The Metiss Group Profiled on Metromode.com
The Metiss Group was recently profiled in the online publication Metromode.com, highlighting our consistent success and growth, particularly in recent years.
Metromode is published by Detroit-based Issue Media Group, L.L.C., and profiles job growth and development in Southeast Michigan.
Susan Cain, in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, describes a series of experiments by psychologist Solomon Asch in which volunteers were grouped into teams and asked to take a vision test. He showed them a picture of three lines of varying lengths and asked questions about how the lines compared with one another. His questions were so simple that 95 percent of participants answered every question correctly. But when Asch planted high dominating actors in the groups, and the actors confidently volunteered incorrect answers, the number of participants who gave correct answers plunged to 25 percent.
The impact persistent, aggressive dominating types have on group decision making is astounding and can send teams in unproductive and inaccurate directions. Stating incorrect facts forcefully and relentlessly doesn’t make them correct, but can eventually make them believable. Teams that are aware of this when making decisions, are comfortable challenging dominating team members, and have dominating team members whom are comfortable admitting they may be wrong are much healthier.
Today, more and more work is being done in teams, and those teams risk being knocked off track by certain team members. But, teams that understand each other’s problem solving styles and have a common language for identifying the various approaches are equipped to make better decisions.
Empower your teams to understand their workplace behaviors and avoid being unduly influenced by the high dominating team members and they’ll be more successful.
If you google “how to sell customers”, you’ll get about 835 million results. Googling “how to write business plans” returns about 409 million results and “how to raise capital” about 222 million. Oddly, searching for “how to hire employees” only yields 146 million results (“how to fire employees” returns even more at 199 million).
The fact is, leaders are not taught to hire employees as much as other business practices. As a result, leaders should not expect to always make great hires (even if they were well trained it’s impossible to do every time). Most hiring managers will make at least one hiring mistake sometime in their career. That’s fine, maybe even encouraged. What isn’t okay is not correcting the mistake.
Good leaders recognize when they make a poor hire, admit it, and correct it. Though a good selection process and reliable assessment tools increase the odds of a successful hire, nobody expects hiring managers to be perfect. But the team does expect leaders to fix their mis-hires. The team will respect the leader for admitting and correcting their error.
Empower your hiring managers to correct hiring mistakes and you’ll have a more successful team.
We are naturally attracted to people who agree with us and confirm what we already believe. It makes us feel better and less stressed. However, disagreement, not consensus, leads to better decisions. Unfortunately, few leaders are comfortable seeking out differing opinions.
People with different behavior styles approach problems and offer solutions from different perspectives. Your forceful, aggressive team members will give strong, no-nonsense answers. The fun loving, high energy team members will offer optimistic, conflict free approaches. Easy going, steady team members like logical and empathetic solutions. And the rigid, compliant types prefer analytical, data driven options.
First, take time to evaluate how your team typically solves problems and use some psychometric assessments for additional insight. When you understand everyone’s strengths and approaches, encourage the team to challenge you from those different perspectives. Once given permission and inspiration to contribute using new solutions in this way, the team will naturally make better decisions.
Empower your team to challenge your positions by using their strengths, and you’ll experience more success.
It’s the New Year, so as Steven Covey recommends in his 2nd habit: Begin With The End In Mind. What do you really want/need to accomplish this year? What about your direct reports? Is there a development goal they have that you can support?
Empower the success of direct reports by asking each what they really want to accomplish as a development goal this year. Together, set a plan with clear expectations, set some milestones for discussions about resources, restrictions, obstacles, and progress toward the goal.
As a team, identify a goal or two that supports organizational goals and set similar plans. Discuss exactly what success looks like, what resources the team will need, any restrictions, and set the first few milestones with clear level of authority. By creating clarity around these borders and boundaries, you empower the direct reports to attain the goal without micromanaging how exactly they get there. Keep adjusting the milestones and level of authority as needed, and you’ll all be energized by the success.
Empower the success of your direct reports by beginning with the end in mind and setting the borders and boundaries around identified goals.
We’re all familiar the mantra: hire for hard skills but fire for soft skills. This is true for CEOs too.
