlines met, projects completed, customer satisfaction targets achieved, budgets maintained. However, they may get little or no feedback on their management and leadership skills. As a result, they sometimes fall into the trap of focusing primarily on the parts of the job they know they’ll either get slapped on the hand for botching or praised loudly for accomplishing.

If your company is guilty of either bringing in mediocre or poor managers or, even worse, allowing bad managers to stay in place, you’re at a huge risk of losing your best employees. On the other hand, if you commit to only filling management positions with individuals who have what it takes to succeed, giving them the tools to do their jobs, and then holding them accountable for building and retaining a great team of people, you can create a company where talented folks would love to work.

Sounds much better than getting “skewered”, doesn’t it?

A software glitch has resulted in shipping delays to a group of your customers, and you know the problem is going to cause some major headaches for them. I.T. is working to correct the issue but might not have it resolved until tomorrow at the earliest. In an effort to do some pre-emptive damage control, you ask two of your salespeople to immediately contact the companies who’ll be affected. The goal is to give them a heads-up, let them vent what you anticipate will be some pretty significant frustration, and communicate the anticipated “fix.” You tell your salespeople you know the calls will probably be unpleasant to make, but you need them to get on it ASAP.

Salesperson A (Alice) jumps right in and starts contacting the customers you’ve assigned to her. She directly and truthfully explains the situation and then stays calm in the face of the angry words directed at her. When one person demands that Alice see if the problem can be corrected immediately as opposed to tomorrow, she holds firm and explains why that isn’t possible. She remains relaxed and composed during every call and has touched base with everyone you asked her to contact within a couple of hours. She isn’t at all fazed by the distasteful work and, in fact, tells you afterward she was happy to help with it.

Salesperson B (Ben), on the other hand, starts trying to wiggle out of the task from the beginning. He tells you he has too many other things going on right now and asks if Alice can just contact his customers, too. When you say, “no” Ben goes into procrastination mode and promises to start making calls as soon as he finishes a report that’s due this afternoon. Every time you walk past his desk he seems more and more agitated. When he finally gets around to calling the first customer on his list you overhear him downplay the severity of the issue and suggest it might even be fixed by lunchtime today. Then he goes over to Alice and asks her if she can help him contact everyone else because he hates doing this kind of thing.

Now, if you’re the manager in charge of this scenario, you’re most likely going be left wondering why Alice and Ben handled the calls so differently. How was Alice able to approach potentially contentious conversations so confidently while Ben avoided them as long as possible? Why was Ben so fearful of getting an earful from angry customers while Alice didn’t take their wrath personally at all? And what made it possible for Alice to stand firm on what your company could and couldn’t do to fix the problem while Ben simply told people what they wanted to hear?

In my experience, the most obvious difference between these two employees is that Alice has a low level of Social Adaptability and Ben has a very high level. Social adaptability is a personality trait that impacts an individual’s willingness and ability to handle conflict. It’s the natural tendency to adapt to other people’s feelings in order to avoid unpleasant circumstances. If you have a lot of it, you really don’t like to deliver bad news or make unpopular decisions. On the other hand, if you’re lower in it, you tend to have a thicker skin and won’t likely bend just to make others happy.

What’s interesting is that some jobs require employees to deal with conflict and negative reactions from others quite frequently, while in others these types of encounters are rare. The closer you can match the level of social adaptability in someone to the position, the better the fit. It’s definitely worthwhile to consider this during the hiring process. No amount of conflict management or communication skill training will do very much for the “Ben’s” of the workplace in terms of helping them be less accommodating and more comfortable handling contentious situations. When faced with “fight” or “flight,” you want employees whose natural reaction is the right reaction.

So she asked me the obvious question: “What should I do to light a fire under him and get him to work faster?”

In my experience, she can’t. Simply put, most individuals have a natural speed at which they like to function.

Some people love to process tasks rapidly, make decisions quickly, and act on things right away. They prefer to do it now rather than later, and the faster the better. They get bored and antsy if the pace is too slow, and they do not understand the concept of taking a “wait and see” approach. Sometimes they’re even willing to sacrifice correctness for the sake getting something done (after all, they can usually go back and correct their mistakes once they’re finished, they reason).

