Back2Basics - Episode 14: You're hired! How to best approach starting your new job!

Feliciano School of Business faculty members in the department of Information Management and Business Analytics, Dr. Mahmoud ElHussini and Dr. George Elias discuss issues and problems being faced by business professionals. On this podcast, they discuss how to start off in a new organization. Dr. Moe and Dr. George breakdown issues and problems being encountered by entrepreneurs, executives, and all levels of managers.

Co-Hosts Background:
 
 Mahmoud (Moe) Elhussini, MS, MBA, DBA, is an Instructor Specialist at Montclair State University.  He is also the president and founder of The Growth Coach Allentown - Somerville.  A consulting and business coaching company.  Moe has worked in data & operations management for over a decade.  He then switched to business consulting, helping companies build ERP and customer interface systems.  After that he transitioned into international business development, helping companies manage their internal organic growth or through mergers and strategic alliances.  Moe has published a couple of handbooks, one on emotional intelligence and another on servant leadership.  He is currently working on a third that revolves around overcoming sales objections.  Moe has a BA in Biology from Rutgers University, an MBA in Global Management, and MS in Information Management, and a DBA in Geopolitics and Strategy.  At Montclair University, Moe is part of the Information Management and Business Analytics Department.  He teaches Business Decision Making, Operations Management, and Statistics in Business courses.
 
 George Elias, Ph.D., PMP is Chief Systems Engineer for Space and Airborne Systems leading initiatives in integrated spectrum management and mission avionics at L3Harris Technologies. Additionally, Dr. Elias is as an adjunct professor at Montclair State University’s department of information management & business analytics where he teaches business operations and statistics. Dr. Elias is experienced in leading the development and production of complex hardware and software system solutions including: electronic warfare systems, communication systems, and space systems. Previously, Dr. Elias served as the Director of Capture Excellence & Business Development Operations for the Electronic Warfare Sector. As an L3Harris Technologies Certified Enterprise Capture Lead, Dr. Elias was responsible for directing large, complex pursuits across the enterprise. In addition to systems engineering and business development, Dr. Elias has held roles in finance, quality assurance, operations/manufacturing, modeling and simulation, project engineering, program management, and Internal Research and Development (IRAD). Dr. Elias has a Doctorate in Systems Engineering, a Masters Certificate in Project Management, and a Masters in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology. Additionally, Dr. Elias has a Bachelors in Computer Information Systems from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey & New Jersey Institute of Technology. Finally, Dr. Elias has a Mini-MBA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome back to Back to Basics. I am Mola Hustini and I am here with my good friend, george Elias. Welcome, george. How are you doing?

Speaker 2: 0:18

Doing great, Mo. How are you Good to have you back in the country.

Speaker 1: 0:23

Yes, yes, I'm good, I think, yes, it's good to be back too. How's your summer going so far? How's it been going? It's been a while since we talked.

Speaker 2: 0:33

It's been a very busy summer. A lot of good things, but very packed. I don't think I've had a summer packed this much since I was in grad school, so it's really, really, really really putting me to task.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Well, I'm glad you're back, man, and I'm glad we're catching up on our new podcast today. I'm really excited about it. What do you say, george Shall? We continue. I know I think the last one we did was about interviewing the interviewing do's and don'ts. Where do you think we should take it from here?

Speaker 2: 1:13

So, you know, I think we should skip the job negotiation process right, Because it's so it's exciting to get a job offer. I want to skip that for another day and jump into your first few days at work. How that? Feels, I think it's something that can be exciting, but also anxiety at the same time. Right when you're starting a new adventure, you don't know exactly what to expect.

Speaker 1: 1:49

I think maybe we should start.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Maybe we should even start when you're coming into a leadership position. Maybe you're the new boss.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Okay, so you're a new boss and you have a team that reports to you that you don't know.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Yeah, yeah. And I think there's there's some like general mistakes that that you can make. I want to start with the first one.

Speaker 1: 2:23

You ever had someone go?

Speaker 2: 2:25

ahead.

