Episode 17 - Why great employees don't always succeed in new roles

Why do some promotions or hires fail, even when the candidate seems like the perfect fit? What is the key to make your employee development or recruitment process more successful? 

Welcome to today's conversation on People Matters at Realising Potential Ltd where Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones explore the deeper reasons why promotions and new appointments don't always work out - such as misalignment in work styles, expectations and values. 

While skills and experience are important, they’re not the only factors that determine success in a new role. We'll discuss how different behavioural drives and needs influence whether a job really is right for a person. 

We talk about the the role of the manager in setting up employees for success, and why decisions to hire or promote should consider so much more than just a CV.

If you’ve ever wondered why a great employee on paper struggled after joining your organisation or after being promoted, this episode is for you. 

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help your people, teams and businesses realise their potential, please visit our website.

Transcript

Neale James: Here's what's on today's edition of Realising Potential with Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones.

Fiona Brookwell: It's about understanding how do you want that job done.

Michel Jones: And of course, one of the other tools that we work with is a measure of cognitive ability, that ability to process complexity.

Fiona Brookwell: Unless you fit with their values framework, you simply won't get the job.

Michael Jones: So, the appointment was made and I very clearly talked to my client and said I don't think this is going to work and let me explain to you why that is.

Fiona Brookwell: And a lot of time and effort and money is wasted in organisations in the hiring process by not being clear in the first place.

Neale James: Fiona, why are some promotions within organisations just not successful?

Fiona Brookwell: So, this comes down to the different muscles that people might use to be successful in the jobs that they do. 

So, when we're looking at individuals, we like to understand the various components that you have, and we break it into what we call the head, the heart and the briefcase. 

The area that most line managers are very comfortable with is understanding what's in somebody's briefcase. So that's their knowledge, skills and experience, their competence. And that often links to what you might ask for in somebody's CV, in their resume. You might do a job description.

A job description is a list of what you want done in the job. Somebody's CV is a list of what they've done in their career. So, knowledge, skills and experience, competence is very important.

But that changes and that changes over time and that can change quite quickly. So, you can go on a training course and have a secondment to a different department, learn some new skills, you can add it to your toolkit, which is great. But that's not the only measure of success.

The next piece that you ought to consider is what we call the piece that sits in the heart. And that's about attitudes and values and cultural fits and whether people are honest or dishonest, for example. And if these things are important to your organisation, then you ought to do things to measure them.

So, certain organisations out there, unless you fit with their values framework, you simply won't get the job. And again, our attitudes, our values change over time. It's a bit of a slower burn.

And as we get a bit more mature, we might be a bit clearer on what our value sets are and what you might call your non-negotiables. So, if it's important, check it out. 

And then there's a piece which is a bit more complex for people to understand.

And that is around the how people like to do things and the how you want the job done. So, getting back to your question about some promotions successful and some promotions not successful, it's not just about understanding what you want done in the job. It's about understanding how do you want that job done.

Some people have got muscles, natural muscles, that make it easier for them to transition through different job roles to be able to manage change and to be able to manage ambiguity quite flexibly. And have the drive and the initiative and the ambition to be able to manage themselves out of their previous toolkit or their previous skill base to drive and learn some new things or be able to take responsibility in a field that maybe they're not particularly expert in. 

So, when you have people who are more of a generalist nature, these are often people that find transition into promotions easier than those that might be classed as more specialist in nature.

People who are more specialist in nature are often more orientated by needing to have their knowledge base very firm, very secure, very solid. Because if their confidence doesn't come from their ego, it doesn't come from their just natural desire to want to become CEO of the organisation, if you don't have that particular ambition in you, that doesn't mean to say you can't be hugely successful at what you do, but it means that the muscle that you're using to be successful is probably more likely to be orientated around your knowledge, skills and experience rather than just your ego and your drive.

And people of that nature are often better and more successful when they get opportunity to broaden out their skill base, learn more things, deepen their knowledge base and then more of a gradual step up to more responsibility within their specialist field.

So, there is quite a difference between those of us who have more of a specialist orientation that are more suited to broadening out with smaller steps up and sticking within their specialist field as against those who are more generalist in nature who often find it easier to go through the career progression by going up the ladder, the traditional route. 