On the other hand, I know people who are at their best when they can work slowly and methodically and do it right the first time. If they feel rushed or pressured to cut corners in order to meet someone else’s timeframe, they often become flustered and stressed. They like to consider all their options before making a choice, and they are typically quite patient and content to let events unfold. It would make them miserable to produce less-than-quality results just to get something out the door.

Certainly people can fall in between these two extremes, and those individuals usually have the best ability to speed up or slow down based upon what a situation dictates. But folks at the ends of the spectrum usually work according to their natural pace, and attempts by managers to alter that pace usually yield only short-term changes.

Which is why when you’re hiring for an open position, it makes sense to consider the average work flow and the time constraints of the job you’re trying to fill. You’ll then need to figure out whether candidates are a good fit with it. Putting a fast-acting person in a slow moving job is just as detrimental as placing a more unhurried, deliberate individual in a high speed environment. A match here will save both you and your potential team members a lot of frustration.

Except, of course, when it isn’t.

When can it be a problem? Well, for starters, when the job doesn’t lend itself to taking charge. Lots of positions don’t offer many opportunities to assert yourself, especially those where the person works mostly in support of others or doesn’t have much authority. Sure, a moderate amount of assertiveness can be helpful in pushing forward to get results, but high levels pretty much set employees up for frustration unless they’re in a role that allows them to be directive, make decisions, and change course as necessary to accomplish tasks.

And then there are situations where a group of people needs to work closely and cooperatively to achieve an outcome. It’s fine if one member of the team is highly assertive and can assume the role of leader. But two or three assertive individuals all trying to run the show? That’s a recipe for power struggles and turf wars in many cases.

Finally, let’s not forget that those with micromanagement tendencies usually struggle to work effectively with assertive employees. Most micromanagers are loathe to admit they need to be in control pretty much all the time, but they don’t exactly gravitate toward letting their people do whatever they deem necessary to get their jobs done. Ironically, the ones I see most frequently insisting they want the “hard chargers” are the first to complain that they have to work too hard to rein these people in.

I think the key to determining just how assertive you really need your employees to be is to take a long, hard look at three key things:

• The job they’ll be doing
• The team members they’ll be working with most closely, and
• The way you’ll realistically manage their day-to-day activities

Once you’ve settled on the ideal range, you should be able to calibrate your interview questions and your assessment tool to help you determine how your candidates fit. This is definitely one of those instances where you need to be careful what you wish for and make sure you can really use it if you get it.

If you’re a manager, I hope one thing you’ve considered is your current team and each individual who reports to you. Some questions to consider:

• Do you have great people?
• If not, what’s your plan for upgrading?
• If so, are you giving these individuals the support they need to excel?
• How has each person on your team increased in value over the past year?

And, most importantly,

• What are you doing to ensure your top performers want to stick around?

To that end, I recommend Eric Jackson’s terrific article on what not to do to retain your top talent  Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent – Forbes

What I find especially interesting about this piece is that while it’s directed toward managers in large companies, every single item holds true for medium and small businesses as well.  There is absolutely no reason companies of any size can’t offer their people career path planning, effective performance reviews, or opportunities to develop their creative ideas.  And it’s not just the big guys who benefit from sharing a clear vision, communicating strategies openly and making sure their managers are great people to work for.

If you use these ideas to create and implement a checklist for ways your company can maximize its talent in 2012, my guess is most of your other goals will be much easier to achieve.

What are you doing to ensure you hang on to your best people this year?  Where are your biggest opportunities?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you’re an extrovert, dealing with a steady stream of people knocking on your office door all day long can pump you up because you thrive on the interaction. On the other hand, if you’re an introvert, that same scenario would probably leave you exhausted and stressed by day’s end. Likewise, if you love attending to details and working within an established structure, you’re most likely energized when it comes time to spend a couple of days putting together your department’s annual budget. But if you have zero patience for minutiae and would rather do creative work, the same task would leave you dragging after only a few hours.