Speaker 1: 2:25

I'm sorry to interrupt you, just so we build the picture. I'm going to sum it up to build the picture to people to kind of like get envision what we're talking about. I'm new to a role as a leader. I have a team that reports to me that I don't know. It's a new company, so it's not like a promotion. I'm starting brand new and a brand new company. There's five, 10, 15 people that report to me. I don't know them and I have a new boss that I report to. It's kind of like the picture that we're in, right, yeah, I think we should go with that.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Okay.

Speaker 1: 2:58

All right, go ahead. So I didn't interrupt you, go ahead. What were you going to say?

Speaker 2: 3:03

No, no, no, that's good. I'm glad we we set the scene good, right. So you know, I've seen this a couple of times. I was wondering if you've seen it, If you ever seen that person come in like like you're the new boss or they're the new boss and somehow they can't stop for Agon.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Yes, absolutely. They're bragging and they feel like they have to make changes in the department automatically like part of that bragging that they're doing that. You know I'm here now, no matter how good or bad what's going on. Let's make changes to show everybody that I'm here. I've seen that many, many times. Yeah, I, what kind of bragging do you see? What kind of bragging do you usually see some place? Give example.

Speaker 2: 3:47

I've seen bragging where it's like that they'll talk about the degree that they have you know, I have some super MBA from an Ivy League school or maybe they're bragging about their past role or they were, or sometimes I've seen where they come from that military experience. I'm a, I'm a colonel or commander or something. Blah, blah, blah. I was ahead of this, ahead of that. And it's like just you know, overwhelming, trying to tell their team that they're a superior human being. You know what?

Speaker 1: 4:24

You just literally the first two seconds. You were talking to your mind with me of an example that I just have to share. Do you ever watch that show undercover boss? Yeah, the one where a boss goes okay. So I was watching a documentary or I was reading a story, I think, related to how it backfires, and it fits in perfectly with what you're talking about. I don't remember what company, but there was one of those.

Speaker 1: 4:49

You know people that were visited undercover by their boss. They turned out to be great, so they got all those you know. They were rewarded properly. They spent the next few months bragging about the fact that they won and that now they're. They had that superior mentality. Long story short, they actually ended up getting fired. They were let go. So, to your point, bragging is a big boo boo, not a good thing to do, no matter what the reason is. If you feel like you were one out of a hundred people that got the job and that now you know what you're, you feel like you're a superman. No, don't go in and talk about, just like you said, the qualifications that led you to get the job, your superior techniques and interviewing that made you get the job, your super personality. Be modest and be humble.

Speaker 2: 5:43

Yeah, and you know, mo, I think there's a psychology behind bragging, right? I think when someone's bragging, they're actually trying to take control over other people's perception of them, right? They're really trying to force that person to think highly of them, and in that interaction. It actually shows weakness and underconfidence and your keen usually picks up on it and they start asking themselves why does this person feel the need to tell me all of their qualifications? Why are they doing that? Why are they trying to make me feel like I'm less?

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yeah, so in other words, that's a really good point, george. In other words, they have no other experience or talent or expertise in showing their and what's the word? I'm looking for? Not power, but authority, proving their authority in the new role that they have. They have, no, they can't think of, and you would do it, except to brag about themselves.

Speaker 2: 6:58

Yeah, and I'll tell you kind of a funny scenario that happened to me. Somebody came in as an executive on our team years ago and she was a bragger actually. And the funny thing is is that she's saying things like I have a degree from such and such a school and I'm like, oh, so do I.

Speaker 1: 7:27

And she says oh, and.

Speaker 2: 7:28

I have right. And she says, oh, I had these roles, so am I. And then she starts saying, and one day I'm going to do my PhD. I'm like, oh, good for you. And then she starts asking me. I'm like, yeah, I have a PhD. And she's like, oh right. So it was kind of like a funny backfire where I could tell she was bragging and it actually was an interesting scenario. I don't think she liked me very much afterwards, but it was like what are we supposed to do? A lie?

Speaker 1: 7:59

I know right, you're just carrying on the conversation, you're playing along, but you know what, george, let's go. I'm sorry, were you going to say anything else?

Speaker 2: 8:10

You'll go for it.