So, if I give you just a small example, so I might be a sales manager within a large established organisation and be hugely successful, and I've got all the awards that say I'm top sales manager and I have been for the last 10 years.

And that might be a very established organisation, might have lots of process, a very closely managed CRM system where the leads are fed into it, and we've got thoroughly trained specialists doing thoroughly trained technical work.

And the reason why I'm very successful is because I like to work in an organised and planned fashion and the organisation provides me with lots of framework and structure and lots of process around that. But because you see my CV as being sales manager, very successful in your major competitor and in a large established organisation, you decide to then hire me as sales director into your younger, fresher, more entrepreneurial organisation and then of course expect me to be able to step up and be successful.

So, you promote me, you hire me into that position as sales director and six months later, 12 months later, I'm not as successful as you expected me to be. Why? Now it's not because of the weight of my briefcase because technically you know I've got the knowledge, skills and experience.

It's going to be around the how and how you want that job done. So, the reality is I am someone who is successful because of my depth, knowledge, skills and experience and because I like to work in a planned and organised fashion and because my previous employer gave me that structure and that framework to work in. 

You've employed me now in an entrepreneurial setup where there's no framework, there's no structure, there's no hot leads being fed in anymore. It's about going out and hunting business and taking it from scratch without any of the support mechanisms that I've had around me before. 

And if I'm not of the nature to be able to manage ambiguity and to be assertive enough to operate outside of my foundation knowledge base, then there's going to be a big gap because the new job is not about following rules. The new job is about having lots of drive, lots of initiative and managing lots of ambiguity.

But if too much risk and too much ambiguity actually frightens me and makes me feel uncomfortable and nervous, then I'm not going to take those decisions. So, it's a classic example of where we take a top specialist and we promote them into very much a general management, general leadership position, but they can't transition through being able to make decisions autonomously rather than being able to make decisions within a framework and within a strong support mechanism. 

So often if promotions don't succeed, it's not about what the individual's done in their career, it's about the how. And the how the new job needs to be done against the how the individual likes to work and how they're motivated to actually get their work done. 

I think there's a piece to add in here about the importance of understanding what the non-negotiables are within a job role and within organisations, the key stakeholders that have an impact on how that job is going to be worked and managed on a day-to-day basis actually get aligned. 

Because the worst thing that you can do as a candidate is have one stakeholder who has expectations of the job to be done in an ABC fashion and yet somebody else that you need to report to two days a week wants it done in an XYZ fashion. And then you've got another key influencer who wants it done in a DEF fashion. 

By definition, as the job holder or as the candidate, you have no chance of its success because you report, you know, straight line to one person, dotted line somewhere else and a key influence somewhere else. And three different people want the job done in different ways.

So, one of them wants you to use your initiative and take your own decisions, whereas another one doesn't want you to do that, and they want you to keep your head down, do as you're told and follow the rules. 

Well, I'm sorry, but actually, if I am somebody who likes to keep my head down and follow the rules, then I'll be happy working with one of you, but I'm not going to be happy working with the other one and vice versa. 

So, it is important for organisations to actually do some smart work right up front and be really clear, not just on what the technical aspects are of the job, but actually, how do they want that job done?

Do they want the job holder to take charge, take control, use the initiative and make their decisions independently? Or do they want the job holder to be a specialist in their field, keep their head down, ask for permission and follow the rules on things? 

And if your stakeholders are aligned and you're clear, then you can put out a really clear job brief and then you can attract the right candidates that are switched on to work in that fashion.

But if your stakeholders are not aligned in the first place, the danger is you come in and you get interviewed. You're an ABC person. You get interviewed by the line manager who wants an ABC individual, and that's great. They highly recommend you. 

And then you go for second interview to the manager that wants an XYZ person and they don't quite like you. And then you go for third interview to the person that wants DEF, and they're completely confused because they've got a bit of something but not everything that's needed.

So, as a candidate, you have no chance of success. And a lot of time and effort and money is wasted in organisations in the hiring process by not being clear in the first place as to what are not just the task aspects of the job but the behavioural expectations of the job.