Why the differences? Each one of us is hard wired with a specific set of personality traits and talents that allow us to do certain activities more quickly and easily. And when we have to perform tasks that require a quality we don’t possess, it takes a great deal of energy to gear ourselves up to essentially do things that don’t come naturally to us. We have to think harder, focus more and, in general, force ourselves outside our comfort zones to handle the work. This effort requires significant physical and mental energy, and once we’ve completed the task, we’re tapped out.

As you may have already discovered, a job that’s good fit for you allows you to use your natural personality traits and talents much of the time. Even if you periodically have to handle things that aren’t comfortable for you, these don’t make up the bulk of your days. And when you’re doing things that are compatible with how you’re hard-wired, you probably leave work feeling pretty energized much of the time.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Those folks who drag themselves home at the end of most days totally drained and depleted may not just be working too hard. Instead, it’s likely they’re spending a lot of time trying to accomplish things that require them to go against their own natures.

A hiring manager recently told me she was considering a candidate for a position that would require the individual to step up and handle conflicts repeatedly throughout the average workday. She was concerned because the person she was most interested in fit with every part of the job but that one—her candidate was low in assertiveness and something of a people pleaser. Her biggest fear was that dealing with a lot of contentious situations on a daily basis would become exhausting for this individual and leave him without enough energy to tackle all the other parts of the job. I told her I thought she was right to be worried, especially since the conflicts didn’t just happen once in a while. The manager ultimately decided that she’d be setting this particular candidate up to fail if she put him in a position that required him to spend so much of his day on energy-draining activities.

What’s the lesson to be learned here? It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is for most people to power through tasks that aren’t a good fit for them. Because once your energy is depleted, charging your battery back up isn’t usually a five minute endeavor. And having to do it over and over again, day after day, is a recipe for burnout.

What tasks do you recognize that either drain you or energize you? And how does this concept play out for the people on your team? Click here to share.

And when it’s particularly bad, they often ask me to facilitate some sort of “team building” exercise that will break down barriers, build relationships and, in general, help these individuals learn to play nice.

But you know what I’ve found? In almost every case, teamwork problems start at the top. And they won’t get better until management addresses the real root cause of the dysfunction: themselves.

That’s because in most instances, the managers are setting a poor example of teamwork in the way they interact with each other. Whether it’s as blatant as backstabbing and gossiping or as subtle as a snide comment or eye roll directed toward another department head, team members notice how their manager treats others. When there’s mutual respect and support, they understand they’re expected to interact the same way with the employees on the other manager’s team. Where they see hostility or disregard, the door is open for them to behave that way as well.

In the organizations I’ve worked with where I see strong, effective teamwork at all levels, it clearly filters down from the top. The senior level management team is cohesive and stands together. Even if these individuals don’t always see eye-to-eye they back each other up and handle their differences maturely. Their example is followed by the next level of managers, who understand that they’re expected to model teamwork in their words and actions. This continues down the organizational chart, with managers at every turn walking the talk when it comes to teamwork.

Senior managers can’t get up on their high horses and preach teamwork if they turn around and exhibit the very actions they’re railing against. If, on the other hand, they hold themselves to a high standard and show their people how it’s done, they have a much better chance of getting the teamwork they want.

Have you ever experienced teamwork breakdowns that start at the top in a company you’ve worked for? Did upper management address the core issue or keep trying to make surface level improvements? Share your experiences here.

That’s because they’re often confusing sociability with social skills. And these are two very different qualities that are typically thought to be similar but are actually quite distinct.

Sociability is a personality trait and is generally hard-wired into people. It’s a measure of whether an individual needs a lot of interaction with others or whether he prefers to work on his own most of the time. Employees who are high in sociability love to collaborate and work in groups while those who are low would rather spend their time independently completing tasks or projects.

