Believe it or not, I get asked this question a lot, and it is akin to asking about the occupant of Grant’s tomb: Where can I go to find great advice about managing a workforce?
This question usually gives me a headache, and once I get done pointing out this blog and my monthly “Last Word” column that appears both at workforce.com and in Workforce Management magazine, I have to stop and think for a bit. And then it hits me—what about the Corner Office column in the Sunday New York Times?
And there is this advice that is so glib and shoot-from-the-hip cool that it sounds good on first glance, but really, is just simplistic and silly when you examine it closely. Here’s what I’m talking about, from last Sunday’s New York Times: Mindy Crossman, CEO of HSN, claiming that her hiring philosophy is that “you only hire Tiggers. You don’t hire Eeyores.”
OK, I get the notion of not hiring someone like Eeyore, who is “generally characterized as a pessimistic, melancholic, depressed old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of … Winnie the Pooh.”
I had a guy who used to work for me who had an Eeyore-like demeanor, and he was terribly depressing to hang around for more than about five minutes. But if hiring an Eeyore is a bad thing, why is hiring someone like Tigger (another friend of Winnie the Pooh) viewed as the better way to go?
Here’s what Mindy Crossman told the Times: [I don’t need people who] “have to be loud, but I need energy-givers and I have to get a feeling that this person is going to be able to inspire people. Are they going to be optimistic about where they’re going? Are they going to attract people who are like that?”
She’s right that high-energy people can be a great addition to a workplace, but who said that only high-energy, Tigger-like personalities inspire people? Plus, most workplaces are made up of a lot of different types of personalities.
People with a lot of energy are great in some ways for some things, but an office full of them? Somehow, I don’t think a place where everyone is bouncing off the walls makes for the best workplace environment.
And here’s one more thing: What kind of CEO speaks of their workplace and hiring philosophy in terms of fictional cartoon characters? I mean, I enjoy a good cartoon as much as anyone, but I wouldn’t describe my hiring or business philosophy in terms of Montgomery Burns, George Jetson or any other such character.
Maybe HSN’s Cindy Crossman wasn’t completely clear when she talked to The New York Times, but maybe that’s just the nature of the newspaper’s Corner Office column, because it seems to me that all too often the advice from these captains of industry is completely wrongheaded and seems to be what you should AVOID doing at all cost.
So it seems with Mindy Crossman, because her admonition that “you only hire Tiggers” is as foolish as it is shortsighted. Yes, it doesn’t pay to hire glum Eeyore types, but then again, bigger-than-life people who constantly overhype their worth and are bouncing off walls like kindergartners on a sugar high isn’t the workplace answer either.
Eeyore or Tigger? That’s a terrible choice to make, and thankfully, most CEOs know that hiring and business decisions aren’t as simple or clear-cut as that. If you look to cartoons for your hiring philosophy, well, be prepared to feel like Wyle E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner, because it’s likely you’ll be running into a lot of walls along the way.
Here’s a question I’d love to have some hiring managers answer: Would you hire (or even consider hiring) an individual with superior talent but a troubled past who might be a game-changer for your organization? Yes, he’s a convicted felon, but he has served his time, expressed remorse on numerous occasions, and seems generally contrite for his past actions.
Would you give this person a chance? Does talent outweigh the negative baggage, especially if the person in question has the ability to really, really help your business?
In other words, would you take a chance and hire former star pro quarterback Michael Vick?
“For Michael Vick to have any prayer of resuming his NFL career, he has to show true remorse for dogfighting, something he now admits doing as young as 8 years old,” writes Sam Farmer in the Los Angeles Times. “He made that confession recently to Wayne Pacelle, chief executive and president of the Humane Society of the United States, when Pacelle visited him at his home in Hampton, Va.”
The details of Michael Vick’s involvement in dogfighting are well-documented and abhorrent to just about anyone. And, Vick has paid a heavy price for his actions: “Although he remains on probation, Vick on Monday completed his federal dogfighting sentence, which included 18 months in prison and two more under home confinement,” the Times story points out.
“He [also] forfeited an estimated $70 million when the Atlanta Falcons released him from his 10-year, $130-million contract, [and] Vick filed for bankruptcy protection a year ago, listing $16 million in assets and $20 million in debt.”