It’s a popular belief that CEOs get fired (or forced to resign or retire under pressure) because of poor financial performance. But that’s wrong, according to a four-year study by LeadershipIQ.com who interviewed 1,087 board members from 286 public, private, business and healthcare organizations that fired, or otherwise forced out, their chief executive. Below are the five reasons the CEOs were fired and the percentage of board members providing the reason:
Board members or other hiring managers can minimize mis-hires by focusing on screening for soft or healthy skills. While it is easier to screen for hard skills, behavior based interview questions and workplace behavioral psychological assessments can provide insights regarding candidates’ likelihood of struggling with healthy skills.
Empower your selection team with the tools to screen for healthy skills and you’ll make successful hires.
It’s a well know fact that 75% of business startups fail in the first year, over 80% fail in the first 5 years, and only 4% survive 10 years. Given these overwhelming odds, why do so many entrepreneurs risk their life savings and start businesses? When most people anticipate future events, their initial reaction is to be overly optimistic.
We’ve all sat in meetings where the high influencers in the group persuade the team with the optimistic vision. The opinions of the quiet realists are often overlooked or stifled by the enthusiasm created by the energetic influencers. Good leaders recognize decisions can be highjacked by the overly optimistic vocal team members and go out of their way to extract the opinions of the less forceful deeper thinkers.
One approach is to challenge the team to conduct a premortem when making important decisions. When the team has almost come to an important decision, have the team imagine they are a year into the future. They implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Discuss what went wrong that created the disaster. You’ll be amazed how engaged the introverted conscientious team members become and how better decisions are made.
Empower your decision makers to conduct premortems and they will make more successful decisions.
Microsoft announced recently they are abandoning their controversial “stack ranking” system for evaluating employees. For years, Microsoft managers have been required to grade employees against one another and rank them on a scale of one to five. Under this approach, some employees must receive an unfavorable review based on how they compared to their peers, regardless of the quality of their work or their accomplishments. This created great angst for both managers and employees and is the primary factor for Microsoft’s poor morale.
Jack Welch similarly mandated a 20-70-10 differentiation process at GE. Each GE department head was required to identify 20% of their superstars, 70% producers, and the 10% low performers needing to be terminated. Even in an organization as large as GE, this approach was rejected by both managers and employees.
There is nothing wrong with differentiating your team – your superstars should be treated differently than your questionable contributors – but forced ranking is not the best approach. The best differentiation models identify specific rigid criteria required to be identified as a superstar, producer, or questionable. It doesn’t matter what percent of your team are superstars as long as they achieve the established challenging success factors (both achievement metrics and cultural/behavioral performance). Similarly, those team members failing to meet their success factors and falling into the questionable category should be working on an exit plan, regardless what percent of the team this represents.
Empower your leaders to differentiate based on predetermined success factors instead of a forced ranking, and you’ll have a successful team.
The most hated talent management process is the performance appraisal. It’s one of the few processes that both leaders and direct reports dread. Unfortunately, most HR policies require this annual ritual that is cumbersome and expensive. HR experts estimate that the cost of preparing a performance appraisal is about $2,500 per employee per year. This cost includes the time required for preparation, meeting, and recovery (yes, direct reports need time to recover from this traumatic experience).
With all the evidence showing the ineffectiveness of formal performance appraisals, we are flabbergasted HR influencers insist leaders continue to conduct formal appraisals. We recommend informal quarterly performance reviews but realize most leaders are still required to prepare formal performance appraisals.
Here are some tips to make the performance appraisal process more effective:
Empower your leaders to conduct smarter performance appraisals, and you’ll experience more success.
Availability bias was pioneered by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who in 1973 developed a model to explain systematic bias in human decision-making. Kahneman subsequently won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work. We all have availability bias and have to exert much cognitive discipline to avoid the pitfalls.
Availability bias is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. When making a decision, recent related events and situations are easily remembered. As a result, we might judge that those events are more frequent and impactful than others. We give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.
Availability bias is frequently demonstrated when preparing performance reviews. Leaders tend to give greater weight to recent events when evaluating their direct reports. This becomes more problematic the longer the time between performance reviews. Most people can only recall details within the past 90 days. To overcome this tendency, leaders must record the performance of their direct reports throughout the review period and prepare the review based on those records, not their memories.
Empower your leaders to prepare their performance reviews based on documentation accumulated all through the review period instead of what they remember, and they’ll have more successful feedback sessions.
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