Recruit based on your weaknesses!
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How do you get managers to think outside the box when they are recruiting into their team? One pattern HR constantly struggles with is managers who fall into the trap of trying to get people into their teams who have followed a similar pattern to their own career path or history. This usually stems from a deep down belief that the person will be good at the job because they’re similar to the manager – “I was successful because of X, this person has done X so they will be successful too”.
In the work we do with managers at all levels, there is often a disproportionate overlap between the strengths of team members and of their managers. Quite simply, people like working with people who are like themselves.
This pattern of thinking can often be damaging when managers give career advice to younger staff with different interests and strengths. We often hear graduates saying “My manager says that I have to spend 10 years in a technical speciality before I can start managing people” or asking “How can I act against my manager’s career advice, without destroying a great relationship?”
Recruiting a team of people based on your own track record is understandable, as it’s often the only experience you have of how to succeed.
The reality is that the factors which have made a manager successful could be different to those which make up this “template” of the ideal candidate. For example, their success could have come because of an opportunity that arose outside of their control. Or the world might have changed since they made that move 5 years ago and there are different paths now.
When promoting and recruiting talent, we need to make sure that managers look beyond the people who are like them and instead take a view that the best candidates are sometimes those whose strengths balance out the manager’s weaknesses. For instance, a manager who is a big-picture thinking, creative individual would benefit from team members who are good at making sure the detail is done correctly and on time.
How to raise this awareness? Recently we’ve noted the reaction of managers to people using our Strengths Cards (part of the Talent Manager Think Strengths workshop). Sorting out your own cards to find out what energises you, and the areas which in your heart of hearts, you don’t think you’ll ever be any good at, is the first step in raising awareness. Doing a quick sort of what you think are the key strengths and weaknesses of your team is another step. But the real aha! moment comes when you ask the question – who would be a good pair of people to put together, so that one person’s strengths balance out the other’s weaknesses? It’s a short step from this to analysing the strengths pattern of the whole team (dominated by the blue ‘thinking strengths’ cards? Weak on the green ‘people strengths’ cards?) – and starting to think about – what are the strengths that are really missing from our team? Who do I need to cover my own weaknesses?
It’s key when recruiting or giving more responsibility, to encourage managers to measure people based on their brightness and ambition. And if they’re not like them, get them to take a risk – they’ll almost certainly add more to the team than a clone.
Take Away
It is better for managers to recruit on the basis of their weaknesses – not their strengths!