Social skills, on the other hand, can be learned and even improved over time. This trait is usually present in people who can make conversation easily, who know how to develop rapport and relationships, who are good listeners, and who have nice manners. It’s especially important in customer-facing jobs or those that constantly require someone to interact with and get along with others.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

It’s entirely possible to have one of these traits but not have the other. Someone who’s high in sociability but lacks social skills may be driven to interact with others but not do it effectively. Think of the woman at the party who easily moves from person to person but spends the bulk of the time dominating the conversation by talking about herself. Or the obnoxious guy sitting next to you on the airplane who keeps droning on about his health problems despite your repeated attempts to cut off the conversation so you can read your book.

On the flip side, someone who’s low in sociability may not necessarily look for opportunities to connect with others, but if he or she has strong people skills you’ll never know it. These individuals have often cultivated the ability to make small talk, be friendly, and listen well, so exchanges with them are usually pretty pleasant. It’s easy to think they love being around people when, in fact, they’d probably rather be left alone.

Of course, some folks have neither of these traits, while others have both. The important thing is to remember that having one doesn’t necessarily guarantee you have the other.

If they truly need a “real people person,” I think most hiring managers would benefit from considering what they actually mean by this phrase and making sure they’re targeting the right traits in their candidates. Most assessments can measure sociability, but social skills are best identified through observation during the interview process. While one is internal and the other external, together they have everything to do with how a person interacts with others.

I’m asked this question a lot by companies who are trying to figure out why they have a hard time hiring the right people. And often I recognize they’re struggling with either one or both of the elements essential for a great hire:

Finding and Funneling.

Finding is the recruiting phase of the process. If a company isn’t able to identify and attract quality candidates, the best interview techniques in the world won’t do them a bit of good. Finding is about having a large pool of highly qualified, desirable people to choose from. It requires companies to be methodical and consistent in their networking efforts. It forces them to constantly be on the lookout for individuals who could take their organizations to the next level. Doing this part right ensures that when the time comes to hire someone, they’re choosing from the best, not simply accepting who’s available and can start on short notice.

Funneling is about having a proven hiring system to follow. It involves creating a step-by-step method that maps out the sequence of events people go through once the company becomes interested in them as candidates. The goal is simple: keep narrowing down the initial group of prospects until you’ve identified your top choice. The heart of effective funneling is a structured selection process that includes solid interviewing, assessment, and reference checking practices that are followed by managers every time they hire. And managers have to be trained in the skills needed to execute the system for it to really pay off.

Some companies are top-notch finders but botch the funneling part. They attract great candidates, but their haphazard or non-existent selection practices keep them from choosing the right ones. Other companies are decent at funneling, but they aren’t attracting enough quality candidates.  They have to exit the majority of the people they interview, and sometimes they end up settling for a mediocre choice simply to get someone in the open position.

But the ones that master both finding and funneling? Those are the companies with great people whose individual success typically fuels the organization’s success. That’s what they’re doing right.

What do you think would happen if the next time you’re about to sign on a new employee you inserted this paragraph in your Offer Letter:

I understand that during my first 90 days on the job the vast majority of my training will be of the “trial by fire” variety. Instead of a comprehensive, job-specific training program that gives me the tools to succeed in my job, I will accept minimal direction from my manager. I agree to figure things out on my own, learn from my mistakes, and gracefully accept lots of “after the fact” feedback on how I should have done things the first time around.

I acknowledge the company will most likely not be ready for me on my first day and may have to scramble to provide basic necessities such as office space, a telephone, business cards, and a computer. I also understand that any training manuals or materials I do receive will probably be outdated or incorrect as company policies and procedures are constantly changing.

I agree to willingly take on tasks I am ill prepared to perform correctly and accept full responsibility if I screw them up because I haven’t been trained to do them the right way. Ultimately, I absolve the company of all liability if I fail in my new role because of inadequate training.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? No potential employee in his or her right mind would agree to this set-up.

And yet, time after time I see managers expecting new hires to succeed in the face of this exact situation. Sure, I exaggerated, but this paragraph describes a lot of what I see new hires up against all the time. They come on board excited and energized, determined to get off to a great start, but too often from the minute they walk in the door they’re met with mediocre or even poor training. And those high hopes and expectations they had for this new opportunity diminish a little more each day they’re in the job.