Speaker 1: 8:11

No, okay, all right, I want to take this to a next step. So now you're, superman, coming into a new role. Now Just complicate this a bit. Imagine, now you're coming in to a role. You were hired because the company in your department that you're going to manage or lead has a problem. So you're coming in now into a problem and you have that mentality that I'm going to save everybody, right Like I'm here. They hired me for a reason I'm the hero. How do you think you should? What mindset, what state of mind, what should you have if you're coming into a department where the person you're replacing was fired? They were bad. You were hired because you were the best of the best out of 20 people that they interviewed. What mindset should you have when you land in that new role?

Speaker 1: 9:11

Yeah, so, what did you not do?

Speaker 2: 9:19

No, I'm glad you said that, because I think that a lot of executives or leaders are brought in and are specifically given the task to change or build change or be a catalyst to change. I think that they're often given that task and I would say the very, very last thing you should do on your first day or your first week is come into the team and say something like I'm here to fix you or I'm going to change everything. That is literally the last thing that you should do. And I would say I would keep that assignment somewhat, at least somewhat on the back burner, a little bit, not saying that you shouldn't be doing what your supervisors tell you to do, but I wouldn't be explicit about it as my approach. I'll just give you an example of my approach. I would interview my team, both together and one-on-one, and I would ask them questions like well, what's good here, what's not so good here?

Speaker 2: 10:29

If you were to change something, what would it be? And I would gather from the team and I might, if they're all like super cheery positive about it I would say something like my predecessor left or which fired why do you think that was? Or I might say something like just to see if I could get them. Leadership seems to have some issues with this department. What do you think they are? Is there something that I could do about it? I would actually ask them for advice. I would say nine times out of 10, the people that are already in the department realize that there's some issue, and one or two of them at least are going to have some good suggestions on where to start, and sometimes you might find out that the executive leadership perception or their diagnosis of what's going on might not be all wrong, but also may not be all right yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:33

And, yes, I agree with you. I agree with you and I'm thinking to confirm what you're saying. I actually, in my coaching with clients, I do what you're talking about. Sometimes, when I'm working with a client and I know from working with them that they have things that need to change, but their personality or their tendency is to not accept somebody telling them do this.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Instead of that, sometimes they do what you're talking about, where, instead of saying you need to hire four more people, for example, I would say do you think it would help if you change your organization a little bit? Which would lead to the next question Do you think it would help if you hire one person? So it's kind of like what you're saying I get them to say for me what I want to say. So it shows that we're kind of like meeting in the middle or that there's some kind of consensus, mutual agreement on what it is that we need to do. So, yes, sometimes posing the recommendation or plan of action as questions or doing it via a dialogue is sometimes more has a bigger impact than saying we're going to do ABCD. So I agree with you on that.

Speaker 2: 12:55

I mean, you know the thing is is, if you come in with, you know that you know superior kind of stance and you're kind of like wagging your finger down at your team one, you're not going to build rapport, your team's not going to trust you and you know you're going to come down heavy-handed and what could actually happen? You might drive people away and a few of them you might say, okay, well, you know, they were the ones that were causing the problems. The issue is the wrong people could get driven away and you could be left with the people that can't find an alternative job, right, so you're stuck with them. And the people that were highly mobile, the people that were actually getting the work done and doing things, they're the ones that are going to leave because they can't.

Speaker 1: 13:50

Yeah, yes, let me. Let me. Let me ask you a question, george. I'm in my new role. I've been there now the honeymoon phase is over, the first few days, and I need to start working right. I need to get to know what I'm doing, what I, what I need to do, and so on. Now, keeping in mind, I have a boss and I have people that report to me, should I or should I not ask a lot of questions, and when should I ask questions if I do?

Speaker 2: 14:34

Yeah, I think, I think that there's. You know, like, like you're insinuating, there's a balance to asking questions, right? Because one. You don't want to look or be perceived that you're slowing things down and just stopping the conversation by asking a bazillion questions.

Speaker 2: 14:53

But, you know. So there's, there's a time to let the meeting go and write down your question, that that you have, and follow up later. But I think it's fair to say that when you're starting a new position, if you really don't understand something you don't get it, you should ask, right? You know? I know in my career, my job, we, we use a lot of acronyms, like a ton of acronyms. Everything's an acronym, yeah, and, and.