Neale James: Let's take a scenario. The job has been well profiled. You've hired the right individual into the job, but it's still not successful.

Why might that be?

Michael Jones: I think we work with a lot of people who operate in the talent acquisition field. One of the questions I often ask is how frustrating is it for you when you have been briefed on a role and you work very hard to understand the role from the hiring manager and anybody else who's involved in the recruitment process, and you hire what you know to be a perfect candidate or as close to perfect as it's possible to get. And you're quite pleased with yourself because you've achieved something, you've ticked something off your list, and then six months later you're advised that you have to go out and recruit that role all over again.

How frustrating is that? And then of course what people say is we made a bad hire. And the chances are we didn't actually make a bad hire.

We made a great hire, but the manager that we put that hire to work with possibly didn't understand the way that that person was constructed because we've often been led to believe that we should manage people like we expect to be managed. And one of the things that we always say is that's nonsense. We should manage people like they expect to be managed.

And it might very well be that that perfect hire is somebody that the manager doesn't understand, that they don't understand that there are different motivation needs, that they need different things than what they might need from their boss. 

So, often the promotion doesn't work quite simply because the manager doesn't understand what that person needs to be given in order for that person to operate at optimum capacity.

Fiona Brookwell: So for example, if you knowingly hire somebody into a receptionist job and that job requires lots of high extroversion to do the job successfully, it's a very front-facing job, and you therefore hire somebody of an extrovert nature so they enjoy working with and through other people, but you give them to a manager who doesn't communicate with them proactively, doesn't involve them in things on a regular basis, and pretty much leaves them to their own devices just to get on and do the job, but doesn't have regular check-ins with them. And that individual ends up feeling isolated or feeling excluded by their line manager because their line manager has very little time for them and very little communication with them, then that individual could then feel a disconnect and feel that their manager doesn't like them and feel that their manager doesn't value them. 

So it's an example where you could have somebody hired into the right job with the right traits, but if they're mismanaged, the manager doesn't know that they need that level of social reinforcement and acknowledgement and to feel valued by their manager on a regular basis, then you're going to have a disconnect there, and the individual leaves after three, six months because they think their manager doesn't like them. 

Why? Because their manager doesn't talk to them very often.

Michael Jones: I'm sure you'd agree that managers have a duty. They're being paid money to do the job managing people, so they have a duty to understand the people that they are managing and they have a duty to accept that I need somebody in that role who's different to me, and again, I think it's their responsibility to work out that that person is different to me, so what makes them different? How do I need to adapt and adjust my behaviour to give them what they need?

I can't be that person. I shouldn't be that person. But I should understand that person well enough to know that they will need things from me that I don't need from my boss.

Another reason I can think of why sometimes the promotion or appointment to a job doesn't work is that sometimes it's a complex job, and the individual who is appointed to the job takes time, takes more time to learn, takes time to process complexity. 

And I can think of a real example when a client of mine a number of years ago took immense time and effort and involvement from other people to be really clear about what the role was, and they did. They profiled the role with our assistants, and they found a candidate who was an exact fit for what they were looking at, and of course one of the other tools that we work with is a measure of cognitive ability, that ability to process complexity and move from learning to application quickly, and this particular candidate scored incredibly low on that measurement, on that piece of data. 

So, it doesn't mean that they don't learn, but they take time to learn, and we were very clear that this role required an immense ability to move quickly.

So, the appointment was made, and I very clearly talked to my client, said, I don't think this is going to work, and let me explain to you why that is. And then six months later, my client called me and said, I'm having a real problem. He's just not moving fast enough and not getting it.

And we had a long conversation about what was going to happen, so the question then was, do you have the time to allow them to catch up to learn, or are you at that stage in your evolution that it's just not going to work? 

And the decision was made that it wasn't going to work, and it was a decision that cost them an incredible amount of money, and the candidate, of course, an immense amount of pain, and the team that the candidate was leaving caused them a huge amount of disruption. So, there are lots of reasons, I think, why promotions don't work, and we've only touched the surface about why that might be.

Neale James: Realising Potential with Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones. For more information about our services and organisation, visit www.rpx2.com.