Weekly Success Tip

Q3. At work do I have the chance to do what I do best?

Today we continue our six part series on what it takes to hire and retain the most talented staff according to the largest study of it’s type ever done.

As previously mentioned one of the startling findings from that study was that the world’s top managers don’t believe anyone can do anything they choose... They don’t hire on skills and experience, they hire on talent!

This controversial statement is the topic of today’s success tip and brings us to question number three.

Q3. At work do I have the chance to do what I do best?

You’ll recall in the first part of this series of six questions that I told the story of when I owned my fitness club, I became frustrated with my personal trainers because they weren’t 'selling'.

My solution was to provide them with great sales training and make them sell, but what I found was that whilst they could do it and learn to sell, they didn’t like to sell. And If I had persisted and tried to make them sell, I would have lost them.

As a result of this, I discovered that people will always resort to their natural behavioural strengths or tendencies, so it is far better to view them as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and figure out where they best fit, rather than trying to squash people into roles that don’t fit their strengths.

A classic example of this in sales is when someone does really well at selling, the normal career progression is to promote them to sales manager. Now I would confidently argue that being a star salesperson and managing a team of salespeople are not only very different skills, they require very different talents.

Occasionally, this works well but more often than not, one of two things happens. Either the new ‘sales manager’ gets really frustrated or the salespeople get really frustrated. And the result? Either way staff turnover increases.

In most cases you’d be far better to keep your star salespeople and let them do what they love to do best.

Forcing people ‘up’ the organisational ladder based simply on length of service or performance can be a disaster, especially if the new roles require different behaviours and talents.

The solution is always to let people play to their strengths, rather than forcing them to do roles they are not suited to and waste valuable time trying to work on their weaknesses.

It’s hard enough to find out what you’re really good at, let alone finding your weaknesses and trying to improve them.

So why not take a minute now and rate yourself from 1 (low) to 5 (high) and answer this question: Q3. At work do I have the chance to do what I do best?

Next week we’ll examine question #4.