How To Hire and Train Self Managing Top Performers

#1 Companies constantly look for opportunities to grow their Self Managing culture.

April 2009

Each month this e-letter will provide key information on how these companies select their self managing talent and how they train them to be even better.

Hiring Self Managers

My customers tell me Talent Acquisition means finding the right person, for the job as well as for the company and for the candidate. Sounds like a lofty goal, however why not? When you think about it, the Hiring Specialist holds the destiny of the company in their hands.
It makes perfect sense to go for the best. At a recent seminar, Paul Tobey quipped, “Most people don’t get what they want because they don’t know what they want!” It’s easy to fall into that trap in selecting a new employee, a new key element really, for our companies.
The companies we’ve worked with over the past 25 years have helped develop a formula that works – no surprise, since it came from the people who use and depend on it every day. And these are the best in the insurance and financial industry so they know a thing or two about selecting top people!
You can increase your odds of success in a new hire by taking a balanced look at Talent, Effort and Fit to your company. Even weighting on each seems to work best.
Some quick definitions:
Talent: Combination of learned skills required and natural behavioural characteristics (shown by psychological profiling)
Effort: This is a tweak on the Behavioural Interview. We’re looking for a history of working steadily and working hard enough to achieve consistent results.
Fit: This is the chemistry or gut feel we experience when we meet the ‘right’ person for our company. This ideally shows up when they ‘light up’ talking about the work they want to do with your company.
So by using a system with even weighting on each element, you get a solid hire: They can do the job. They will do the job and they will be passionate about doing it with your company.
Why use a system like this? Because it’s proven and it works, whether you are hiring an HR Specialist, a customer service rep or a top salesperson.

Training Self Managers

You can hire self managers or you can grow them or you can do both – best of both worlds. We are all self managers to varying degrees. It is core to us in fact self management is a core element to our beliefs.
We all want our kids to grow up to be successful, responsible adults who make and keep commitments and make us proud.
Right now is a really good time to bring more of that back. Why is now a good time? Because right now more than ever we are influenced every moment of every day in every way possible, to do what someone else wants us to.
The confusion and potential for overwhelm is very real.
So how does the self manager handle it? The core of managing ‘self’ is making commitments and keeping them. The commitments are based on self motivation. The motivation of the self manager comes from their internal decision about what they want.
So how does that make a difference? It cuts down on the confusion and overwhelm because we have ‘skin in the game’ and are self motivated to get and keep focused.
Want to know what a self manager looks like? Look at the best performers in your company, the key people who make good things happen and they do it day after day, year after year. They are your internal role models.
Tiger Woods has been described as the ultimate self manager. When you think about it in terms of Talent, Effort and Fit it gets very exciting!
He has grown his huge natural skills and his behaviour to a level unique in his ‘business’.
His effort is consistent – he is known for working very hard and very smart.
His Fit to his chosen career is Passionate! It is so total this passion spills over into his love of healthy food and the right exercise – check out his book.
Training to be a better self manager works well when the self manager – that’s you and me - is in charge with the ‘coach’, their manager, constantly growing and supporting this growth.
How do we coach ourselves and how do we coach self managers. By asking ourselves the right questions and really listening for the answers. The source for motivated action is in those answers.

Until next month, keep Self Managing
Cliff Sutton, the Self Management Group, 416-930-6165, csutton@self-management.com
Please refer this monthly e-letter to at colleague at email above. Thank you.