Speaker 2: 15:21

When someone's you know new enroll, when, when we, when we're talking in a meeting and the acronyms are rolling off our tongues and everybody in the meeting knows, except for the new leader it's, I think it's very fair for that new leader to take. What does that stand for? What does that mean? What does that report with those three letters, that that you're saying and people understand that. You know we have a certain lingo at work and not everybody gets it. And, and, and we're. We'll slow down and say, okay, this should this acronym, that acronym, and we're fine with that because we know how. How would they know what things mean if they weren't there?

Speaker 1: 15:59

I agree with you. I agree with you. And what I, what I? There's one, I don't want to say exception, but there's one thing I want to. I want the listeners to keep in mind my humble opinion.

Speaker 1: 16:16

The way I see it, one of the main reasons a boss would hire somebody to work for him or her is because they want them, obviously, to help him. Now, when I hire somebody, one of the first things that I'm looking forward to is that that person will take some of the headache off of me, is going to help me out, right? So, going back to what you said a few minutes ago, I think there's an, or there's a very, very one should be careful when they approach this questioning part, especially with their boss. I think you should time when to go to the boss. You should not, for example, in your first day or two, be knocking on his or her door every five minutes asking questions you should think about, especially, not more with your team, but with your boss. You should not be I don't want to use the word harassing, but you should not be very comfortable knocking on the door every time a question comes up.

Speaker 1: 17:24

For example, if I have a boss and I have no idea about 90% of what I should be doing. For example, the thing with acronyms that you're talking about. Rather than every time an acronym comes up, I go and ask I might maybe write them down, send that an email asking somebody just tell me what they mean, right? So this way I avoided having that discussion with my boss. If there are several questions that come up at once, or maybe I would save a bunch of questions to go one time during the day instead of going two, three or four times in the day. My point is try to be diplomatic and careful. When you need to ask your boss questions, don't do it where you're going in every two minutes. Don't do it where you're asking repetitive questions, things that he or she answered. Be careful with your boss because, keep in mind again, the main reason that boss hired you is to take away from the things that he or she is doing and to alleviate some of the stress and headache off of them. Make sense, what do you think?

Speaker 2: 18:42

Yeah, I think that if you have a legitimate question, I think you can be clever about where you get your answers from, and it doesn't necessarily need to be from your boss, especially if you're in executive scenarios.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Oftentimes your supervisor might literally just be too busy to answer every one of your questions. So I would say you could actually ask your team. So, for instance, if you legitimately don't understand some process or something going on, ask somebody in your team that used to do it or does it say hey, could you walk me through it. Or if you want to see, like you have a manufacturing or some floor or something that you do, hey, get your team to show you. I think that's a powerful way and it's a way of showing the team that they have knowledge that you don't have, which actually shows that you care and you're interested in what they're doing.

Speaker 2: 19:50

So another thing another approach that I've seen work in some larger workplaces is if you can find a peer of yours to show you the ropes, because they'll often be processes or things that you have to do as an employee, and getting a peer to kind of show you the ropes is another method right. It doesn't necessarily have to be your supervisor all the time which actually brings up a good point.

Speaker 1: 20:22

Maybe what we should think about is and I know a lot of companies do it if I am going to hire somebody that proactively I put up here, or somebody that this new hire person can shadow and follow for a week to a month to get to know the job, right Part of the training process or under a bigger umbrella maybe brings up the point that the training, onboarding process, orientation, is very important, so that it helps that you know what. Maybe, instead of I want to hire this person to start working October 1st, it might be a good idea if I bring him in mid-September and haven't go through an orientation for two weeks to kind of eliminate, put him through a process that will eliminate a lot of the questions that he might face when he hits the floor running October 1st. Right, it kind of shows that this world of orientation and training does matter.

Speaker 2: 21:24

It totally matters. Being able to onboard you know an employee properly, I think is critical from a company, but from an employee to a new employee perspective.