If you wouldn’t expect a top performer to sign on for sub-par training, why would you think they’d willingly accept it after the fact?

Here’s a tricky truth about motivation: it’s an ever changing force.

Think about your own professional experiences. Is what motivated you when you were in your 20s the same as what motivated you in your 30s or 40s (or later if you’ve been at this for a while)? Most likely what you recognize is that as your needs, goals, and priorities changed over time, so did your motivators, especially as they relate to the workplace.

For example, let’s say you were highly motivated by money, challenge, and risk when you were looking for your first job out of college. Those factors may have driven you to bypass some opportunities (those that didn’t pay what you needed, the ones that seemed boring or predictable) and go after others (like the ones offering better compensation or the chance to be part of a dynamic new venture).

But a decade later, you might be in a different place personally. Maybe the challenge and risk that once drove you have become stressful and exhausting, so now a job with more stability begins to look appealing. You might also be surprised to learn that one of the things you now value most is relationships with co-workers, so being part of a close-knit team working toward common goals is one of the key things you look for in new opportunities.

And ten years later, all of these motivators could once again shift and cause you to create a whole new “wish list” for what you want in a job. You might even look back at the career goals you set for yourself when you first joined the workforce and think, “Wow, those aren’t important to me at all anymore.”

So what causes our motivators to change over time? Life. Getting older, getting married, getting divorced. Having kids, raising them, and having them go out on their own. A health scare or a financial crisis. Inheriting some money or discovering a passion for something new. All kinds of things happen outside of work that make employees re-evaluate whether the jobs they have right now are still relevant to the people they are right now.

As a manager, the only way you can be certain you’re providing what motivates your team members is to really know them as individuals. Yes, it’s important to maintain “professional boundaries,” but that doesn’t mean you can’t routinely ask about what’s going on with them outside of work. If you do this regularly and really listen to what they say, you’ll know when things are happening that might be causing their motives to shift. You’ll have a sense of whether what was driving them in the past is still relevant or if they’re looking for something different. And making sure you’re able to meet their needs today is the key retaining them.

What have your experiences been with motivators changing over time (either your own or your team members’)? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Their thought is that it’s not only more cost-effective to have fewer employees but that they ultimately come out ahead because their team members are more productive and provide a higher level of customer service. This, in turn, leads to increased sales and profitability. Here’s how they explain their philosophy on their website:

We hire only about 3% of all who apply. If you indeed believe that with one great employee, you get three times the productivity of a good employee, you can afford to extensively train them and communicate to them, empower them and pay them 50 to 100% more than what other retailers might pay them.

So let’s see….The Container Store is consistently on Fortune’s “Best Places To Work” list and they lead their industry in sales per square foot. They also pay twice the normal wage for retail employees ($20 per hour vs. $10 per hour), so if we do the math we can see how it’s a better deal to have one $20/hour, high performing team member as opposed to forking over a combined $30/hour for three mediocre people. With roughly 3,700 employees nation-wide, the savings are substantial.

In contrast, many companies I know are loaded with “good” employees. Interestingly, when managers complain that they would love to bring in higher-caliber people but just can’t, compensation is usually what they claim is their biggest roadblock. But The Container Store offers up a pretty compelling argument that not only is it doable, it makes a lot more sense from a business standpoint. I also like that, for them, it’s not just a matter of paying more but also creating an outstanding work environment and really treating their people well.

It’s definitely something to consider next time you’re about to settle for “good.”

Wrong.

That raw potential is going to need training, guidance, and support. He’s going to need help getting acclimated to your company’s culture and understanding the “unwritten” rules of the road. You’re going to have to provide the tools to help him get up and running: the skills, the knowledge, and the techniques that he’ll need to do the job the way you want it done. You’ve got to advise him on how to build strong relationships with key people, navigate the existing company structure and systems, and understand the habits and customs that are crucial for fitting in.

