The great organisations give space, support and a framework for success that is clear – this is not the soft option or approach – many people, as you may have experienced, see the setting and managing of clear frameworks more difficult that just letting people succeed or fail on their own account.
The number of client ‘stakeholders’ responsible for new appointments I encounter who either ignore or pay lip service to support, relationship building and, most importantly, the giving and receiving of feedback is a constant source of astonishment.
I have lost count of the number of managers, including very senior ones, who shy away from giving timely, developmental feedback until the ‘problem’ becomes too much and the timescale becomes too late. When this is investigated afterwards the new appointee often talks about ‘no one gave me the feedback, I thought I was doing OK, they then convened a review meeting and I was out the door.’ Sounds dramatic doesn’t it but, in my experience, is not that uncommon. I recently met a potential client who was on his third Operations Director in two years – they had all, in his eyes, ‘failed.’ Had they??
I have had client after client who think that by doing a weekly, monthly, three monthly or often dreaded annual paper based on an HR supplied appraisal or performance management process is what they ‘should’ be doing – in my view this is a cop-out!!
There is no substitute for on-going dialogue, relationship building built on trust and the giving and receiving of feedback.
The great organisations approach new appointments and, particularly, new senior recruits with a view that says, of course, ’let’s get results’ but not from a place of assuming the new recruit can just do it. They put in place supportive coaching or mentoring or both that really aims to deliver medium to long-term bottom-line results.
Companies spend an enormous amount of time, money and effort on the recruitment process but then fail to deliver on the transition into the new role. Failure to provide support for the new employee is, I believe, a key ingredient in the disastrously low success rates for new appointees. An internal study of 20,000 executive searches performed by global executive search company Heidrick & Struggles found that 40 per cent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or leave within 18 months of their start date.
How would it be if you changed this statistic in your own organisation or, perhaps, your own career?
www.theresultscentre.com