Speaker 2: 21:37

I think people need to recognize that companies aren't perfect and they don't necessarily do onboarding perfect and there's going to be times where you'll be a little lost and need to ask questions, and I think you know, unfortunately, sometimes for you to be successful at work, you need to create that onboarding process for yourself, and some of that is asking the right questions, building the right network, trying to be creative and, you know, find those resources and those people that are willing to help you.

Speaker 1: 22:16

And set up your own training. In other words, set up the meetings to train yourself on what you need to know and what you need to do. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Is it good or bad to ask your direct reports for advice? Is that weak in you? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 2: 22:40

I think it's great. I'll be honest with you. I've had new supervisors for me a good couple on board and have sat with me and said something like George, what advice do you have for me, right?

Speaker 2: 22:56

And I'll be playing with them and I take it as an opportunity to tell them how to avoid some past mistake that somebody else did, or I'll take it as an opportunity to give them advice. Hey, you really wanna meet such and such a person because they're the real moog or a shaker around here. I mean, I'll come out with it and quite frankly, there's an interesting thing that happens when somebody takes interest in your thoughts, somehow you think more highly of them. So when you ask your team for advice.

Speaker 2: 23:37

That team member probably thinks that you're a genius, smart person because you knew the right person to go to.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Yeah, you're right. And it builds that comfort level with your team that there's this understanding. I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, we both learn from each other. And also, since we did start Bryce by saying that the scenario we're talking about is somebody in a leadership position. Leaders should realize that their team especially at the functional, operational level the ones closer to the market, closer to the competition, closer to the customer, closer to the client they have the best intel, they have the best knowledge about what's going on in the outside world, outside of the four walls of the company. So absolutely go and ask for advice, go and ask for, ask questions, ask what they send, get their opinions, solicit their opinion. I would definitely definitely do that, not just in my first month or day, but until I quit or move on to another role. I would continuously always seek advice, opinions, feedback from my direct reports and the ones beneath them that exist.

Speaker 2: 25:02

Yeah, moe, I think it's not that long of a conversation, but why don't we transition a little bit to you know, if you're coming in as an maybe early in career or a fresh out of school, or you know you're coming in as kind of an individual contributor, not the boss? You're walking into the job for the first time, you know now you're really a blank slate right. You're probably not being told to come in fixed to team. You're coming in there to learn. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that somebody you know does when they're coming into a job like that?

Speaker 1: 25:48

Some of the mistakes I see, or I don't like that, some of the things that I think that could harm me. If I get into a role like that is if I do not get to know my team members, my colleagues. If I stay to myself, I come across as somebody that is a loner, that does not want to know anyone. I think that could harm me, especially after everything that we just said. My power, my strength, my success will come from my team, not just from my boss. So I need to get to know them. So I think being personable, being approachable, being humble, not trying to single yourself out above others, is really helpful when you get to that new role. Grabbing a coffee with somebody, bringing in a box of donuts on your first day or second day for breakfast, bringing in a box of coffee from Wawa or Dunkin' Donuts, doing those little things that people like, that would make them welcome you and approach you.

Speaker 1: 26:55

It's not always work. I mean, let's be realistic. To make people we're human asking about my kids' soccer team, asking about me coaching Little League, asking about my interests, ask others about what they like, so that they get to like you. Don't just be like good morning, did you send this email. Good morning, we're going to have a meeting today to talk about ABC. Right, be personable, don't be too nosy. Obviously don't ask questions that you shouldn't ask about someone or someone's family or someone's private life, but open up that dialogue with your team members so that you guys do become, if anything, at least company or work friends, not necessarily outside of the company, but at least in the company that you guys are comfortable working and interacting and communicating with each other.

Speaker 2: 27:56

You know, like as you're saying that, I think that you're absolutely right. You have to build a personal network. That's in most companies. That's the way you get things done. I think a mistake that folks make sometimes is one, like you said, they may not actually do that. They might be kind of, like you know, isolate themselves, and that doesn't help.

Speaker 2: 28:20

The other mistake is trying too hard to make friends and doing things that end up being more like toxic patterns. Like, for instance, very early on in your first few weeks you participate in work gossip or talk about somebody, or maybe you overshare because you're desperate to make a friend. I think those are toxic patterns. We've all had probably a little bit of gossip going on in the workplace. It's sort of like a natural thing to do to talk about colleagues or your boss or what's going on.