And once that stuff is in place, you’re going to have to provide clear, ongoing direction and feedback to keep him on track. You’ll have to praise him when he gets it right and hold him accountable when he doesn’t. You’ll need to challenge him, set goals with him, and figure out what you need to do to keep him from being lured away by a better offer. Most importantly, you’ll need to invest time in building a relationship with him and being the kind of manager he feels lucky to work for.

I’ve seen so many managers become frustrated because their great hires don’t always transition into great performers. How could this happen, they wonder, when they put so much time and energy into getting the right person in place? I think it’s often because they forget a crucial fact:

Hiring isn’t a finish line—it’s a starting point. And your work is just beginning.

How does your company ensure great hires transition into great employees? Or is this an area where you struggle? Please share your thoughts here.

The one piece of advice I always give managers who are facing the tough task of terminating a team member is this: “Don’t make it harder on the employee than it already is.”

Certainly losing a job is usually painful on many levels. Loss of face, loss of income, loss of relationships—all those things really hurt and can’t be avoided no matter how gracefully a manager exits someone. But sometimes companies make things worse than they need to be and, as a result, the terminated team member often gets angry and tries to fight back. And this is where things can get ugly.

Sometimes managers deliver the news poorly by choosing the wrong method or words. When this happens, fired employees often feel blindsided or stung or humiliated, and they lash out in response.

Other times organizations don’t plan for a smooth aftermath. Instead of immediately communicating the decision to the people who need to know about it, they keep quiet and let the word seep out slowly and often inaccurately. Or they don’t think through the logistics and have to scramble to handle the details after the fact.

I’ve been thinking about the right way to fire people while listening to all the debate over the past week regarding the termination of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Interestingly, the conversation has focused primarily on how she was fired, not whether she should have been (most agree she wasn’t getting the job done). One of the biggest topics of discussion is the e-mail Bartz sent to company employees right after she was let go. It read:

To all,

I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.

Carol

Sent from my iPad

She was obviously insulted that she was ousted via telephone and took the opportunity to get a dig in at Yahoo’s Chairman. Many people have argued that she’s right to think he owed her the courtesy of a face-to-face termination given her position. But even worse, she promptly began speaking out to various news sources by giving interviews in which she railed against how she was treated and criticized the “doofuses” on Yahoo’s Board. And plenty of people question why no one thought to disable her ability to send all-company e-mails before she was terminated, which is pretty standard procedure in most organizations of any size.

Would Bartz’s behavior have been different if her firing had been handled better? Who knows, given her reputation for being outspoken and a bit of a hothead. Maybe she would have come out swinging no matter how they sacked her.

But I’ve personally noticed that more often than not, when a company (and, in particular, a manager) exhibits classy behavior in firing, employees generally show some class in receiving the news. Even if it’s painful, it doesn’t have to be ugly.

What are your thoughts on the right and wrong ways to fire employees? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you’re not getting useful responses from reference checking, my guess is you might not be doing it right.

So here are five questions to try next time you’re considering hiring someone and really want some objective input. They’re best used if you’re talking to someone your candidate has worked for in the past. Managers who use them tell me very often they generate interesting, insightful answers from references that help them learn something they didn’t know and might not have found out otherwise.

Question 1: If you could create the ideal job for Cheryl, what are the primary things you’d have her doing?

Question 2: If you could have done one thing differently with Cheryl while she was working for you, what would it have been?

Question 3: How did Cheryl’s job performance differ from what you thought you’d be getting when you hired her?

Question 4: What management style did you find got the best results from Cheryl?

Question 5: What one piece of advice would you give me if I do end up working with Cheryl?

What I think works about these questions is that they give references the opportunity to provide either positive or negative feedback in a diplomatic way without asking for the standard “strengths and weaknesses.” Even better, they sound less like you’re reading from a page out of “Reference Checking 101” and more like you’re having a conversation with someone who’s professional opinion you really want to hear.

Before you write off reference checking, think about how asking better questions might yield better results. Now, what questions do you typically ask references? Please share them in the comments section.