Yes, Vick has paid the price, but his crimes clearly warranted the penalty. Ed Sayres, president and chief executive of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said it was Vick’s “barbarism that sets the crime apart,” and that Vick admitted he electrocuted and beat dogs to death after they lost fights. “This was not a one-time transgression or crime of passion—this was a multi-year pattern of behavior that demonstrates a startling lack of moral character and judgment,” Sayres said.
But whether you decide to hire Vick also comes down to something else—do you believe in redemption? Can people atone and make up for their actions? Do the Michael Vicks of the world deserve a second chance?
I believe Vick deserves another chance, and I think that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell—the guy who ultimately will make the decision—will eventually come to that conclusion too.
However, I also believe the discussion over whether Vick should get another chance is one we wouldn’t be having if he wasn’t a big-time, highly talented athlete. Is there any profession in America other than the performance-driven world of professional athletics that would consider hiring someone who served time for torturing animals?
Although I believe in the power of redemption, of serving your debt to society, and of getting another chance, I also don’t believe there is a hiring manager outside the NFL who would take a chance on a convicted felon like Vick no matter how talented or game-changing he might be.
Pro football writers are split on this.
John DeShazier in the New Orleans Times-Picayune feels that “Vick has paid enough to regain admission to the league if a team will have him,” while Mike Lopresti in USA Todaysays that “the thinking here is [that Vick] probably merits one more year of sanctions, for wanton cruelty, but I could be talked into ending his suspension now. He’s been gone two seasons. That’s forever to a professional athlete.”
For hiring managers and recruiters who like to crow that it’s all about hiring superior talent, that’s only true up to a point, because I don’t believe there is a talent manager outside of the Oakland Raiders willing to go to the boss and make a pitch for hiring a game-changing individual with off-the-board talent who also happens to have a rap sheet that includes torturing animals.
So I ask again: Would you give Michael Vick a second chance?
I normally might have gone right by this article, but it was the headline that gave me pause and pulled me in. It said, simply, “Charisma? To Her, It’s Overrated.”
Wendy Kopp was talking about hiring teachers, but her quote about charisma was particularly insightful. When asked “What are you looking for in the teachers you recruit?” she said that she looked for: “The ability to influence and motivate others in a sophisticated way—but not necessarily charisma. And that’s an interesting one, right? Because people think of teachers who are born to teach, and you think of all these charismatic folks. Some of the most successful teachers are some of the least charismatic, interestingly. But they have a gift of figuring out what motivates people.”
Kopp’s comments snagged me on two levels: One, as a part-time educator who teaches writing to college seniors at night, I’m interested in what it takes to be a good teacher. But her thoughts also grabbed me in my primary career role as a longtime manager, editor and executive who frequently grapples with the issue of leadership and how much charisma or presence plays into the ability to lead people and get them to perform better.
And, Kopp’s insight into hiring teachers holds just as true for managers and executives, because in my experience charisma in leadership is just as overrated as it is in teaching.
This is an issue I’ve battled over my entire career.
I’ve had to fight the perception that just because I wasn’t a jump-on-the-desk-and-shout-at-the-troops type of person that I really wasn’t a leader. In fact, I remember telling one boss of mine that he was wrong because yes, I was a leader, but just not the type he was familiar with.
It hired a lot of executives and managers based on these qualities, but usually, what they ended up getting were people who were glib and good at talking to a crowd, but terribly shallow, shortsighted and unaccomplished when it came to actually leading anyone.
The late, great management guru Peter Drucker knew this, and that’s why the father of modern management didn’t say anything about charisma when he was discussing what it takes to be a leader. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations,” Drucker wrote. “[In short,] management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
Yes, Wendy Kopp is right; charisma IS overrated, because it is a surface quality in most people that has little to do with teaching, leadership or actually getting people to perform. I hope we’ll finally get people to realize this, but I fear we won’t, because it is far easier to get mesmerized by charisma than it is to dig into what it REALLY takes to lead people to another level.
When did stealing employees from your competitors—a longstanding and honorable tradition about as old as business itself—become a bad thing?
I used to work in the newspaper business way back when a) the newspaper business was still healthy; and, b) there were still cities in this country that actually had honest-to-God competition between daily newspapers. I know that makes me a dinosaur, but I can remember a time when the best part of my job was figuring out how to poach some up-and-coming star away from the other paper in town.
That’s why I am surprised at what’s going on in California’s Silicon Valley, where “the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other tech companies conspired to keep others from stealing their top talent,” according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News.