Speaker 2: 29:05

And to a certain extent, some of that communication I think might be okay or tolerable, but when you're early in career or early in a role, you don't know the politics of what's going on and you're doing something very dangerous to start talking about other people because they may have been around each other for a long time and you're the new person on the block.

Speaker 1: 29:35

That's a really good point, absolutely the second. Somebody comes to talk to me about someone else in a non-work related way, kind of like what you said, in a toxic way. I already build the perception that there's always the opportunity they can do the same thing about me. People like that. They get singled out I don't want to say flagged or branded, but they become known as that person that does that. And I think it's just like you said, especially if you don't know people and you do it early on, especially game people's friendship or trust, highly, highly, highly probable that it will backfire. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 30:26

Yeah, so I agree with you.

Speaker 2: 30:30

You know, the other mistakes that I think some folks make when they start a new position is they decide that they're only going to do what they were hired for.

Speaker 2: 30:45

And I think, you know, being inflexible in what you do is a mistake, and I would say I would encourage people to actually do the opposite. If there's things around the office that you see aren't being done and they should be done, you know, I mean you can ask permission to do it or maybe in certain cases just do it right. And sometimes those little things make a huge difference and you know you get recognized as a doer, right. So I'll just give you an example of something I, you know, one of the things I noticed early on in my career is that there's jobs for people to like literally approve paperwork or approve things, and it's not necessarily anybody's job to go walk that piece of paper from desk to desk and actually push things along, right. But if you become that proactive person and you say you know what, it's not my job, but I'll walk it from desk A to desk B, just so this process happens, I think you know people recognize that you're somebody that's interested in getting things done.

Speaker 1: 31:54

Absolutely, and it fits in with what we said at the beginning. Your boss hired you to help him or her and alleviate some of the burden off of them. So the more you do what you just talked about, the better you're going to be viewed in a positive way with your boss, with your team Balancing it, absolutely Right. Yes, if you're going to volunteer, especially if it's something that you're going to volunteer with that funk anybody the more you become experienced in your job, the more you can do it. But to some extent, absolutely, I think it's the right thing to do. Show the positive energy, show the willingness to help, always offer to help. Show that sincerity in your offering. It will never, never harm you. It builds a good, positive perception around you.

Speaker 2: 32:50

No more. We're running short on time, but I want to make one more. One more point before we wrap it up here, and I want to bring this up because I think that when you're new and career and you're fresh out of school, you have a lot of fresh ideas. You're your early career and inspired, and you might see the company doing things that are the old, stodgy way. You might have some really bright ideas and be enthusiastic about it. I would encourage folks to try to be patient and not make too many suggestions without building rapport first. Right, Like you need to build trust and rapport with your coworkers before you start telling them that they're doing it all wrong and you might think you're doing the right thing by showing how smart you are, but they're actually going to start distrusting you because they're going to think, oh, this person's a know it all and they don't know anything because they haven't been around here like us.

Speaker 1: 33:55

Yes and that's yes. I agree 100%, and that's kind of like the quick remark I made at the very beginning. Today, some managers, some leaders go into a company and they think the best way they're going to show that their value and work is if they change things around. Don't do that, do not go in with the mentality that you need to make changes and, just like you said, george, even if there are things that need to be changed, don't do it right away. I agree, I agree, I agree with you, my friend. This was great, this was really good, george. I think it was some interesting points that we shared and I'll give it back to you, buddy, to wrap it up.

Speaker 2: 34:35

No, I think great conversation mode get to have you back and doing these podcasts again. It's been what a month or two, so it's nice to do this.

Speaker 1: 34:48

Yes, so, anyway, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. What's going to say?

Speaker 2: 34:55

You're good, all right. So thank you all for listening to this episode of back to basics on the business edge, brought to you by Feliciano School of Business at Montclair State University. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and welcome any feedback you have for us, including suggestions for future topics.

Speaker 1: 35:14

Thank you, George, and thank you for all the listeners and we will see you next time on back to basics podcast Take care, george, awesome Take care.

Speaker 2: 35:24

See you next time.