Lucky hires are usually the result of having a sound process and the patience to stick with it. This happens most often when managers take the time up front to understand what they need in the person they hire to do a job. When they follow a proven, structured plan for interviewing, testing, and reference checking. When they refuse to make a hasty decision in order to fill a position quickly. When they ask for input from people who make great hires themselves and really listen to what these folks have to say about the candidates they’re considering.

On the other hand, those who blame a bad hire on being unlucky have often done at least a few things to shoot themselves in the foot. Maybe they started out with an “I’ll know what I want when I see it” strategy instead of an accurate Hiring Profile. Or they talk more than they listen in their interviews. It could be that they settle too quickly just to get someone on board, or they fail to consider whether the person will fit with the company culture or the existing team. Perhaps they were too busy to check references or too cheap to use an outside assessment tool.

Either way, I’ve seen very few instances where managers consistently hire great people simply because of luck. The most effective ones I know somewhere along the way got themselves some training, developed a solid method, and made a commitment to stick with it. They don’t skip steps and they don’t settle.

So you can leave it up to luck or you can choose to stack the odds in your own favor. Which option sounds most appealing? Share your thoughts in the comments.

“Did you see it coming?”

Because in most cases, you should have. People rarely make hasty decisions when it comes to resigning, and they almost always start showing signs that they aren’t satisfied well before they make a move. Yet I routinely talk with managers who claim to have been blindsided by the departure of an employee they thought was perfectly happy and now find themselves scrambling to find a replacement for a job they aren’t prepared to fill.

But you know what I usually find when I take a closer look at these situations? The manager wasn’t paying attention at all. He or she was too busy with other activities and, as a result, failed to do some key things that might have raised a red flag indicating a retention problem was brewing.

If you take the time to really get to know your team members, you should understand what they need to get out of their work in order to stay motivated and happy. You should know if their compensation is satisfactory to meet their needs or if they’re struggling to get by on what they’re making. You should know if they find their primary job duties interesting and challenging or boring and annoying. You should know if they enjoy working with the other people on the team or view them as a necessary evil. You should know if they feel appreciated and valued or if they leave work each day already dreading coming back the next morning.

And you need to know where they’d like to go career-wise. Do they aspire to move up the organizational chart, or would they rather stay in their current jobs but have opportunities to learn, grow, and take on additional responsibilities? Where would they like training, coaching, or mentoring, and what are you doing to make sure they get it? Because if you can’t or won’t help them achieve their professional goals, at some point they’ll probably start looking for someone who will.

So how do you develop the kinds of relationships with your employees where they tell you about all these things? The easiest way I know, hands down, is by having weekly, one-on-one meetings with each of them to open up the lines of communication. The meetings should be short (no more than 20 minutes or so), informal, and the agenda should be up to the team member. Ask your people to keep a list of things they want to talk about: ideas they have, issues they need help with, stuff that’s bugging them. Then each week sit down and give them your undivided attention. Go over their lists and address each item. Ask them what’s working and what’s not. Talk about their victories over the past week as well as their struggles.

But here’s the important part: really pay attention to what they say and how they say it. Watch their body language and tone of voice for signs of tension, stress, and frustration. Notice what topics make them smile and charge them up. If you do these meetings week in and week out, you should find that your team members start to open up and tell you more than just the basics.

Best of all, you’ll be able to much more easily spot the signs of a developing morale problem, identify what’s behind it and, hopefully, head it off before it becomes significant enough to motivate them to take another job.

I realize sometimes managers simply can’t do anything about issues that have the potential to drive an employee away. You may lose someone because there’s no promotion opportunity, no room in the budget for a raise, no quick fix for the outdated software they claim makes doing their job twice as hard as it should. But at least in these instances you’ll know what might be coming and can prepare accordingly by developing a pipeline of potential candidates in case you need to start interviewing.

Because no matter how much you like surprises, I’ll bet this is one you could do without.

Have you ever been surprised by an employee’s resignation? Looking back, were there signs you missed that you wish you’d noticed? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the “Comments” section below.

Here’s a different sort of question to try next time you find yourself in a second interview with a candidate of interest.  It’s most effective if you use it about mid-way through the meeting, after you’ve covered some of the more “traditional” topics related to experience, background, and skills.