According to the newspaper, “few details have been disclosed so far about the hiring-practice probe, which The Washington Post first reported in a story on its Web site late Tuesday. Citing two unnamed sources, [the Post] said the Justice Department was examining the possibility that the four companies and other unnamed firms may have violated antitrust laws by ‘negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another’s employees.’ ”
My surprise at this story flows out of my experience working at a San Francisco dot-com during the boom years from 1998 to 2001. Back then, poaching talent from a competitor (and we viewed just about ALL companies battling for technology workers as such) was a mark of both a strong company brand as well as a crackerjack recruiting operation. Luring talent away from someone else was as common as fighting traffic on the Bay Bridge—and, a helluva lot more fun.
So, having some sort of agreement among tech firms to not recruit talent away from one another, if true, would be a huge change in how Silicon Valley tech companies traditionally operate. Plus, it flies in the face of California’s “tough rules barring companies from restricting their employees’ job hunting,” the Mercury News noted.
“Many companies across the country require employees to sign so-called noncompete agreements, in which the worker agrees not to be hired by a competitor within a certain period of time,” the newspaper said. “But California law generally regards such pacts as unenforceable, said Bob Taylor, a Palo Alto attorney who specializes in antitrust law. … As a result, Taylor said, California ‘is one of, if not the most, difficult states for employers to prevent employees from taking jobs with competitors.’ ”
Maybe I just see things differently out here on the Left Coast, but a deal among big tech companies to pull their punches and not recruit talent from one another is akin to thieves agreeing not to steal from each other. What’s the point? And, can you really trust anyone to hold up their end of such an unholy agreement?
I follow the philosophy that all’s fair in business, love and war. Isn’t this what the whole notion of “passive” recruiting—an oxymoron if there ever was one—is all about? I’d love to hear what recruiters have to say about this, because if deals like this to not hire from competitors make sense, we might as well kiss the whole notion of recruiting goodbye.
In fact, a lot of baby boomers want to stay on the job longer these days given what the recession and economic downturn have done to their IRAs, 401(k)s and other retirement accounts. These are people are a lot like me—boomers who want to work as long as they can, or at least until age 70 so they can maximize their Social Security payout.
But in an odd twist, a lot of boomers are now retiring unexpectedly, and “Instead of seeing older workers staying on the job longer as the economy has worsened, the Social Security system is reporting a major surge in early retirement claims that could have implications for the financial security of millions of baby boomers,” according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.
“Since the current federal fiscal year began Oct. 1, [Social Security retirement] claims have been running 25 percent ahead of last year,” the Times story adds, and “that compares with the 15 percent increase that had been projected as the post-World War II generation reaches eligibility for early retirement, according to Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration.”
This shows you just how hard it is getting a fix on where workers’ heads are and what they might do, and it makes long-range workforce planning extremely difficult. In fact, just last December, a CareerBuilder survey found that 60 percent of workers older than 60 said they planned to postpone retirement and stay on the job.
What has changed, of course, is the economy. While I believe the CareerBuilder survey accurately captured the mood of boomers wanting to continue working back in December, it clearly didn’t anticipate the huge plunge in the economy and job losses in the first quarter of 2009. Yes, a lot of older workers want to keep working, but what do you do if you lose your job, can’t find a new one, and have the Social Security retirement option available?
If you are in that kind of fix, you do what most people would do: You take the retirement money and run, even if that’s not what you planned or wanted to do.
Here’s what is going on, the Times story indicates: “Many of the additional retirements are probably laid-off workers who are claiming Social Security early, despite reduced benefits, because they are under immediate financial pressure, Goss and other analysts believe.” And, the story adds, “The ramifications of the trend are profound for the new retirees, their families, the government and other social institutions that may be called upon to help support them. On top of savings ravaged by the stock market decline and the loss of home equity, many retirees now must make do with Social Security benefits reduced by as much as 25 percent if they retire at age 62 instead of 66.”
This just goes to show you how ridiculous it is trying to make broad-brush assumptions—like baby boomers retiring in a huge wave—given how unpredictable the economy can be. And it just shows again that no matter what part you play in the workforce—employer, manager or down-in the-trenches employee—the smart thinking in this economy continues to be pretty simple: Always hope for the best, but make certain that you prepare for the worst.
= Member Only