Lead into it by telling the individual that you’ve enjoyed learning about the jobs and people and events that have had an impact on how she got to where she is today professionally.  But now you’d like to switch gears and hear a little about the things that have happened to her outside of work that she feels have influenced the person she is today.  Then simply ask,

“What were you like when you were a kid?”

Now, I know this may sound a little off-the-wall, and some of you may even be wondering, “What does this have to do with the job I’m hiring for?”  But you can learn a lot about candidates based upon their answers, especially if you can get them to open up a little and share some personal stories.

Since most candidates aren’t expecting this question, they haven’t prepared a response ahead of time.  So I find they tend to answer it pretty candidly and without trying to frame what they  say around what they think you want to hear.

You might hear about interests they had (loved to build things, lived to play baseball, was a total bookworm), their personalities (shy, outgoing, troublemaker), and their lifestyles (moved around a lot, lived in a small town, was rich or poor).  They might share a little about their families (only child, one parent passed away when they were young, part of a close-knit extended clan) or about school experiences (straight A student, underachiever, loved math).  They might talk about the challenges they faced, the dreams they had, or the people or events that they still think about to this day.

Who knows what you’ll hear?  But managers who routinely ask this question often tell me that it always helps them learn something about their candidate they didn’t know.  And often what they uncover gives them insight into the person’s character, views, and values which, as you may have discovered, can be very difficult things to assess during an interview.

There’s a reason childhood is often referred to as your “formative years.”  Much of who you are is shaped by things that happen to you while you’re growing up.  Those years aren’t definitive, of course, because you certainly find people who didn’t necessarily grow up under ideal conditions or influences yet go on to develop character and values quite different from those they were exposed to (and vice versa).

But one manager I know who never skips this question values it because he’s found one thing to almost always be true:

If you want to know who people really are, you have to understand where they’ve been.

And that may be a history lesson you can’t afford to skip.

What is this challenge? Accepting that your people aren’t like you.

I know you may think you get this concept, but my experience is most individuals “get it” intellectually but fight it anyway.

They keep insisting on managing their employees they way they’d like to be managed. They keep trying to get their team members to do things the way they’d do them. And they keep overlooking the fact that what motivates them won’t necessarily drive others at all.

What’s the solution?

First, managers need to remember that each individual on the team has a core set of personality traits and talents that drive what they’re good at and how they like to do things. And these traits and talents may or may not be shared by the manager. That’s why Joe shies away from confrontations with vendors even though his manager would “jump right in there and take care of the situation once and for all, no matter how upset the other party is.” The manager may have a natural ability to handle conflicts, but expecting Joe to handle the task the way he would isn’t going to get him anywhere. A better approach would be to coach Joe from the standpoint of, “I know this kind of situation makes your uncomfortable and you hate to do it, but let’s practice some strategizes to make it less painful for you.”

Next, managers should keep in mind that what they want from their own manager may have no bearing at all on the relationship they need to have with their team members. For example, I was recently talking with an individual who didn’t personally care about getting much in the form of positive reinforcement from his supervisor. I believe his exact words were, “I don’t really need my boss to tell me when I’m doing a good job, because I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.” He was, therefore, pretty unsympathetic to a couple of his direct reports who thrived on “thank yous” and “atta boys.” But his unwillingness to give them what they needed (as opposed to what he needed) was creating dissatisfaction and morale issues that would continue if he refused to change his approach.

Finally, it’s crucial for managers to accept that their own motivators may be very different from those of their employees. A manager who’s driven by challenge and risk may be baffled by team members who resist change and cling to the status quo. Someone who always has her eye on the next possible promotion may get frustrated by an employee who shows no interest in moving up the organizational chart and ignores her advice on how to prepare for the “next level.”

The key to all of these solutions comes down to two things: Managers have to really get to know and understand each of their team members and figure out what makes them “tick.” Then they have to be flexible enough in their approach to work with each person individually based upon their own unique circumstances.

Have you ever found yourself managing an individual who was nothing like you? What was your approach? Please tell us about your experiences here.